One thing Cecil does not mention is that buying out slave owners often only adds more capital to a wicked operation and perpetuates and strengthens it instead of the desired effect of eliminating it.
This is the problem currently faced with children sold as slaves in Haiti. (Google it, if you’re unfamiliar with the situation) If you were to “buy” every child currently being offered as a slave there today, with the intent of emancipating them; tomorrow there’d be twice as many children for sale in Haiti.
It was unfeasible then and it is now. There is STILL slavery in the world and plenty of slaves, in the good old USA and other countries too. It is an evil that appears all too often, and must be fought over and over again. An endless tragedy.
Um. Nicolas Kristof of the NYT has noted that buying out child prostitutes isn’t such a hot idea, as it would only encourage brothel owners to acquire more kids. Point taken.
But the idea in Cecil’s column is to a) outlaw slavery and b) bribe Southern plantation owners so that they would not take up arms. This isn’t some half-baked free market solution being discussed: it’s a hypothetical political deal.
In 1860 the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports and was responsible for a sizable majority of the Gross National Product. It was the attitude of Southerners going into the war that the US could not survive without the South’s cotton production. (The US controlled almost 80% of the world market.) Slaves were worth more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation combined. Southerners were just not going to give them up.
I’s sure that a great many in congress would have wondered, if you cut off the free labor force, you are sure to cut off the production of cotton. Without the revenue on the export of cotton, where would the country find the revenue to pay for the purchase of slaves?
In addition, before the South succeeded, there were not enough votes to impose such a measure.
At the time, the Southern states were so confident that they considered annexing Cuba and parts of Mexico for expansion.
As it turned out, the North managed with out the production of cotton. The world did not come to the aid of the South to save its supply of cotton, but instead, England and France invested heavily in nations like Egypt to develop cotton production there.
In the end, there were no winners, but try to tell that to anyone at the beginning.
Most of the western hemisphere countries that had slavery in the 19th century ended it through compensated emancipation rather than warfare.
My god, if we had all then known the slaughter and devastation that war would bring, the abuses of Reconstruction, the new generations of racism and sectional resentment thereby sown… I think most of us, North and South, black and white, would have gladly embraced this alternative.
Plus the slave trade had been abolished decades earlier. So if they had a mandatory slave buy out, there would be no legal channels to replace them, and so it would have had the exact same effect as abolition.
I have to take exception to an unspoken yet implicit tone in the column: that Lincoln’s election meant abolition was around the corner. Lincoln had repeatedly insisted that he had no plan or timetable for the abolition of slavery, and no intention whatsover of forcing abolition upon an unwilling South. His platform was simply that slavery was socially and economically unnecessary and that eventually the South would come to see that. The only concrete measure against slavery on the Republican’s platform in 1860 was to halt any further expansion of slavery into the territories; and this was as much to put a halt to the endless wrangling over slavery in the territories that had produced the “Bloody Kansas” disaster as it was a move against slavery as an institution.
I’d just like to comment that Cecil’s joke at the end – “But my guess is they’d have walked out of that first presentation on the Human Asset Reclamation Program (HARP) saying what defenders of the ancient values say now when negotiations take an unpromising turn: we’d better lock and load.” – is very apropos. IIRC, 1861’s battles were fought almost entirely with flintlock muskets, as percussion caps were a new development (possibly a wartime development). So quite literally, the muskets had to be prepped by securing the lock then putting the load of powder and shot in the barrel.
Buying out is exactly what they did in the British Empire, but that was only half of it The other half was to gradually restrict the domains in which slavery was profitable, or even legally permissable. There were still British slavers in the 1820s and 1830s, a few elderly plantation owners in the West Indies, but they grudgingly allowed themselves to be bought out and retired back to England. And that was the end of slavery in the British Empire.
Lincoln knew this; so did the southeners, which was why the question of extending slavery into newly admitted states was so important to both of them.
The other thing, which Lincoln also knew, was that the British program succeeded because it was very tightly focussed: the aim was to abolish slavery, not to demonize slave owners. Indeed, slave owners were co-opted whenever possible.
It was slow and expensive, but it looks like the American Civil War was a lot more expensive.
Is there any political reality to compensated emancipation?
We can’t talk about what people would have done if they knew the future. Lots of people today have been screaming at the top of their lungs about the horrible effects of a future that is sure to come if people don’t take action now, immediately - and people refuse to take any action at all. [Insert your favorite “we need to do it now” policy here. In addition, the costs alone of the long-term bond issue would have tripled the entire 1860 federal budget. Imagine telling people who are refusing to listen to your policy issue that, oh, by the way, it would also add 300% to the annual budget.]
All we know is that slavery was the dominant issue of the 19th century and had been inflaming passions for 60 years. Any talk of compensation has to be thought of in that light. Both the North and South had given their answers over and over. Neither would accept it for a second.
Saying that Lincoln could or should have done anything is as odd as saying that Lincoln’s election wouldn’t lead to a showdown over slavery. What Lincoln said on the campaign trail might have been sincere, but nobody sentient enough to make it to the ballot box thought that the election of a Republican would mean anything other than an attempt to end slavery. Seven states had seceded before he took office. The argument had ended before the inauguration. Either Lincoln capitulated to the South completely or the country was over. War was a formality. Compensated emancipation by Lincoln would have to be a bribe by the North to bring the southern states that had left back into the union. It is impossible that could have succeeded. It is impossible that it would have been tried, and if tried, it is impossible that anyone could be found to pay the money.
The question that Cecil should have addressed is whether Buchanan could have swung the deal to save the union before anyone knew that the Republicans would take power. He was a southern sympathizer and would have had more political opportunities to bring it into effect. If you can’t make the case that Buchanan could have made it a reality then it couldn’t be done at all. Now try imagining Buchanan doing this. I’ll wait. … Yeah, not likely, is it?
Compensated emancipation can only be talked about in hindsight and in an economic universe without real people in it. It didn’t happen because it couldn’t.
I am curious: where was the financing for emancipation supposed to come from?
There was no income tax, and aside from the constitutional issue I wonder
if objection to income tax for the purpose of emancipation could have been
surmounted. Slave states would have had grounds for saying that they should
not be required to contribute since they were happy with the status quo.
Slave owners would have had grounds for saying that their share of the taxes
would offset a significant part of their compensation. On the other hand I can
hardly imagine the free states saying “sure, we’ll foot the whole bill”.
As it was, about 95% of all non-postal revenue came from tariffs:
Now, I do not believe that tariff issues caused the Civil War. However, the same
objections would have been available to the pro-slavery faction as there would
have been to a nation-wide income tax. furthermore, with the exception of
Louisiana (which was willing to go along to some extent due to its sugar crop)
all the slave states were hostile to high tariffs in principle, and I wonder if higher
tariffs could gotten through congress absent 100% uananimous support in the
North, where not everyone might be counted on to go along with doubling or
tripling the tariff rate for the next 30 years.
Where did the UK get the money to do what they did? How about Brazil and Cuba,
or did Brazil and Cuba even have ownership compenation programs?
Delegates to the Niagara Conference, which was attended by representatives from both governments but was not authorized or sanctioned by either (i.e. the representatives did not have any power to make agreements- it was more of a brainstorming session) one proposed plan hammered out involved bond issues and staggered payments of **up to **$400 per slave over a period of several years, with children born to slaves in the mean time being considered of free birth.
While it never came remotely close to fruition or anything like it, what I think is amazing is how furious many southerners got about it, claiming in the first place it was too little per slave and in the second they didn’t want to sell anyway. The amazing thing about this was that the conference took place in July 1864 when
-Gettysburg had been lost more than a year
-Tennessee was gone to the CSA
-The Mississippi River was gone to the CSA
-Atlanta wasn’t looking good at all
-Confederate currency was essentially worthless
In other words you’d think they’d have known that $400 in gold was better for a slave, even one previously valued at five times that, than nothing at all. Perhaps if it had been a genuine offer from the U.S. government it would have gone over better but I doubt it. Even at Hampton Roads Conference in February 1865- to the above add
-After (or technically during the final leg of) Sherman’s March
-Richmond was clearly unsustainable for any real length of time
-Atlanta, Columbia, and numerous lesser towns and cities were burned down
-Confederate money was absolutely worthless
the South still would not agree to abolition. One of the carrots Lincoln dangled to Stephens was a possible maybe that they could halt the 13th Amendment if the South returned to Congress.
Point: Getting the money in place would have been a nightmare but the southerners weren’t going to sell anyway.
Imagine if the South went to Lincoln and accepted at point blank without any negotiation the most radical Republican platform on slavery: Slow abolition over the next 50 years:
That would mean slavery would still be around in 1913 as airplanes flew overhead. Other proposals extended this to 75 years which would have kept slavery legal until World War II.
Ironically, the first proposed 13th amendment to the Constitution by the Republican party would have secured the legality of slavery and made it impossible for the federal government to ever ban it. Lincoln, like most Republicans figured slavery would fade away on its own if given the chance. After all, the trend for the last 50 years had been the decline of slavery all over the world.
The South was simply in no mood to negotiate and would have refused all monetary compensation. To them, slavery was a way of life and any attempt to end slavery was an attack on their culture. It would be like asking how much we can pay Moslems to eat pork or Christians to trample a cross. It would have been an affront in their nature.
It was not a rational response, but secession was not a rational move either. The main complaint by the secessionists was the refusal of many Northern communities to allow the easy return of runaway slaves. If the South, as part of the U.S., had problems getting the North to return slaves, how would becoming an independent nation, and an enemy state help the situation?
In the end, the nation went to war and the 13th amendment was not the one that guaranteed the right to own slaves, but one that eliminated slavery completely and immediately without compensation. The South was in ruins and their dreams of a tropical slave holding empire stretching from the Source of the Ohio river down to Brazil (another Slaveholding state) died.
Thanks for the information on this meeting, which I had not read of
except for one short, forgotten sentence long ago. I would like to know
more about it, but am having trouble finding an internet site. Do you
know of any?
I do not believe Lincoln have gone along with a compensation proposal
then or at any other time. McClellan might well have.
The South was in 7/64 certainly pinning a lot of hope on Republican defeat
in the presidential and congressional elections, and their replacement by a
more conciliatory government.
I agree.
I would still like to know if any specifics were suggested by the compensation
supporters, and how the issue was handled elsewhere in the world.
The 1860 Radical Repuiblicans favored immediate uncompensated emancipation.
(Lincoln was not one of them) I doubt any Republicans would have agreed to a
constitutional amendment preserving slavery for 50 years.
Nitpick: percussion caps had been around since 1820. It’s true that at the start of the war both sides, scrambling to arm themselves with anything available, fell back on obsolete stockpiles including smoothbore muskets and even flintlocks. But percussion cap rifled muskets had been the standard since 1855.
I thought it was strange that there was no mention of the other issue involved in the Civil War: state’s rights. Buying out slaves, rather than declaring them freed might have delayed the issue, but I think it would have eventually come to a head, quite possibly in a violent manner. For that reason, I don’t think that buying the slaves would have really saved lives or resources. For that matter, buying the slaves and then getting into a civil war over state’s rights would have left the federal government tapped for funds and at a disadvantage in ensuing conflict.
I can’t imagine someone like Edmund Ruffin would ever have agreed to a buyout. Too many in the South saw slavery as the bedrock of their economy.
There is absolutely no way that South Carolina slaveholders would have sold their slaves. A buyout might have worked in some of the border states, but the South would have none of it. A compensated emancipation might have worked – slaves were freed but every slaveholder gets a payment – but that would be the worst of both to the South: they would have their slaves taken from them, and not paid their market value.
Ultimately, though, it wasn’t economics that kept slavery going. There are arguments it wasn’t economically feasible (and arguments that it was), but, in any case, it was an institution that the South was not going to give up simply because they would have been paid for their property.