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 ...
They won’t show up it meal time in the Rubber Room.
Of course they weren't willing to sell. Slaves were the labor force for the south. AND even if slaveowners had sold their slaves to the north, what would stop them from buying more? Ron Paul is an idiot who couldn't think his way out of a paper bag.
But RuPaul won the CPAC straw poll - he must be a strong conservative! Right?
Because the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery.....
Every time I think about starting to like Ron Paul he opens his yap and says something really dumb...
Heck, it would probably have started a whole new scheme - Hey, you become my slave, I'll sell you and we can split the money.”
I stand corrected. It appears that the North did offer to buy them.
Okay, there is now no thread of sanity on this quote from him.
Sure I’ll sell you my slaves then go buy me some new younger stronger ones.
Is he really this stupid?
Maybe Ron Paul should suggest that the US buy the world’s supply of cocaine, heroine, and marijuana and disband the drug enforcement agencies?
Call it fiscally conservative and put an end to the “drug war” and the “war on drugs.”
-—”Sometimes you just have to fight for freedom.”-—
Amen, brother, amen!
I just got a real belly laugh at this one, since the Paulistinians have been smearing Palin with incomplete quotes, half-contexted statements, and wild assumptions.
They’re never going to live down the fact that Ron Paul just came out against the Civil War. LOL
Ron Paul can’t think beyond the end of his nose. Slavery would have still been legal. We would have been buying the same men & women 25 times over. It took a war to end slavery.
Buying the slaves is not very practical, but there is a lot that most conservatives need to learn about Lincoln.
See, e.g., The Real Lincoln, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.
From one review of the book:
Description This is the book that made it happen: the nationwide revision concerning the man who they tried to tell us was a great liberator. Dictator and slayer of liberty is more like it. Lincoln was not the godlike figure of myth and legend but an unusually cruel political operator who exploited the moment for personal gain, just as we’ve come to expect of modern politicians.
In this blockbuster, Thomas DiLorenzo calls for a complete rethinking of a central icon of American historiography. He looks at the actions and legacy of Abe Lincoln from an economics point of view to show that Lincoln’s main interest was not in opposing slavery but in advancing mercantilism, inflationism, and government spending: the “American system” of Henry Clay.
Through extensive historical investigation, DiLorenzo shows that the high tariff pushed by Northern industries, at the expense of Southern agriculture, was the main cause of the sectional conflict. Further, Lincoln’s goal in preventing Southern secession was the consolidation of federal power and the collection of revenue, not the elimination of slavery. Introduction by Walter Williams.
Barron’s says: “More than 16,000 books have already been written about Abraham Lincoln. But it took an economist to get the story right. The Real Lincoln, by Loyola College economics prof Thomas J. DiLorenzo, is this year’s top pick in [Gene Epstein’s] sixth annual review of Holiday Gifts that Keep on Giving, When It’s the Thought that Counts.”
ISBN 0761526463
They could have passed a law .....
The North thought the war would be over in 3 months, IIRC.
Neither side forsaw the length and bloodiness.
Yes, thank you for saying it.
Ron obviously knows little about the period. I just finished my second reading of Shelby Foote’s 3000+ page opus.
Lincoln made repeated attempts to get the South, or the border states, to free their slaves with compensation.
He couldn’t get traction for it, not even in his own cabinet. It’s highly unlikely northern people would have been willing to tax themselves to compensate slaveholders. For some obscure reason people are always more willing to fund a war than an effort to prevent one. Sort of along the same line there’s never time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over.
BTW, his numbers are wildly off. Official US government estimate in 1879 is that the war cost a little over $6B. 1% of that, per Ron, would be $60M.
There were 4M+ slaves in 1860. I doubt the owners would have been willing to sell at $15 each. Average price, if I remember correctly, was somewhere between $500 and $1000, which would add up to somewhere around 50% of the cost of the war, not <1%.
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