What about people who paid for slaves and had them taken from them by the government? Slaves were very expensive, one web site described an auction where the cost of a slave was as much as $60,000 in today’s money. The people buying slaves were not breaking the laws of the time. And I’ve never heard of a slave buyback program by the government.
Good points.
Compensated emancipation was done in D.C. in 1862. The idea was still floating around even later in the Civil War.
That was the British model, and it was the obvious road not taken in the U.S.