You’re missing the point. The escaped slave was on one side of the line and his legal owner was on the other. But the proclamation said that if you were an escaped slave and your owner lived anywhere in “Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth)” then you were now free. You no longer had to fear that you would be returned to your former owner when the war ended. These men were freed on January 1, 1863.
Very few southern people had slaves compared to the population as a whole. Most small farmers for example, did not have, nor could they afford slavery. Slavery was mostly contained on large plantations and tracts of land. It was the big business classes in the South that wanted to be an independent country, with slavery a side issue. It was a fight between federalism and states rights in everything, not just slavery.
I think the people who went to Brazil saw an opportunity to be able to have a nice, large farm for a cheap price, instead of living in a war torn, impoverished area of the United States under military rule. Probably some of them just hated the USA and took off, while probably most saw an excellent business opportunity. Hell, today a lot of Americans would be happy to go to Brazil of there was land or an opportunity.
Not true, if you read what the Southern people actually wrote and said (much less the subtext they did not quite say). Before, during, and after the war, they are quite explicit that slavery was the key motivator.
It turns out it was a rebellion led by slaveholders to protect slavery from perceived coming federal interference, with some minor side issues about tariffs tacked on for show. “States rights” at the time was a code phrase for “slavery” almost exclusively – if for some reason you were talking about some other presumed state right, you’d have to explain that, since your listeners would assume you meant slavery.
They’re still around. They’re called corporations. They just changed up the terms of slavery a little so now it’s more like permanent indentured servitude. 
Regarding the Proclamation’s focus on legalism, nitpicking over the boundaries, and general lack of rhetorical flourish – and the eventual impact it would have after quibbling died down – Governor Andrews summed it up best: “A poor document, but a mighty act.”
I forget now, what are all those exceptions about? Were those areas that the Union had already successfully occupied? Or were they heavy Lincoln re-election campaign contributors? 
And where did the Northern Army get its legal authority to declare slaves free? From the Emancipation Proclamation, which was a legal document issued under the authority of the President’s war powers.
Until the Proclamation was issued, slaves were still a form of property, and the federal government was bound to respect that form of property, by both the Fifth Amendment and the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3). The Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott was still the law of land.
The Union Army, as part of the federal government, was bound by the United States Constitution to respect the property rights of American citizens in the rebellious states. Just as the Army could not unilaterally seize Farmer Brown’s house, just because he lived in Virginia, neither could they seize Farmer Brown’s slaves, without due process and fair compensation.
Once the President determined that freeing the slaves was a war measure that would help to cripple the South’s war economy and strengthen the military position of the Union Army, he issued the Proclamation under his war powers - as a directive to the Union Army. The Proclamation is what gave the Army the power to free slaves as it captured rebellious territory.
And that is also why it only applied to those portions of the United States that were in rebellion - as a document issued under the war powers, the President had no power to free slaves in territories that were not in rebellion.
If the rebel master used his slaves to further the Confederate war effort, that might be so. But if Farmer Brown in Virginia was just using his slaves to farm his own property, on what basis were they contraband? The fact that the states were in rebellion didn’t mean that all of the citizens of those states automatically lost all of their rights under the federal Constitution, when the federal government defeated the rebellion and restored federal authority in their part of a rebellious state.
Just a part of the problem
Demonstrating unusual self control by not commenting further.
Just to follow up on the point that the Army did not have the automatic power to free slaves, and did not in fact do so, there was the early example of the Frémont Emancipation, which President Lincoln countermanded, as contrary to the powers he wished the Army to use at that stage of the war.
Slaves were the least of it. The Union army looted whatever it wanted from rebel territory, and was only bound to respect property rights once a particular region formally surrendered to Union authority. Now if I understand you correctly what you’re asking is, before the Emancipation Proclamation could a surrendered rebel immediately ask that the Fugitive Slave Act be enforced and his escaped slaves returned to him? I have no idea, except to say I’ve never heard of that happening. Maybe such a surrendered rebel would be told that the Union authorities were busy at the moment, there’s a war on you know.
This was a major plot device in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. IIRC first Liza, and then eventually Tom have to cross Ohio and eventually take a boat to Canada. Until I read the book and looked at a map, I hadn’t realized that escaped slaves from Kentucky had only to cross one state–Ohio–and then half of Lake Erie to escape U.S. jurisdiction.
No legal effect? This wasn’t a House of Senate bill, but a Presidential proclamation with the force of law. Or so I thought.
I don’t think most people are aware, though, that the Proclamation only addressed the condition of slaves in rebel states, or parts of some states. There were also numerous slaves in states that remained mostly loyal, like Missouri. These were not legally free until after the war.
SO anyway. One time I worked with a guy named Leon. Everyone called him Boise, like Boise, Idaho. That’s a weird name for a black guy born in the south.
Well see, old Boise liked to drink and when a man buys you a drink, you drink. Boise woke up in…
Boise, Idaho.
He was a slave (this was around 1970) for eight years before he escaped one night. He would have run before, but shotguns are scary.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled rant…
And why not?
Of course!!! slaves in Kentucky did not have to go very far, because Kentucky was/is a Northern state.
You realize, of course, that Kentucky was not/is not/never was a “Southern State”. Kentucky was never in the Confederacy, Kentucky did not succeed from the Union, Kentucky is/was a Northern state and Kentucky was actually a Yankee state.
If you really want to see how easy it was for a slave to “escape”, then look at the slaves in Maryland or Washington DC who didnt have to cross any state at all, they just had to get in a boat and paddle out a few miles into international waters to be “free”.
Slaves in Florida only had to sail 90 miles in order to get to Cuba.
Slaves in Texas could just walk across the Rio Grande into Mexico.
I don’t get this story . . .
It is usually referred to as a border state.
That was the main point of the US Civil War: Lincoln did have legal jurisdiction; the seceding states didn’t have the right to do so, so the duly elected US Government was the legal government of the South.
Now, the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t really enforcible until the end of hostilities.
The point presumably is that people have been, in fact, held as slaves in the United States many times since the abolition of legal slavery. In some times and places, as with peonage, it was a relatively large-scale practice. In other cases, it was small groups and individuals just kidnapping people for the purpose.
Several years ago I heard a story from a neighbor about another former neighbor who (less than 20 years ago) had a couple “indentured servants.” These were apparently itinerants who didn’t have many options and had been pressed into accepting this arrangement. In practice, as I heard it told, it amounted to slavery–a fairly benign version of slavery, better than peonage, but not better than the lot of some actual legal antebellum black slaves. Everyone involved in this instance was white; the person I heard the story from began it in the context of just talking about the other former neighbor; “he believed in white slavery” was the actual remark that caused me to say, whoa, what?
Was there really a lot of difference between a slave (ca. 1860) and a sharecropper (ca. 1870)? Either way, you were tied to a plantation-as a slave, by being owned, as a sharecropper, by being in purpetual debt to the man who owned tha land. And, if your crop failed, you were really screwed-a slaveowner would feed you (if only because he wanted to save his investment), but a sharecropper was a liability, to be gotten rid of.
Slavery/sharecropping was what kept the South poor and backward into the 1950’s- there was no market for skilled labor, and the low wage pool of sharecropper dragged everything down-this is why agriculture in the South was so backward for so long.
A lot of people liked it this way-though not if you were poor.