Obviously the price and conditions were never right, were they?
LIke any emminent domain action, the owners are not likely to willingly sell at bargain basement prices offered at the end of a rifle barrel.
I think the point is that the war wasn't about freeing slaves, that there were other alternatives if that was the desired result.
Today we'd have a cash for clunkers program to trade in your old labor for some government approved system.
If the government announced a plan that that they were buying every privately owned fiream in the country at market prices, and you had to sell all your firearms to them at fair value, but you could never purchase another gun ever again, would you willingly accept the offer?