Gay Butcher Bump
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 ...
You need to re-evaluate everything you were “taught” about the Civil War.
Unfortunately the reasons were lot more complicated than just slavery. The cival war was about money as much as anything, and for record the states had started to seceded before Lincoln was even elected. So not to trash him in any way but exactly what did he do that was so admirable ?
The majority of the Southern leaders expected a peaceful secession; they did not anticipate that their action would lead to bloody conflict.
1. Economic and social differences between the North and the South.
With Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. However, at the same time the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton meant the greater need for a large amount of cheap labor, i.e. slaves. Thus, the southern economy became a one crop economy, depending on cotton and therefore on slavery. On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture. In fact, the northern industries were purchasing the raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. This disparity between the two set up a major difference in economic attitudes. The South was based on the plantation system while the North was focused on city life. This change in the North meant that society evolved as people of different cultures and classes had to work together. On the other hand, the South continued to hold onto an antiquated social order.
2. States versus federal rights.
Since the time of the Revolution, two camps emerged: those arguing for greater states rights and those arguing that the federal government needed to have more control. The first organized government in the US after the American Revolution was under the Articles of Confederation. The thirteen states formed a loose confederation with a very weak federal government. However, when problems arose, the weakness of this form of government caused the leaders of the time to come together at the Constitutional Convention and create, in secret, the US Constitution. Strong proponents of states rights like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were not present at this meeting. Many felt that the new constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently. They felt that the states should still have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts. This resulted in the idea of nullification, whereby the states would have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. However, proponents such as John C. Calhoun fought vehemently for nullification. When nullification would not work and states felt that they were no longer respected, they moved towards secession.
3. The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents.
As America began to expand, first with the lands gained from the Louisiana Purchase and later with the Mexican War, the question of whether new states admitted to the union would be slave or free. The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820 made a rule that prohibited slavery in states from the former Louisiana Purchase the latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes north except in Missouri. During the Mexican War, conflict started about what would happen with the new territories that the US expected to gain upon victory. David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846 which would ban slavery in the new lands. However, this was shot down to much debate. The Compromise of 1850 was created by Henry Clay and others to deal with the balance between slave and free states, northern and southern interests. One of the provisions was the fugitive slave act that was discussed in number one above. Another issue that further increased tensions was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It created two new territories that would allow the states to use popular sovereignty to determine whether they would be free or slave. The real issue occurred in Kansas where proslavery Missourians began to pour into the state to help force it to be slave. They were called “Border Ruffians.” Problems came to a head in violence at Lawrence Kansas. The fighting that occurred caused it to be called “Bleeding Kansas.” The fight even erupted on the floor of the senate when antislavery proponent Charles Sumner was beat over the head by South Carolina’s Senator Preston Brooks.
4. Growth of the Abolition Movement.
Increasingly, the northerners became more polarized against slavery. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists and against slavery and slaveholders. This occurred especially after some major events including: the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Dred Scott Case, John Brown’s Raid, and the passage of the fugitive slave act that held individuals responsible for harboring fugitive slaves even if they were located in non-slave states.
5. The election of Abraham Lincoln.
Even though things were already coming to a head, when Lincoln was elected in 1860, South Carolina issued its “Declaration of the Causes of Secession.” They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests. Before Lincoln was even president, seven states had seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
“As late as 1864, the Union offered to buy all the slaves if the South would end the war.”
Never heard that, but I assume that this condition, if it existed, was to be coincidental with the South’s surrender. Is that a correct assumption?
This is not true.
The money price of any slave, would never go above the money value of the labor which could be extracted from that slave. A slave-holder would not pay a million dollars for a slave which would only deliver $20,000 in labor value over his lifetime. This "upward bound" on the money value of each slave is one of the reasons why Compensated Emancipation worked in other slave-holding countries, and why every slave-holding Western nation except the USA was able to end slavery without a war.
Ergo, in principle, Ron Paul is right.
Even a very generous Compensated Emancipation program would have cost the USA half the money, none of the economic damage, and none of the 600,000 dead.
A slavery bailout? My God this guy is a moron. And where would the north have got that money, pray tell? Wow... so much for smaller government.
No, Ron Paul is a nut because he is a nut. All rosy theory and not an ounce of practicality.
But to address the issue, what's legal and what's moral are not always the same. The abolitionists of the URR were definitely fighting to free Slaves. Part of the Republican platform of 1860 was opposition to the Dred Scot decision, so they were politically fighting the expansion of slavery into the territories. But, the Fugitive Slave Act was the legal reality of the ante-bellum US. It wasn't the Northern states that pushed that through, though, was it? The election of Lincoln sparked the secessionists, because it signalled the end of the Southern states being able to do things like that legislatively any more. It was the death knell to the dream of expansion of slavery into the West.
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.
And who exactly produced this cotton? Why was it so profitable for the South? Why had they developed into a monocrop agro based economy -King Cotton - instead of developing their own industrial base?
No matter how you slice it, it comes back to slavery being the cancer that caused the War. But, I'll give you this; it was the moneyed "Big Guys" who got the South into a shooting war to protect their interests. They were making a lot of money out of that "peculiar institution" that the average Southerner was not.
It is the underground railroad that you are describing. Actually, the government did catch and return; that's why the UR had to hide.
Gay Butcher Bump
Ron Paul is Mogollon’s mom?
The "fiscally conservative" Ron Paul bought that win, by paying for his supporters to attend and vote. They will be doing the same at the upcoming Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where the Ron Paul machine has reportedly bought 800 admissions. Again, selective "fiscal conservatism."
Ron Paul is still an idiot.
I agree with him, although highly speculative, it makes sense. So I am stupid also, I guess.
I disagree. Lincoln's initial objective was to preserve the union and then later in the war ending slavery. In achieving both, Lincoln demonstrated a great deal of sophistication and intellect as he was under a great deal of pressure from the union side including the west for a negotiated settlement. Suggest you read Tried by War, author James M. McPherson to gain some insight into the tight rope Lincoln had to walk in order bring the war to a successful conclusion.
If the war was not about slavery, I wonder why the south didn’t make a treaty with England to sell cotton to them exclusively and free the slaves in exchange for military assistance.
Because the south would have taken the money and used it to import more slaves.
I used to like this guy, but what a dumbass he has shown himself to be recently.
“The north didn’t want the freed slaves.”
Neither did Lincoln. Liberia ring any bells?
Ron Paul demonstrates that he’s not smarter than a 5th grader.
Suppose the North bought a guy’s slaves. They would have to pay him higher than market value, or he wouldn’t sell. So, he sees an opportunity to make a profit. He buys a lot more slaves, and puts them in the names of his wife, his kids, his other relatives, etc. He sells those to the North at higher than market value.
A slave trader hears about it. Hey, he thinks. I’m going back to Africa for another shipment. Business is picking up.
An enterprising businessman goes north and talks to some of the freed slaves. He says, “Look. Come on back to the South and pretend to be my slaves. I’ll sell you to the North, and we can split the profits.”
Yeah, Ron. That’ll work great.
Bump
Where are the PAULTARDS?
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