# would "compensated emancipation" have worked? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 20, 2003, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735 "2003-04-20T00:40:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![spinozafan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@spinozafan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinozafan)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/1 "2003-04-20T00:40:17Z")
I ran across this book called “The Real Lincoln” that says President Lincoln drove the South into the Civil War so that he could destroy state’s rights, not to free the slaves. To prove his point, the author says Lincoln could have ended slavery in the U.S., without war, by something called “compensated emancipation”; i.e. paying slaveholders to free their slaves. My question is, would this have worked in the Southern U.S., the way it did in other countries? If so, why didn’t anybody try it as far back as the 1840’s, when it had already been done in other countries and the conflict between the states was heating up? ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/2 "2003-04-20T01:36:43Z")
Hardly a general question with a factual answer. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/3 "2003-04-20T03:14:05Z")
Actually, a freedman was my adoptive home county’s Representative in the North Carolina General Assembly just after the Civil War, and he proposed a law in 1867 that would have had the state appropriate $1,000 per freed slave, $500 to go to the ex-slave to give him a start in free life, and $500 to compensate the ex-slaveowner for the loss of services. It’s a very typical Tarheel idea to try to achieve that sort of compromise benefitting both sides. Unfortunately, the Fourteenth Amendment made the proposal unconstitutional. I’m wondering if any border or southern Northern states (not an oxymoron – the states on the southern edge of “the North” as a geographic region, e.g. Maryland and Delaware) ever attempted this sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/4 "2003-04-20T03:41:31Z")
There were about 4 million slaves in the United States in 1860. Assuming that they worth about $1,000 each to their masters, it would have cost $4 billion to manumit them. The federal government in this era was only spending about $70 million per year. After most of the slave states seceded, and the government began spending huge amounts of money to wage the Civil War, the Lincoln administration urged the four remaining border slave states to take another look at compensated emancipation, and offered federal help. All of the states refused. Border-state representatives, as James McPherson puts it, “questioned the constitutionality of (Lincoln’s) proposal, bristled at its hint of federal coercion, and deplored the potential race problem that would emerge with a large free black population”. ---
**Author:** ![spinozafan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@spinozafan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinozafan)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/5 "2003-04-20T04:09:49Z")
Thanks, guys, for the info. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/6 "2003-04-20T05:29:09Z")
Bear in mind as well that most of the seceding and creation of the CSA occurred before Lincoln even took office. The following is taken from the [American Civil War Timeline](http://americancivilwar.com/tl/tl1861.html): > [@](#): > > 1860 > December 20 - South Carolina seceded from the Union. > > 1861 > January 9 Mississippi seceded from the Union. > January 10 Florida seceded from the Union. > January 11 Alabama seceded from the Union. > January 19 Georgia seceded from the Union. > January 26 Louisiana seceded from the Union. > January 29 Kansas admitted to the Union. > > February 1 Texas seceded from the Union. > > February – The seven seceding states draft the Confederate Constitution. > > February – The South Seizes Federal Forts. > > **March 4 – Lincoln’s Inauguration.** > > March 11 – Constitution of the CSA ratified. I find it hard to see how Lincoln can be blamed for all the events that occurred before he even took office. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/7 "2003-04-20T06:40:00Z")
A bit disengenous, Northern Piper. It’s true seven states left the union before Lincoln was inaugurated. But they did so after he was elected. But the argument described in the OP is a great deal more deceptive. The fact remains that 95% of the reason the Confederate states seceded was to preserve slavery. Most of them explicitly said so in their declarations of secession. Compensated emancipation would never have worked. Those who proposed it were unable to surmount the public opposition to the population of millions of free blacks that would result from it. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2003, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/8 "2003-04-21T05:12:18Z")
**Little Nemo** , I was responding to the OP: > [@](#): > > I ran across this book called “The Real Lincoln” that says **President** Lincoln **drove the South into the Civil War** so that he could destroy state’s rights, not to free the slaves. That to me reads as a request for information whether Lincoln, once in office, took steps to get the Civil War going. My point is that by the time he took office, secession was well under way and he was reacting to it. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2003, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-compensated-emancipation-have-worked/169735/9 "2003-04-21T14:12:44Z")
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I haven’t read “The Real Lincoln” and based on the reviews I’ve seen I don’t plan to. But I’ve read similar works by other authors and most are simply grinding their own axe. One of Webb Garrison’s books, for example, is based on the idea that Lincoln was a failure as a President because he should have accepted the secession of the deep south and worked on keeping the upper south in the union. It’s true that Lincoln probably could have done this, but Garrison is missing the point. Lincoln’s openly avowed goal was to keep every state, including South Carolina, in the union and he was willing to use any means, including military force, to acheive this goal. And it was the threat of this military force that led to the secession of the upper southern states. Garrison never claims that any other means would have brought the seceded states back. So his argument is basically “if I had been in Lincoln’s shoes I would have had a different agenda, so Lincoln was wrong.” But Lincoln did do what he set out to do, albeit at a high cost; the southern states were brought back into the union. I won’t even get into “The South Was Right” by Kennedy and Kennedy. I suspect the only point those two have are the ones on the top of their heads.