What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?

Why this is the answer

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War, declared that the enslaved people in the Confederate states were free. Emancipation means freedom and a proclamation is an announcement, so the name says exactly what it did. It did not reach every enslaved person at once: most people in the South were not actually freed until the Union won the war in 1865, and slavery everywhere in the country was abolished by the 13th Amendment later that year. Any of the four official answers is accepted. Memory hook: 1863, freed the slaves in the Confederacy.