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 ...
Seriously, make a quick buck, but then you need someone to tend those fields and keep the house, so then you go again.
What good would that have done? Buy up all the slave and the democrats would have just gone out and taken more people into slavery. It would have been a never ending buy out.
Look at the democrats today! Look at how they see nothing wrong with forcing people to buy a product of the democrats choice. How they all share the elitist attitude toward the American people and how they think our freedoms should be limited.
No! Buying those enslaved would have been a never ending purchase. Because democrats never stop trying to enslave others.
The fact that importing slaves had been illegal for 50 years?
Ron Paul and the Paulettes are playing solitaire with 51 cards.
So the south could get new slaves from Africa to sell to the North at a premium?
It is only the matter of settling on the right price which will solve all human conflicts. Single-track individuals quite good in some narrow field of interest, but have the unfortunate tendency to apply it to every field as a panacea.
“Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way?”
And then what?
“...he was determined to fight a bloody civil war...”
First, I don’t recall that there were that many who thought it would be all that bloody or all that long—on either side.
Second, it was the War Between the States and Lincoln couldn’t have done much of anything without the support of the the non-seceding States and the volunteers from those States who bore the brunt of the war.
s
Have you stopped molesting barnyard animals yet?
Don’t be assinine.
You know darn well that you are lying by implying that Ron Paul supports slavery. Somehow I don’t think that bothers you, does it?
But he is right. If Lincoln really wanted to free the slaves, which he didn’t, he could have championed buying them and then freeing them.
But he didn’t.
While I don't agree with Ron Paul on most things, he is right about Lincoln. Abe started the war against people who seceded peacefully and did not take arms up against the North until the precipitated the fight at fort Sumpter. Lincoln did not want secession so he pressured the south until they fought back. Hence a war. Lincoln was a blood thirsty tyrant, regardless of how history paints him.
Obama compared himself to Lincoln.
From the Paul interview: "...the Civil War was to prove that we had a very, very strong centralized federal government and that's what it did. It rejected the notion that states were a sovereign nation.
The people who disagree want to turn around and say, "Oh, yes, those guys just wanted to protect slavery." But that's just a cop-out if you look at this whole idea of what happened in our country because Lincoln really believed in the centralized state. He was a Hamiltonian type and objected to everything Jefferson wanted....."
In those ways Obama is Lincolnisn / Hamiltonian.
Not saying we are headed for Civil War, just noting the interesting perspective given the recent events and underlying agendas.
Living Proof that Lincoln should have sent Sherman to California after he subjugated the south.
Lest there be any doubt: the CAPITAL value of slaves in 1860 was more than all the RRs and textile mills in the north PUT TOGETHER; and more than half of all value in VA. The top richest 11 states? 10 were slave states because of the property value in slaves. The CW was all about slaves, property rights in slaves, and the expansion of those rights. Because once you established that a black person was a person and not property ANYWHERE, it threatened slavery EVERYWHERE, and that was not tolerable in the South.
That’s ridiculous and completely illogical. They didn’t just buy the slaves and free them (like the genie from Aladdin, I presume), for the same reason the government doesn’t just buy up all the drugs and destroy them.
(1) A single buyer wanting to clear the market will cause an immedate price-hike, and (2) if you don’t outlaw it, people can just buy more slaves ... and you’re stuck with the same problem, and a precedent of the government buying up illegal goods (which would make the practice profitable).
The war was (partially) about making slavery illegal from then forward ... not just about freeing those slaves that existed at that time. The South would still have objected to the legal change.
SnakeDoc
Did he ever bother to actually read a history of the events that led up to the Civil War as well as its history?
Is there any GOP’er in his district that can retire this loon.
Surely somewhere in that district there is a libertarian oriented GOP’er that can defeat him.
I would think his district is getting tired of his maniacal pronouncements. Is Rand Paul equally as nutty?
Nutjob.
No, there are basic economic reasons such a purchase was impossible. The value of each “next” slave sold would go up geometrically. It’s like the reason we have eminent domain: while some property owners would sell, the closer you get to completing the “line,” the more each remaining owner would hold up the buyers until the final price got outrageous. But as others mentioned, the South didn’t WANT to sell, because slavery was a political and social system of oppression, NOT a “market” system of labor.
I pretty much don’t care what Ron Paul says about anything.
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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Thanks for an actual historian’s perspective, LS.
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