How Effective Were the Abolitionists by 1860?

As slavery rapidly increased between 1790 and 1860 by 3 million people in the United States of Amereica to a total of 4 million, so did support for the abolitionist movement, a group that sought to end the enslavement of blacks within the South. Though they did help to free thousands of slaves and moved whites towards the idea of equal rights, were they really that sucessful and did they really contribute that much to the final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863? I believe that their efforts can be seen as both encouraging and discouraging the end of slavery.
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