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.
“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.