Posted on 07/06/2013 7:37:16 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Thanks for that question, I'll accept it as being something other than rhetorical.
Over the years, beginning with President Jefferson in the early 1800s, several plans to free slaves by compensating their owners were offered up.
Some of these plans included transportation of former slaves to Africa.
One led to the 1822 establishment freed-slave settlements in Liberia, Africa.
Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS) and supported by such prominent politicians as James Monroe (Virginia), Henry Clay (Kentucky) and Abraham Lincoln (born Kentucky).
In due time, Lincoln also proposed a compensation plan to free slaves and offer them transportation to Africa.
Like all such previous plans Lincoln's was rejected by slave-holders, but in this case also by free slaves themselves, who preferred to take their chances here.
So, bottom line: there was no possibility -- zero, zip, nada -- of the Slave Power accepting compensation in exchange for freedom of slaves.
In most slave-holders' views, slavery was such a good and moral institution, that any suggestions for mass freedom for slaves -- compensated or not -- could only be viewed with horror.
JCBreckenridge: "It was about the same thing it was back in the 1820s.
Nullification."
When Lincoln was first elected in November 1860 and South Carolina immediately began moving for secession, there was nothing for them to "nullify".
Slave-Power Democrats still then controlled the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court -- nothing, nothing had changed.
Except that Lincoln was certainly anti-slavery, and was perceived as a threat to slavery in the Deep South -- enough of a threat for them to justify secession in their own minds.
The Tappan brothers Arthur and Lewis. They were like the Koch brothers of the abolitionist movement.
Actually, it does. "Manstealing" is forbidden. In fact, it was a capital offense.
"And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." -- Exodus 21:16
And clearly, slavery thoroughly violates the Golden Rule.
"[W]hatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." - Matthew 7:12
As Lincoln said, "Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
Yes your correct
The final 4 straws if you will.
Dred Scott
Harper’s ferry.
Bleeding Kansas.
Uncle Tom’s cabin.
These events enraged both sides.
But after Harper’s Ferry the South was determined on War. At that point it wasn’t just about slavery, but John Brown was trying to cause a slave revolt and get a lot of people killed.
Slavery was by far the main cause of the war.
We have already established that this was a time when passions were at a fever pitch. Economic systems, like the slavery fueled South were not going to change overnight. My previous post described how the period from 1820 to 1860 was fraught with challenges, with new states coming into the Union,and whether they would be allowed to have slavery or not.
The Constitution had already established that there could no more importation of slaves after 1808. That was a 20 year concession made at the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Slavery could not be ended overnight, or in one fell swoop.Nor, did the North desire it to be so. After all, the North did not want to have black people migrate northward. Plus the Federal government got the majority of its operating revenue from the South’s agricultural exports.Those taxes were the major source of government funding before there were corporate and personal income taxes, which would not happen for another 50 years(excluding the Civil War income tax, which was short lived, in the North).
Abraham Lincoln did not really care about the slaves, only about what the solution might be to what everyone realized would be a huge dislocation in the fabric of the nation and how it would operate going forward, should the institution of slavery be abolished. He was an early supporter of the nation of Liberia, to export blacks back to Africa. When he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it was not for slaves in the North, or in the border states, nor was it even for all of Louisiana. And until the 13th Amendment, it was not even legal for him to do so.
The states in the South saw an overreaching and interfering Federal government and reasoned they should be able to leave the Union the same way they came into it. After all, the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence expresses that very thought.
Now as far as Jeff Davis goes, it appears that before the start of the Civil War, there attempts to peacefully negotiate the separation of the Confederacy from the Union, including the payment for Federally owned facilities. Lincoln did refuse that offer, which was made directly by Davis, a former US Senator from Mississippi.
Davis did not what Beauregard to fire upon Sumter, but only agreed when Lincoln moved to resupply the fort against the express wishes of the Confederacy for him not to do so.
Some can argue that was like lighting a fuse in a bomb factory. The result is a known quantity for that action.
When it is said not to push the US around, it can argued that the folks in the South WERE the US, just as much as those in the North.
And of course, war was extremely profitable to those engaged in the supply of weaponry and supplies, on both sides. So there were less than idealistic reasons for some to beat the drums in 1861.
As far as the military defeat of slavery, the ultimate defeat of slavery would have come with mechanization of the agricultural processes starting in the mid 1870s. The economics of the situation would have settled the issue with far less bloodshed than a war. And face it, was slavery really “ended” in 1865? We had apartheid in the South for 100 years after the Civil War, and the Northern powers did not give a whit for the rights of the black man until Lyndon Johnson came along and saw political power to be gained by it.
As for Thomas Jefferson, when he died in 1826, he was found to be in tremendous debt. He did not release his slaves becasue they had nowhere to go. They liked being at Monticello. When Jefferson’s heir released them, they refused to leave as Monticello was their home. They wanted to stay and work the land. That was a microcosm of what faced slaves— the fear of the unknown, and a society that could not and would not be structured to assimilate them.
The North gave a wink and a nod to the South’s Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan, and a two tiered economic system that stripped the black man of any economic power.
The victor writes the history, and history tells us that Lincoln was a saint. He was a decent fellow, but how was keeping States that already expressed a desire to part, worth a four year war that killed 600,000 men out of a population of 30 million a reasonable trade, for the hundred years that followed?
That is what troubles me. The human cost, then, and since then, was more than man could imagine. So how was it the right course?
That is still a valid question, and one which still animates us today, obviously.
Thank you for sharing your perspectives.
Voluntary compensated emancipation required two things; a government willing to pay for the slaves and slave owners willing to give up their chattel. The U.S. lacked the second part of that equation. There is absolutely no evidence that Southern slave owners wanted to end slavery through any means, compensated or otherwise.
“When Lincoln was first elected in November 1860 and South Carolina immediately began moving for secession, there was nothing for them to ‘nullify’ “
Nonsense. Again - there was a nullification crisis from about 1820 onwards when the North sought to increase the power of the federal government through the Bank of the United States.
Or are you saying it was the South that attempted to create a central bank? No, not at all.
As for compensation - it was closer to confiscation than compensation, the offer was nowhere near what had been paid. It would have meant their ruin - and that was the point.
The point was never to free the slaves - the point was to finally destroy the South. And it worked perfectly well, the South still isn’t as strong as she was prior to 1865, more than 150 years later.
Had Lincoln offered what had been paid, ie, market rate, it would have been taken. It’s like the gun buybacks. Why do you think they only get old guns in poor shape?
I suspect you've just mis-stated what you intended to say.
In fact, the Constitution's 3/5 rule provided slave-holding states with many more representatives than their white populations alone could justify.
That's the root-source of the term "Slave Power" -- the South's increased political power in Federal Government resulting from owning millions of slaves.
In 1787, non-slave states only supported the 3/5's rule grudgingly, as a compromise to entice Southern states to join the Union.
But any suggestion that slaves somehow caused Southern states to pay higher Federal taxes is just ludicrous propaganda.
Obviously there were planters or landed gentry in the lowlands but there were many more common men than wealthy men and those who were connected used populist techniques to play the poor whites off against the blacks.
Which leads you to another generalization: All southern politicians are masters of populist rhetoric.
Again, there is zero evidence that any sort of compensated emancipation would have been accepted by the slave owners. None.
It’s like the gun buybacks. Why do you think they only get old guns in poor shape?
And if the government said that you could sell all your guns to the government at fair market value, but you could not buy any more guns in the future, would you take them up?
Sure, and I might have some sympathy for that point of view, except that John Brown was defeated and captured -- by US Army Colonel Robert E Lee, no less -- then tried and hanged for treason, a fate that Confederate General Lee himself notably did not suffer.
Point is: in 1859 from a Southern perspective justice was done by the Federal Government, and there had been no slave revolt.
So how does that become justification for secession?
I wonder what Lincoln would have thought of today - where the GDP per capita is 48k and government reponsible for a quarter of it. Or to put it another way, 1/4th of the entire population of the united states dependent upon the government for their existence.
Even in the confederacy it was 60 percent to 40 percent. How much does the current population pay in taxes when you take in all levels of government?
We have the entire nation enslaved for the months of January, February and March.
Are we really so much better?
“Again, there is zero evidence that any sort of compensated emancipation would have been accepted by the slave owners. None.”
Have you looked at the deal that was offered? It would have meant ruin. The Civil war was a better financial deal despite ending in complete ruin. This was not the case in the United Kingdom.
It’s very simple. So long as it is more profitable for folks to remain in the slave trade than to leave, they are going to continue to own them. The only - peaceful- means that would have ended slavery is compensation and compensation according to market rates. I agree with enforcing the trade of slaves to prevent their importation - but it wasn’t just about compensation.
It’s like the gun buybacks. Why do you think they only get old guns in poor shape?
“And if the government said that you could sell all your guns to the government at fair market value, but you could not buy any more guns in the future, would you take them up?”
If the government said that it was going to ‘offer’ you a dime on the dollar for every gun you bought or it was going to confiscate them from you with force, would you accept it?
I live in a predominantly black neighbourhood here. I don’t believe slavery ever really left. We just dress it up and call it something else today. And people get really mad at you when you point it out.
Logical fallacy. The government never did say anything of the sort.
So then are you now saying that compensated emancipation was not the solution?
If the government said that it was going to ‘offer’ you a dime on the dollar for every gun you bought or it was going to confiscate them from you with force, would you accept it?
Answer the question please. If the government guaranteed that it would pay you fair market value for all your guns, with the understanding that you could not buy more, would you do it?
“So then are you now saying that compensated emancipation was not the solution?”
I’m saying that compensated emancipation was the only peaceful solution.
“Answer the question please.”
Answer mine. You’ve been going on about how it ‘wasn’t a solution’. The problem wasn’t that it was rejected, the problem is that market compensation of the owners was not even tried. Because that was never the point. The point was to crush the South.
Again, it was tried in the UK and it worked. It meant that those who were involved in the slave trade were not crushed. They were able to ‘cash out’, so to speak. This is why the UK was able to eliminate slavery and avoid a bitterly divided civil war and why black folks in the UK did better than they ever did in America.
“If the government guaranteed that it would pay you fair market value for all your guns, with the understanding that you could not buy more, would you do it?
Me, yes I would do it. Now, answer my question.
Are you contending that they offered market-value compensation? No - they did not.
What the North did was force many folks to choose - between losing everything and losing everything. And then folks seem surprised that some would resist it.
Please show a link to the “deal” you’ve been referring to. Thanks.
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