Ron Paul: Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way? (Insults Lincoln)

Hot Air ^ | 3-31-10 | Hot Air.com Staff

[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.....

[wardaddy]

You are pretty damn smart to be only 22...dam.

I’m the largest birth year in history...1957

but I always felt like the boomers were 10 years ahead of me riding the crest we were being pulled along by.

music was good though...1968-74 was the peak of Rock

[the OlLine Rebel]

ROFLMAO

Sorry, Non-Seq. Couldn’t help myself.

[Non-Sequitur]

Since I already sold mine and vowed never, ever, ever to purchase another, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, does it.

And I've no doubt you have your reasons for doing so that are none of my business. But what about your fellow gun-owners? Just because you would agree to be bound by such a deal does that mean that every other person should be as well?

Slavery was legal in the U.S. at the time. There was no evidence that I'm aware of that slaveholders where chomping at the bit to get rid of their chattel, so any mandatory emacipation program would certainly have been met with resistence and, probably, rebellion as well. After all, the leaders of the Southern rebellion were motivated by the election of a president who merely talked about limiting the expansion of slavery. Why should the idea of being forced to give up their slaves, even at fair market value, been more palatable?

[Christian_Capitalist]

You are pretty damn smart to be only 22...dam.

No, Mrs. Christian_Capitalist is pretty damn smart to be only 22.
Myself, I'm 35.

Hence the "bad, bad old man" comment -- about myself. ;-)

[Non-Sequitur]

Why did it take you so long to get here?

Better late than never.

[central_va]

While the inaugeral address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissole the Union, and divide effects,

by negotiation.

       -- King Abaham's second coronation speech.

[Non-Sequitur]

Sorry, Non-Seq. Couldn’t help myself.

No apology needed. I see he's already following the preferred Southron tactic of not answering any hard questions.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

$2.0 to $2.8 Billion dollars

It doesn't matter even if the numbers were inflated. the U.S. government of 1860 still did not have that kind of cash, and it would have been politically impossible for it to buy the freedom of some 4 million slaves.

The expenses born by the Civil War were born by both the federal government and the states, North and South, and by 1865, the Union did have the capacity raise a lot of cash through Lincoln's emergency income taxes.

But nothing of the sort existed in 1860, including the necessary infrastructure for actually managing 4 million suddenly freed and displaced slaves. If you were a northern taxpayer in 1860, would you want your taxes dramatically hiked just so that the federal government could pay off the southern planters and free the slaves, who would immediately cause wages to drop and present strong competition for jobs?

So, this whole counterfactual argument is really silly.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Nah. Every soldier fights for their own reasons. Lee felt more loyalty for Virginia than the USA, despite his personal distaste for slavery.

However, when it came to the political/economic big shots of the South, they were committed to slavery (their writings were indicative of this). Remove slavery from the equation, there’s no Civil War. Remove everything BUT slavery from the equation...you’d still have a Civil War.

[Non-Sequitur]

...by negotiation.

Nonsense. The South walked out without negotiation, stole all the property, repudiated the debt, walked away from the obligations, all without discussions of any kind.

Besides, why didn't you continue?

"Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."

Davis chose war. Davis lost war. And y'all haven't stopped bitching about it since.

[Non-Sequitur]

So, they passed an 1804 law for gradual abolition (which is good, and should’ve been done nationally), or a sunset more or less.

And how could that have been done nationally without a constitutional amendment?

[Christian_Capitalist]

It doesn't matter even if the numbers were inflated. the U.S. government of 1860 still did not have that kind of cash, and it would have been politically impossible for it to buy the freedom of some 4 million slaves. The expenses born by the Civil War were born by both the federal government and the states, North and South, and by 1865, the Union did have the capacity raise a lot of cash through Lincoln's emergency income taxes.

No, the $6 Billion dollar costs of the War were primarily funded through Debt and Inflation, not Taxes.

With the imposition of a higher tariff, excise taxes, and the introduction of the first income tax in American history, this situation improved somewhat, and by the war's end 25 percent of the federal government revenues had been collected in taxes. But what of the other 75 percent? In 1862 Congress authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue currency notes that were not backed by gold. By the end of the war, the treasury had printed more than $250 million worth of these "Greenbacks" and, together with the issue of gold-backed notes, the printing of money accounted for 18 percent of all government revenues. This still left a huge shortfall in revenue that was not covered by either taxes or the printing of money. The remaining revenues were obtained by borrowing funds from the public. Between 1861 and 1865 the debt obligation of the Federal government increased from $65 million to $2.7 billion (including the increased issuance of notes by the Treasury).
--The Economics of the Civil War
Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside

There's no reason that Compensated Emancipation could not have been paid through a similar Debt Issuance (even the numbers are similar -- $2.7 Billion in Debt for the War versus an estimated $2-$2.8 Billion costs for Emancipation). The difference being that paying off the Debt would have been easier without the loss of 600,000 young males being killed in the most productive years of their lives, Southern infrastructure wrecked and Northern infrastructure damaged.

But nothing of the sort existed in 1860, including the necessary infrastructure for actually managing 4 million suddenly freed and displaced slaves.

Sure there was. There were plenty of plantations which would have had a need for Labor, and would have been flush with cash from Compensated Emancipation. Most freed blacks would have remained in the South and gotten agricultural jobs (as they actually did), the difference being that a monetarily-rich No-War South with its infrastructure still intact could have afforded to pay black freedmen higher cash wages, rather than the meager share-cropping arrangements which the economically-devastated Post-War South was able to offer.

If you were a northern taxpayer in 1860, would you want your taxes dramatically hiked just so that the federal government could pay off the southern planters and free the slaves, who would immediately cause wages to drop and present strong competition for jobs? So, this whole counterfactual argument is really silly.

Versus the Cost of War?

I'd have been in favor of Compensated Emancipation. Wars almost always cost far more than the Government estimates. Better to go with the peaceful option -- that costs less, doesn't get 600,000 Americans killed, and leaves all national infrastructure intact.

[southernsunshine]

I only ask questions, or make suggestions for study, and let each form their own conclusions.

[southernsunshine]

To your #516 (while I’m working in the HTML sandbox for italics).

That is a correlation I have made as of late. Everything the Dums do makes me suspicious!

[upcountryhorseman]

The Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about maintaining the Union. The North , with superior firepower,
would not allow The South to break away and invaded the South.

[LS]

It worked in other countries because the government was not in cahoots with the slave labor system as it was in the South. If the South had willingly gone along and said, “fine, every slave = x value, let’s start,” yeah, it might have worked. But when you have an oppressive government working in tandem with the slave system to control the price of the good through slave posses, the judicial system, etc., then, no, it won’t work. Hence the need for force here.

[Enchante]

yes, good point -— I thought about that right after I clicked “post” —— the biggest obstacle, even if the idea had been seriously explored before 1861, was that it would be a complete political non-starter to pay $2-3 billion to free slaves, especially when so many in the north were living at subsistence levels or just above.... but I think the idea was still utterly impractical because (1) the logistics just would not be in place, (2) the popular support for the idea would probably have been about 10%, (3) it is not possible to make the pre-1861 comparison with “600,000 dead” and “$6 billion” cost for the civil war, massive infrastructure damage etc. b/c virtually no one was imagining or expecting a cataclysm on such a scale (I believe it’s the case that almost anyone north or south who thought about predictions in 1861 expected the conflict to be resolved one way or another that year with limited loss of life)...... WHO in 1860-61 actually imagined $6 billion and 600,000 lives??? I’ve never seen or heard anything to indicate that such a comparison was being made before the civil war.......

[littleharbour]

Much more appropriate had you posted Jefferson’s entire letter:

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl264.htm

Jefferson was horrified at the prospect of a civil war, he was not advocating it.

I didn’t make the reference to Lincoln’s proposed deportation to accuse him of being evil in his suggestion to rid America of its black population, but to point out the hypocrisy of Lincoln and those who claim the Civil War arose out of some noble Northern cause of freeing the slaves and making them full citizens of the United States. The Civil War was about the North asserting its power through enhancement of the Federal goverment. The fact that emancipation came as a corollory benefit of the Civil War does not excuse the damage Lincoln did to America (through the destruction of the war itself and the diminishment of States’ rights) or the evils of Jim Crow, which were a direct result of the forcible end of slavery. The population of the Southern states did not voluntarily end slavery, so they fought back in the ballot box after the end of Reconstruction. Had they been permitted the time to make this decision themselves, the full integration of blacks into American society would have had a much smoother transition and been more broadly accepted by the South’s population. Lincoln’s cannon ensured only that blacks would be kept down for another 100 years.

[Christian_Capitalist]

It worked in other countries because the government was not in cahoots with the slave labor system as it was in the South. If the South had willingly gone along and said, “fine, every slave = x value, let’s start,” yeah, it might have worked. But when you have an oppressive government working in tandem with the slave system to control the price of the good through slave posses, the judicial system, etc., then, no, it won’t work. Hence the need for force here.

That's an entirely different argument, LS.

If you're saying that Compensated Emancipation wouldn't have worked, economically -- then I'm afraid I have to run the number, compare the costs of the War, and say "I'm sorry, but I really think you're wrong. Look, here's a whole stack of evidence." (THUD!)

If, OTOH, your primary contention is going to be that Compensated Emancipation couldn't have worked, politically -- well now, that's a different argument, and one to which I must plead "No Contest". No Contest because:

1.) I haven't studied the breadth and depth of Southern abolitionist political sentiment nearly so much as I've studied the economics (sure, for example, General Lee himself was anti-slavery; but that's an anecdotal population set of one); and...

2.) I can't really speculate on how many Plantation owners would have peacefully taken, say, $700 bucks per slave without raising a fuss versus how many would have resisted (certainly the more-marginally profitable plantations would have taken the money; but amongst the most profitable operations, I'm sure there would have been some resisters), because it was never really tried. I'd be speculating on hypotheticals at that point, without even theoretical evidence from professional economists, and I don't like to do that.

On the economics, I think that my argument is theoretically sound. But if your argument is that even at a market rate of compensation, Compensated Emancipation would have been politically impossible, then I'll have to plead Nolo Contendere due to lack of evidence.

[algernonpj]

Lincoln fought the civil war to ‘preserve the union’ not free the slaves.

In fact, The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.

The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863.

The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named ten specific states/portions of states where it would apply, exempting others.

It was issued by lincoln as “President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure “.

The EO applied to “Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.”