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.....
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Because the South would have used the money to buy more you idiot.
Seriously, the more Ron Paul talks the more I realize he’s insane.
I know, right? And, Ron is assuming the slave owners would have agreed to the sale. Did he plan on forcing a sale, or just use more of the government’s money to raise the offer? The man has no clue. Really. I kinda feel sorry for him.
Because they would just buy more?
Let me ask you this then: if it would be so easy to keep slaves illegally, why didn’t the South keep the slave system up and running after the war? Why isn’t it still going in the South now? After all, if buying all the slaves and freeing them wouldn’t have prevented slavery, why did killing half a million people in a war and then freeing the slaves stop slavery?
By what law was that insipid man our King? By English law alone. We live by American law.
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary....”
You should know the rest! A greater man than any Englishman wrote it. One who was a lawful lord, one who ruled only by the consent of the governed.
;)
As far as I know, none of my ancestors that fought in CW I owned slaves. I think slavery wasn't even on the list of grievences that they had with the North. They are all gone now so that is speculation.
You were misinformed. There's never been any tax on exports. In fact, under Article 1, Sec. 9 of the Constitution, it's expressly forbidden.
Lincoln did appear to have considerable personal insistence upon forbidding succession, which could have been quite independent of the economic drivers for conflict. I don’t pretend to be a Lincoln expert, but merely wanted to suggest that there is a view of history in which he did very great damage to the Constitution, and laid the foundation for the modern welfare state. Not quite as bad as a Bismarck, but not someone to be the subject of unbridled admiration.
Please explain how having your economy and culture based on slavery makes not related to slavery?
What do expect from a Dentist libertarian? Too much laughing gas!
The issue of slavery was rooted in the ideological mindset that the business of owning other humans beings was acceptable.
Paul’s proposition would’ve been no more effective than it would be to “solve” the narcotics trade by buying up the current inventory.
Paul should retire and allow his dementia to run its course with less public affect.
Perhaps the purchase of slaves could have been made via tax and tariff exemptions and discounts on the purchase of government land (after all, the Homestead Act was passed during the war—the government was dying to have more of its land settled). Take into account too the extraordinary amount of money the government spent on the war. No, compensated manumission could well have been the cheaper, “smaller government” option.
Ron Paul and I share the same alma mater (curiously enough, in the context of this thread, Gettysburg College). As much as I would like to back him wholeheartedly, and as often as he comes across with some really positive positions, he seems cursed with the ability to simultaneously shoot himself in one foot while sticking the other in his mouth.
Uh, gee, Ron.
Maybe because if you don’t make it illegal (the outcome of the Civil War), the South would have simply sold the slaves at a profit and over market-cost, bought new slaves at market-cost, and pocketed the margin.
But can you really imagine a war ON our soil (in the Southern states anyway) where 600,000 lives were lost, nearly a million injured, where property values for Southerners were destroyed ?—that is the war Lincoln fought. Mr Paul, no matter what else you think of him, has a point. The country’s unity was bought by blood at the point of the bayonet—TEN TIMES and more the number of soldier deaths than in Vietnam. That’s the man Lincoln was - a man willing to prosecute a war of enormous proportions.
Nope.
The importation of new slaves was already forbidden since 1808. Read the Constitution.
The bloody border wars were invasions by armed proslavery “entrepreneurs”. As you said, Lincoln didn’t happen in a vacuum.
The capital (human, as well as dollars) that was spent was lost waging war, that could have accelerated those innovations.
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