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When the British Empire abolished slavery, it compensated the owners. The total was 40% of the national budget. The slave owners were mostly in the West Indies, who didn't have the power to say no and winning a war of succession would be an obviously fail for small islands.
It indeed was proposed by Lincoln in the early stages of the war. Bonds would have been issued to compensate slave owners for the loss - up to $500m I think. The southern states would not accept the deal and/or it failed to gain further consideration in congress.
The proposal you reference was made by President Lincoln to slave owners in the loyal border states, not to the states in rebellion. Lincoln argued that with the Civil War underway, there was a good probability that the result would be the freeing of all slaves (this was before the Emancipation Proclamation) and if that happened, the present owners would lose their property without any compensation. It was far better that they free them now and receive compensation from the government than risk the unknown future.
From Lincoln's address to the Congressmen of the Border States...July, 1862:
Quote:
You prefer that the constitutional relation of the states to the nation shall be practically restored, without disturbance of the institution; and if this were done, my whole duty, in this respect, under the constitution, and my oath of office, would be performed. But it is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war. The incidents of the war can not be avoided. If the war continue long, as it must, if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion–by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.
Lincoln received a formal thumbs down from the Congressmen, their lengthy reply explaining their rejection may be found here: Compensated Emancipation - Abraham Lincoln
If the slave owners in those states which supported the North in the war had no interest in emancipated compensation, there seemed no point at all in attempting to persuade the slave owners of the states in rebellion.
Could the Civil War have been avoided if the slaves freedom had just been bought?
No.
My answer is as insufficiently as simple as your question.
Slavery--though important to the discussion--was a side issue. Important? Yes. But a side issue nonetheless.
I could write a book on it. . . .er, no, wait: there have been hundreds of very thick books written on it. Political. Socioeconomic. States vs. Federal government powers. Agrarian vs. industrial.
You need read all of those books, then you tell us.
No it wouldn't, slavery was a lifestyle that afforded slave owners unpaid labor. Something they wouldn't have been open to pay for no matter how rich they were or how they were compensated.
Morality issues aside, they believed themselves to be superior and Blacks inferior and so no wrong in it. Money wouldn't have solved this.
Large plantation owners could have easily downsized and with the money hired help/laborers.
Why didn't they?
Also a lot of wrongs they committed against their fellow man was against the teachings of the Bible and they still ignored this.
Could the government have summoned enough money to pay for every slave? Probably. Would it have been cheaper than the cost of the Civil War? Honestly, it isn't certain, but let's say it is (obviously war ain't cheap, but neither is buying every slave in the union).
But honestly, what would it really change? The same tensions from the South and North would still exist. Southern states would still insist that they could do they wanted with in the confines of their borders, and the North would insist that the central government has the right to interfere in those matters.
The racial oppression would still be there in full force. I mean even when the US forcefully abolished slavery, freedman were still economically enslaved for decades upon decades, and it wasn't until the 70s, a bit after the civil rights movement had ended that blatant discrimination had been discouraged and considered socially acceptable in all the states (even then, I am being generous).
So even with the abolishment of slavery and reconstruction from the republicans (who had full control of congress since the confederate states had little representation upon them being readmitted back into the union), southerners were still able to hold freedman down. Fact of the matter is, whether these freedman were bought out or not, they were going to stay slaves regardless, and because the confederate states wouldn't have been wounded due to no civil war, it arguably might have been worse for the Freedman post Civil War than what happened in reality (which was absolutely terrible).
But back to the topic, as I said before, a war between the South and the North seemed inevitable at the point of time we're talking about (I presume 1850s-1860s). "Freeing" the blacks wouldn't have done much to really stop a war from breaking out. Also, many many many Southern slave owners would not sell their slaves to the government, there's a reason why they had slaves, they were still useful and profitable to them. The idea that slavery was inefficient was a northern thing, in the south they were still useful, and while immigration and mechnization (as well as urbanization which may have come later for the South if there had not been a civil war) would make slavery obsolete, not everyone had the foresight to think that far ahead, or really cared too.
.
Federal government became way to powerful because of the northern victory. The confederate view of small government and states rights is constitutionally correct. It is a shame that slavery triggered the civil war, as it taints the confederate cause. The violation of the constitution severely taints the northern cause.
Way to powerful? When 30% of the U.S. population voluntarily surrenders their citizenship then that upsets the balance of power in Congress. Don't secede, you still have your voting power in both the House and Senate as well as sympathetic Supreme Court Justices. The Confederates were not for small government and states rights, they were for the opposite. They seceded because the U.S. Government didn't want to become TOO BIG (by enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act within unwilling Northern States) and the Confederate States of America didn't recognize the rights of their own states much less the rights of Union states.
If they did, they would have allowed East Tennessee and North Alabama to form their own Union states and would not have set up a separate Confederate State Government of Kentucky in Bowling Green. Kentucky had its own state government, thanks. You call it the "Confederate Cause"; shelling a military installation is called treason. There was no Northern "cause". The U.S. government was the U.S. government and Southerners tried to undermine the Constitution when they did not get their way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by antarez
No it wouldn't, slavery was a lifestyle that afforded slave owners unpaid labor. Something they wouldn't have been open to pay for no matter how rich they were or how they were compensated.
Morality issues aside, they believed themselves to be superior and Blacks inferior and so no wrong in it. Money wouldn't have solved this.
Large plantation owners could have easily downsized and with the money hired help/laborers.
Why didn't they?
Also a lot of wrongs they committed against their fellow man was against the teachings of the Bible and they still ignored this.
This.
There was no buying the slaves off of the plantation. Slaveowners were psychotic sociopaths who owned other people. Their "enterprises" weren't the source of wealth, the slaves themselves were. The price of cotton could have plummeted just like the prices of tobacco, rice, and indigo did. Slaves could just be used to help build ships in Baltimore and smelt iron in Birmingham (as they were for example) whenever the plantation economy collapsed.
Slavery gave the opportunity for white males to become de facto feudal lords within an otherwise democratic political system and free market economy. As can be seen from the shambles of Latin American economies due to the legacy of the encomienda system, slavery was never about stimulating cyclical prosperity, like a capital investment would be. Slavery was about ego, domination, and power over others.
You call it the "Confederate Cause"; shelling a military installation is called treason. There was no Northern "cause".
At that time, the "military installation" was part of the Confederate states. The US military had no legitimate business being there, and could be interpereted as illegally occupying territory of the CSA. The CSA had every right to take posession of their property.
At that time, the "military installation" was part of the Confederate states. The US military had no legitimate business being there, and could be interpereted as illegally occupying territory of the CSA. The CSA had every right to take posession of their property.
"At the time", Fort Sumter was built with U.S. Government money from 70,000 tons of New England granite. That makes it Government property illegally shelled and seized by rogue traitors. Fort Sumter was every bit a part of the United States as Fort Monroe, the Port of Norfolk, the Port of New Orleans and any other U.S. government/military installation these traitors failed to overrun. You want your own country, build your own forts. If you believe the U.S. military has no business being in its own military bases, then you should be at the front of the line telling the U.S. to turn over Guantanomo Bay back to Cuba and abandon its 40 military facilities in Germany.
At that time, the "military installation" was part of the Confederate states. The US military had no legitimate business being there, and could be interpereted as illegally occupying territory of the CSA. The CSA had every right to take posession of their property.
The military institution referenced was built with Federal funding, money raised by taxation on all the people of the US, not just South Carolina and not just the seven (at the time) states which had unilaterally declared that they were no longer part of the Union.
Suppose that the city of San Diego decided that it was departing from California and the US. They convene their city council and vote on it to make it nice and legal. A county referendum affirms the departure.
By your reasoning, San Diego now owns all of the US military installations in the county, including the main US naval base on the Pacific coast.
The United States had every right to defend their military installation which they had not ceded nor sold to the Confederacy.
I don't want this to spin into a debate over the morality (immorality) of slavery, it is abhorrent. I am in no way justifying it. But, in 1860 America it was also the law of the land. Slaves were legally property of their owners. They were also very expensive property-on the order of $1000-$2000 in 1860 dollars, or about $30,000 in today's dollars according to a one site (I welcome corrections if someone has more accurate values). Efforts to "free" slaves not only threatened the economy of half the country, but amounted to the seizure of a massive amount of property without compensation. That alone is sufficient to create violent resistance.
Slavery was a "dying" institution by that time. It was declining in most states, both with more states going "free" and fewer people owning slaves. The massive infusion of legal immigrants around this time meant that more labor was available, and ultimately at less cost. Cheap hired help didn't have to be provided food, shelter or other care. And if they were hurt or died, the employer wasn't out the investment in a slave.
My question-had the Federal government agreed to compensate the owners the fair market value of the slaves and purchased them from their owners, would the majority of slave owners agree to sell them? Could this have happened without widespread violence? Would by far the bloodiest, costliest event in American history been avoided?
Would it have been a bit expensive? Sure. But far less so than the cost of a civil war, both in terms of dollars, to say nothing about lives. Did more than 600,000 people die because our government chose to "steal" property without properly compensating the owners?
about time someone asked this question. the civil war was not about slavery. if it was, then abe could have bought all the slaves freedom and spent a whole lot less than it cost in money, men and material.
the fact was, was that the slavery issue was a issue unto itself and the civil war was about a states right to secede. since secession is not mentioned at all in the Constitution, then it is a states right to secede if they so wish to, with or without the feds permission.
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