Lincoln formally declares that enslaved people in the Confederate states and areas named by the proclamation are free. The passage converts emancipation from a military objective into an official act of the United States government, issued under his claimed wartime authority as commander-in-chief.

The declaration was limited in scope. It applied to designated places still in rebellion on 1 January 1863, rather than to every slaveholding area of the United States. Its practical effect therefore depended heavily on the advance of Union forces into Confederate territory.

The promise that federal civil, military and naval authorities would recognise and maintain freedom was central to the order. It meant that people escaping slavery or reached by Union forces were not to be returned to enslavement. The passage joined individual liberation to government enforcement and made the destruction of slavery in the Confederacy an explicit purpose of the Union war effort.