I don't remember where I first learned this, but have basically considered it true while growing up. After the Emancipation Proclamation did the Union Army see an increase in volunteers. As I'd learned it, a lot of northerners with abolitionist sympathies had been unwilling to fight if the status quo of slavery would be upheld after victory, so when the cause of the war (in the popular consciousness at least) shifted to ending slavery there was a great surge of abolitionist volunteers.
Beyond this assumption, how was the proclamation received by the average person in the north?
I've ordered James McPherson's "For Cause and Comrades" but it hasn't arrived yet, is this considered a fair and scholarly source?
In fact, the situation is the opposite: most northern men were not abolitionists, and the Emancipation Proclamation actually alienated them. Most northerners believed in a war to preserve the government and the Union, not to destroy slavery. Democratic soldiers were especially opposed to the idea of war for the sake of blacks.
Even some Republicans weren't ready for emancipation, since it was believed that liberating the slaves would only bring servile insurrection, rape and murder.
The Union had already ran into some recruitment problems. Recruitment stations had been closed during the Peninsula Campaign in anticipation of Richmond's capture by McClellan. But after Lee drove back Little Mac in the Seven Days, more soldiers were needed. Especially because the enlistment times of many of the soldiers recruited in 1861 were over.
The Lincoln administration was not able to appeal to northern men's patriotic fervor anymore. Most would rather stay home and help in the farms than go an fight, especially after the bloody battles of the Peninsula and the Mississippi showed just how devastating war can be. Congress had to enact a "quasi-draft", a militia law that defined all males in a state as members of the militia and allowed the states (or the federal government) to force them to serve if their quotas for soldiers were not met.
The Emancipation Proclamation did have an effect. McPherson says in "What they fought for" that many northerners who were apathic to slavery or opposed to a war for emancipation decided to accept and support the Proclamation because they believed that liberating the slaves weakened the Confederacy. Many would even become abolitionists, albeit gradually.
As for those who were already abolitionists? Most were probably already in the army, and the Proclamation either helped them keep going or dissapointed them: many Radical Republicans believed that it was grossly hypocrital of Lincoln to declare free the slaves not under his control.
It can be concluded that no, the Emancipation Proclamation did not cause a volunteer surge, but actually caused many to not want to serve because they did not believe in a war for emancipation.
Incidentally, McPherson's "The Battle Cry of Freedom" and "What they fought for" are my main sources for this answer. Dr. McPherson is well regarded among Civil War scholars. The aforementioned "Battle Cry of Freedom" is often considered one of the best single volume overviews of the Civil War. His books are, in my experience, well written and researched, and he provides abundant footnotes and sources.