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So why not compensation as was done everywhere else? The UK had abolition prior to the US.

Here’s a hint - the war wasn’t about slavery otherwise compensation was the solution. It was about the same thing it was back in the 1820s. Nullification.

JCBreckenridge: "So why not compensation as was done everywhere else?
The UK had abolition prior to the US.
Here’s a hint - the war wasn’t about slavery otherwise compensation was the solution."

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.

Here’s a hint - the war wasn’t about slavery otherwise compensation was the solution.

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.