At Abraham Lincoln's second Inaugural, shortly before his assassination in 1865, he spoke of how both parties deprecated war, and yet war came.  He continued, "Neither party expected the war, the magnitude, or the duration which it has already attained. Each looked for an easier triumph. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other."
And with that, Lincoln let his own feelings show through as he spoke of how strange it was, "that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces."
Ultimately, the black slaves were set free. Theoretically, it became legal as early as the first day of the year, 1863, in what has come to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation.
"The word spread," in the words of one historian, "from Capitol Hill out across the city, down into the valleys and fields of Virginia and the Carolinas, and even into the plantations of Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama. 'Slavery Legally Abolished!' read the headlines, and yet something amazing took place. The greater majority of the slaves in the South went right on living as though they were not emancipated. That continued throughout the Reconstruction Period."
"The Negro remained locked in a caste system of 'race etiquette' as rigid as any had known in formal bondage, and that every slave could repeat, with equal validity, what an Alabama slave had mumbled when asked what he thought of the Great Emancipator whose proclamation had gone into effect. 'I don't know nothin' 'bout Abraham Lincoln cep they say he set us free. And I don't know nothin' 'bout that neither.'"
How tragic. A war was being fought. A document had been signed. Slaves were legally set free. The word is emancipated. And yet most continued to live out their years, and many of their children some of their years, in fear, saying, "I don't know nothin' 'bout that neither." In a context of freedom, slaves chose to remain slaves, though they were legally freed. Even though emancipated, they kept serving the same master throughout their lives.
— Shelby Foole

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