Posted on 03/05/2008 11:23:56 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Letters Suggest Lincoln Wanted to Buy Slaves for $400 Apiece in 'Gradual Emancipation'
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
AP
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Barely a year into the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suggested buying slaves for $400 apiece under a "gradual emancipation" plan that would bring peace at less cost than several months of hostilities.
The proposal was outlined in one of 72 letters penned by Lincoln that ended up in the University of Rochester's archives. The correspondence was digitally scanned and posted online along with easier-to-read transcriptions.
Accompanying them are 215 letters sent to Lincoln by dozens of fellow political and military leaders. They include letters from Vice President Andrew Johnson and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who both succeeded Lincoln in the presidency in the 12 years after his assassination in 1865.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
In hindsight, $400 apiece could have proven a real bargain.
Corporate welfare.
It’s like the gun buy-backs. People only bring in old, worn out or broken stuff that won’t work anymore!
he wanted to buy them , he also wanted to set them up in either Liberia, or Nicaragua where he expected them to be friendly to US interests.
Interesting approach. I’ll need to read up later.
This could have applicable parallels with the prolife movement.
Interesting. I know there’s been a lot of debate on here during the various WBTS threads regarding whether the Federal government would or could have done something like this pre-War. Trouble is, I don’t see how this could’ve possibly shortened the war—by 1862, with the battle as fiercely joined as it was, the Confederate forces saw it as defense of the South against an invading army. Emancipating slaves would have done nothing to speed an end to that. Besides, at that point, Southern slaveholders probably wouldn’t have sold their slaves to “the enemy” who was busy trying to invade their land.
}:-)4
As I suspected, the article points to this being a proposal prior to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. I believe I’ve read of this before, but would have to do a lot of research to find the volume it was in.
Lincoln put forth a number of proposals both before the war, and after it began, trying to limit the carnage and the effects of succession. For various reasons none took hold.
I thought this was well known. Are there any thoughts about whether slave holders would have accepted such an offer? Something tells me that many would have resisted.
BTW the Emancipation Proclamation freed NO SLAVES!!!
The Proclamation only applied to the areas of states then in rebellion that were not controlled by the Union army. Therefore, it only freed slaves in areas where the North was not in power.
Because of that war, so much power was stripped from the individual states and taken over by the Federal government that the whole makeup of our nation changed.
Agreed. After firing on Sumter, the Rebs weren’t in a mood to compromise.
This wasn’t aimed at the Confederate States. I was meant for Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Washington, D.C, per the article. While these were slave holding states (as were some other of the Northern states although of no real numbers), they didn’t secede.
Oops! I meant secession, not succession. Sorry.
Then I wonder what was the point.
I am descended from several slaveholders through various branches of my family. It has occurred to me in the past that my family invested a great deal of money in a practice that was completely legal, and that money was lost to them with no remuneration.
Agreed. What a foolish issue to make a stand for States Rights over. A total shame all the way around. Of course had they tried to settle that issue earlier they might never have gotten the Constitution ratified.
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