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 ...
Could they still have Irish “indentured” servants?
After all, therre’s always plenty of other people’s money - not that Ron Paul would be for that. Where did he think they’d get the money to buy the slaves? He doesn’t believe in taxes.
If the South had seceded, does anyone think there would still be slavery there? The institution may have lasted longer but could very well have ended with minimal bloodshed. Slavery would have been ended by 1900 at the latest, the invention of the internal combustion engine would have seen to that.
The industrial revolution is responsible for ending slavery, not Lincoln who only issued the emancipation proclamation after years of war.
Lincoln’s deal was the primacy of the Federal State over the several states, and that is what we are fighting today.
As for the South, it seems they were eager for war. To them, the godless machines of the North were unholy whereas their own agrarian society was blessed by God.
Why? Because the war wasn’t about slavery. Like the coming war over ObamaCare, the war was about state sovereinty.
You couldn’t just enslave anybody of color, and importation had been banned for decades. They would have had to bring in illegals or something to get labor. Honestly, even the south was not brave enough to give capitalism a chance - the idea that you could pay the former slaves to do their former work, and still make plenty of money - more money because your employees were motivated, not well understood.
analogy:
like I always say. Castro was no dope, if he had tried to take back Gitmo, we would have tore him a new one.
The stupidest thing the south did was attack Fort Sumter (and the supply ships). they could have seceded and then negotiated for the various US military forts throughout the south, but NO....they started a war, when they didnt have to.
I was trying to explain that to my son, but it didn’t get it. I’ll have to study a bit more (being a Yankee and all).
I wonder, would the North have paid for the slaves using the revenues from the various taxes on the South’s agricultural products?
Heh. Replace “slaves” with “healthcare”.....
Not surprising because economists understand that people do what they are incentivized to do.
I am sure his son who is running for senate in KY would just assume him be quiet for the next 8 months or so.
you’re gonna have to at least post some pictures.
Yes! And that’s why they brought Lincoln and his family in under the cover on night a whole week before his inauguration and hid them in a hotel.
Because their was a plot to assassinate him fixed for the day that he was originally supposed to arrive. It was only thwarted because they brought Lincoln and his family in early.
So on one hand the North is fighting to free the slaves ... the same slaves the North would catch and send back ... and Ron Paul is a nut? I am not convinced the war was about slavery. I think it has more to do with the South trying to sell cotton to Europe, cotton the North needed for their industry ... it was about money for the big guys ... and the little guys ended up dead.
How anyone could vote for this loon is beyond me.
LBJ did exactly that to their progeny and Opossum is doing the same today to everyone.
Of the three greatest presidents we’ve had...Washington, Lincoln, Reagan.. Which one was a LAWYER? That says it all.
... because the slave owners would have taken their profits and purchased more slaves!!??!!??
Hello, McFly!!!!!
It is important to know that there were two “waves” to slavery in the US.
From colonial times, slavery existed to provide domestic servants and field workers to the upper classes. Good quality slaves were very expensive, about $1,000, which in today’s money would be between half a million and a million dollars. Comparable to champion race horses.
Over the course of many decades, many slaves became freemen for any number of reasons. Many became wage workers or even entrepreneurs, where it was allowed, some becoming wealthy enough to afford their own slaves.
At the same time, European immigrants worked in the North for very low wages, doing oppressively hard labor in mining and manufacturing.
Economically, however, slavery was dying, as it was just not cost effective to have such an expensive property doing field work. But this suddenly changed with the invention of the cotton gin.
This turned the economics of slavery on its head. A middle class farmer could earn enough from cotton to afford a slave, then with that slave, earn enough in a season to buy another slave. Economic boom times, by people only interested in money, seeing slaves as the road to quick riches.
This was the second wave of slavery, and soon began the pursuit to buy up new land in the West, to expand slavery. And this sent the South to loggerheads with the North.
The issue went back in forth in Washington, but the South held sway, because it had control of the US Senate, with many senior senators. But that power began to erode. The explosive industrial growth in the North, and resultant wealth, soon eclipsed the value of any southern agricultural crops.
Cheap immigrant labor and heavy industry drove western expansion far faster than could the profits of slavery. To make matters worse, the “green belt” of southern agriculture dried up west of the Mississippi.
It is ironic that the one thing that could have prevented war, a disaster, came a little too late. Had the boll weevil made it up from Mexico just 40 years earlier, slavery would have been a moot point.
-- King Abraham the Butcher
Ah, so the South Carolingians weren't trying to actually kill people, fellow Americans, when they shelled an legally occupied Federal fort? And they weren't already blockading the same said fort?
"It's his fault! He hit me back first!"
Paul has crossed the Rubicon of Idiocy. Good grief.
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