system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How was the Emancipation Proclamation "enforced" during the Civil War? If the South had seceded from the Union, why didn't they just ignore Lincoln and keep their slaves?

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gpt
The Proclamation was issued at a time when the Union army was making steady gains against the South. It freed slaves in those states not yet under Union occupation--as Union troops advanced further, slaves they encountered were freed. The Proclamation was intended so that slaves would be free after the prospective Union victory, which would defuse the power of slaver owners in the South and hopefully aid reconstruction. It would also make the cause of abolition easier, though this proved unnecessary since the 13th Amendment was adopted before the reintegration of the South.

It also had a significant effect in stimulating slave escapes on the Southern plantations, since before there had been no guarantee that a slave escaping from the Confederacy would be treated as free in the Union.