Posted on 03/31/2010 3:04:35 PM PDT by TitansAFC
Ron Paul: Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way?
Getting down to the last two questions here…. Most people consider Abe Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we’ve ever had. Would you agree with that sentiment and why or why not?
No, I don’t think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided. For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have been available to buy up all the slaves and free them. So, I don’t see that is a good part of our history.....
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
So, as I wrote, slavery in the colonies went on for some time. Also note, the British act topped the payout at £20 million. That would have been about $100M in 1860 exchange. If the US had budgeted the same for the 4M slaves, that would have come out to $25.00 per slave, far under the market value. So, no, the situations were not analogous.
My point was that the British Navy was indeed prosecuting slave traders on one hand and impressing sailors on the other for a period of time.
You are correct...they were not doing it by the 1860’s...at least not to American sailors...
There was a lot of wrong on both sides in that conflict.
I say the war was inevitable, mainly because you had two groups (Abolitionist and Pro-Slavery) who were so strapped to their sides they were willing to die for them and had been for nearly 2 decades at that point in Missouri, Kentucky and in Kansas.
The main part of the Civil War started in 1861, but the actual conflict started well before that.
And yes we know it’s about “state’s rights”, ok? We get it. Except from the Northern view (as well as the European), by and large it was about freeing the slaves. That’s why it was inevitable and here even 140 years later it’s still a division for some (for whatever reason). Each side claims to “know” what the other side is for/against, but neither side can actually accept the others’ reasoning. And not listening to another person’s views is clearly NOT a conservative value at all IMO.
The funny part is that if not for the Slaves in the South, the CSA would have been recognized and aided immediately by Britain and France and we wouldn’t be having this wonderful conversation for the 10,000,000,000,000,000th time.
Their clinging to the institution stopped the politicians and leaders in those countries from out and out support when it could have happened earlier, and then after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, support was not forthcoming due to the military situation.
“So, as I wrote, slavery in the colonies went on for some time”
It was abolished in Crown colonies.
” If the US had budgeted the same for the 4M slaves, that would have come out to $25.00 per slave, far under the market value.”
Better than a war and several hundred thousand dead.
“So, no, the situations were not analogous.”
Only by scale, not solution.
>(1) A single buyer wanting to clear the market will cause an immedate price-hike, and
Perhaps, but if you’re doing a block-purchase things can become a little more manageable; if the Federal Government had acted through the states as intermediaries it COULD have been feasible. {I.E. In the purchase contract stipulate that the state would not allow Generational Slavery and, perhaps, that all people should be literate.}
>(2) if you don’t outlaw it, people can just buy more slaves ...
Yes... and no. If the slaves were bought out in, say, all but one state... then only that state’s slaves would be “on the market.” And to influx the slaves you would need to a) breed them, b) import them from some [slaving] country, or c) capture foreigners and sell them as slaves. {All three have, historically, been done.}
>and you’re stuck with the same problem, and a precedent of the government buying up illegal goods (which would make the practice profitable).
No necessarily, if you bar Generational Slavery it cuts out all of those who are “born into slavery,” which I believe to be the most hideous aspect of slavery, from being future slaves.
>The war was (partially) about making slavery illegal from then forward ... not just about freeing those slaves that existed at that time. The South would still have objected to the legal change.
Perhaps, but having the advantage of looking backward in time, I think that it would have been best to have let the south secede, passing a Constitutional Amendment baring slave-holding, and then when the CSA petered out its slaving [as would have likely happened] allowed them back into the USA if they wanted it.
So, you think the Southron slavers would have settled for $25 per head for their slaves worth $500 to $1000? Especially since what they rebelled against was a “Free Soiler” being elected?
Face it, the solution of buying them out was floated at the time, and the slaveowners rejected it. Ron Paul is wrong if he thinks that it would have averted the Civil War, because it historically, objectively didn’t.
QED
Well, perhaps, but it is a brutal method for winning. I would prefer to protect our own borders and society much, much more thoroughly, crack down hard on the actual terrorists we find, and largely ignore what Muslim civilians may be doing in their own lands (in *our* lands is a totally different thing though).
The situation in the South is different, though. The Federal government still directly controls the South. I hope to God the U.S. government doesn’t directly control Iraq and Afghanistan a century and a half from now. Also, let’s face it, there is still resentment in the South over this even though it’s been so long since it happened. National reconciliation could have been much smoother if this particular military tactic hadn’t been used. Remember too the destruction was so great in general during the war that the South was left impoverished for a century after the war (there were, of course, several causes for this, but I think the facts indicate that the war’s extraordinary destruction and death was the most important one).
>England thought we were subjects.
We were.
>We thought we should be independent.
That would be slightly before the Declaration of Independence; the thing that probably galvanized the sentiment FOR independence was when King George III hired _German_ mercenaries to ‘keep the peace.’
>Most of our founders disagreed fundamentally with the “Divine right of Kings”.
I’m not sure which came first, the disagreeing or the abuses; it is likely akin to the Chicken and the Egg... but I tend to think that if the King had acted Justly and Honorably to the Colonists we would be saying “God save the King” & “God save the King” today. Do not underestimate the ‘popular support’ of a ruler who DOES act justly.
Wow.
That idea never occurred to me.
Interesting concept.
bookmark
May[be] all the slaveholders weren’t willing to sell.For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have been available to buy up all the slaves and free them.
It's easy to assume that that wasn't tried. The South would none of it.The South had a tiger by the tail, and knew it. Northeners knew it too, which is why Abolitionism wasn't popular in the North before the Civil War.
While the abuses of King George made revolution more palatable to the active third of the American population that was committed to independence, in the minds of the intellectuals of the revolution the natural rights of man was incompatible with absolute hereditary rule.
That was the principle that made the revolution great, not opposition to a man, and a king is just a man, but against a principle, against all men who would be kings.
Yeah, I was waiting for that too. For some people it goes against everything they ever learned to disagree with Lincoln. Paul could have laid out his argument a little more toward that idea then just pretending to be a peace-nick and saying it would have saved lives.
The man is crazy, but we already knew that. There was talk at the time of buying the slaves, but of course it never went anywhere and wouldn’t have worked anyway.
There was no price worth it for the South. They couldn’t replace the slave labor in any way, shape, or form.
Slavery was a deep part of Southern culture. Eventually it became economic necessity.
It’s absurd, as is Ron Paul.
May[be] all the slaveholders weren’t willing to sell.For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have been available to buy up all the slaves and free them.
It's easy to assume that that wasn't tried. The South would none of it.The South had a tiger by the tail, and knew it. Northeners knew it too, which is why Abolitionism wasn't popular in the North before the Civil War.
Another nail in the Paulbot coffin. Thank God.
Not only does it misrepresent the issues that caused the Civil War, (it was not slavery, but the Expansion of slavery) but he is apparently ignorant of the fact that Lincoln did float the idea of compensated emancipation, and it was rejected by both the North and South.
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