Ron obviously knows little about the period. I just finished my second reading of Shelby Foote’s 3000+ page opus.
Lincoln made repeated attempts to get the South, or the border states, to free their slaves with compensation.
He couldn’t get traction for it, not even in his own cabinet. It’s highly unlikely northern people would have been willing to tax themselves to compensate slaveholders. For some obscure reason people are always more willing to fund a war than an effort to prevent one. Sort of along the same line there’s never time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over.
BTW, his numbers are wildly off. Official US government estimate in 1879 is that the war cost a little over $6B. 1% of that, per Ron, would be $60M.
There were 4M+ slaves in 1860. I doubt the owners would have been willing to sell at $15 each. Average price, if I remember correctly, was somewhere between $500 and $1000, which would add up to somewhere around 50% of the cost of the war, not <1%.
And in early 1861, how many foresaw that the war would grow to the scale that it did? Paul is being his usual idiot self and trying to both ignore history and apply hindsight.
I think that's correct; that the Abolitionists, the people to whom emancipation mattered most, were pretty well vested in the idea of uncompensated emancipation -- uncompensated on grounds of "moral illegitimacy" or some such excuse.
As such, emancipation was envisioned as an uncompensated taking; and it was never contemplated that the ex-slaves would be free to move north and compete with free labor there: the Northern states did enact some exclusionary black codes that remained on the books for some time after the Civil War.
Prewar, Illinois enforced its black code by arresting, fining, and then "selling south" any blacks who entered the State.
For some obscure reason people are always more willing to fund a war than an effort to prevent one. Sort of along the same line there’s never time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over.
One of the smarter things I've seen posted about the Civil War.
Official US government estimate in 1879 is that the war cost a little over $6B. .... There were 4M+ slaves in 1860. I doubt the owners would have been willing to sell at $15 each.
Texas historian T. R. Fehrenbach once estimated that the value of slaves held in Texas in 1860, where btw there were fewer slaves held per capita of free citizens than in some other States, was more than the value of all the improved real estate in the State.
The cost of compensated emancipation would have been beyond the moon in any orderly market, where young, strong field hands brought over $2000 each, less capable slaves were still over $1000, and even children several hundred dollars each, gold.