Lincoln Letters Reveal Plan to End Slavery the Ron Paul Way

[Nathan Hale]

Interesting article, considering Paul's opinion on Lincoln and the Civil War




Upstate NY school to share its Abraham Lincoln letters online
2/15/2008, 5:29 p.m. EST
By BEN DOBBIN
The Associated Press

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — Barely a year into the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suggested buying slaves for $400 apiece under a "gradual emancipation" plan that would bring peace at less cost than several months of hostilities.

The proposal was outlined in one of 72 letters penned by Lincoln that ended up in the University of Rochester's archives. The correspondence will be digitally scanned and posted online Monday — Presidents Day — along with easier-to-read transcriptions.

Accompanying them will be 215 letters sent to Lincoln by dozens of fellow political and military leaders. They include letters from Vice President Andrew Johnson and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who both succeeded Lincoln in the presidency in the 12 years after his assassination in 1865.

In a letter to Illinois Sen. James A. McDougall dated March 14, 1862, Lincoln laid out the estimated cost to the nation's coffers of his "emancipation with compensation" proposal.

Paying slave-holders $400 for each of the 1,798 slaves in Delaware listed in the 1860 Census, he wrote, would come to $719,200 at a time when the war was soaking up $2 million a day.

Buying the freedom of an estimated 432,622 slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Washington, D.C., would cost $173,048,800 — nearly equal to the estimated $174 million needed to wage war for 87 days, he added.

Lincoln suggested that each of the states, in return for payment, might set something like a 20-year deadline for abolishing slavery.

The payout "would not be half as onerous as would be an equal sum, raised now, for the indefinite prosecution of the war," he told McDougall.

The idea never took root. Six months later, Lincoln issued the first of two executive orders known as the Emancipation Proclamation that declared an end to slavery. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified after the collapse of the confederacy, ending two centuries of bondage in North America.

"To be given a document that plunks you right into a situation that Lincoln was facing, it's very compelling," said Brian Fleming, a University of Rochester librarian who is heading the online project.

The Lincoln letters addressing the war, slavery and other affairs of state, are part of a collection of papers once belonging to his Secretary of State, William H. Seward Sr.

They were bequeathed by Seward's grandson, William Henry Seward III, who lived in Auburn, 70 miles east of Rochester, and arrived at the University of Rochester between 1949 and 1987.

The digitally scanned letters will appear on the school library's Web site along with transcriptions, contextual essays written by graduate students and lesson plans designed to help teachers.

___

On the Web:

http://www.library.rochester.edu/rbk/lincoln

 

[The Proservative]

Ron Paul never ceases to amaze, nor do our founding fathers. Men truly ahead of their respective times.

 

[Banana]

Since Lincoln did thought of buying them, I wonder what stopped him from going forward? Too bad that article stopped short of explaining...

 

[The Proservative]

Since Lincoln did thought of buying them, I wonder what stopped him from going forward? Too bad that article stopped short of explaining...

Maybe the same forces that are trying to stop a Ron Paul Presidency

 

[spudea]

The south had already seceded before these letters. Too little too late lincoln...

 

[IPSecure]

Does Bill Maher know this?

 

[sratiug]

Does Bill Maher know this?

I doubt Bill Maher or that douche on Meet the Press know this. It took me a while to remember that the book Mary Todd Lincoln mentions this. Lincoln spoke to his cabinet about it and they shot him down, apparently people made a lot of money from war back then, too.

The AP apparently doesn't know that the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the Union slave states. To say the war was over slavery is to lie, because the Union still allowed slavery during the war.

 

[RSLudlum]

Does Bill Maher know this?

Probably not!! Remember its our duty to inform the uninformed!

oh, yeah and let's not forget that bloodsucker Russert!!

 

[Fox McCloud]

hmm, I'm a bit suspicious of the letters, to be honest--Lincoln was a Communist-fascist....it seems strange that he'd come up with a plan like that...either way, even if he did, it doesn't remove the many sins he committed against the Constitution and his own people.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Would the slave owners be forced to sell- or would it be a voluntary thing? If voluntary, would all slave owners comply? Probably not. If it is not voluntary then it is not a free-market offer but could be seen as the government interfering with commerce- which I thought is in opposition to the Libertarian view. It is an interesting idea and probably would have been cheaper than the war that ensued. Is a man's freedom worth $400 or is the fruits of his labor worth more in the span of his productive lifetime for the slave owner? Is his worth more than merely his economic value to his employer? Should freedom have a price tag? Slavery was a very important component of the Southern economy. That is probably the primary reason a buyout offer was rejected.

One source reports about 4 million slaves during the Civil War. That would be $400 million needed. http://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total Estimates from 1879 put the costs of the war (including pensions though) at about $6 billion http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761567354_18/Civil_War.html and total deaths (including battles, injuries, diseases, and other causes) at around 600,000. Plus destruction of property and factories and railroads, etc. Yes, it would have been a lot cheaper. But would it have been accepted?

There is an intersting look at it here:
http://www.historynow.org/12_2005/historian.html

In the fall of 1861, Lincoln composed an experimental emancipation plan for the state of Delaware (one of those four border states). Under Lincoln’s proposal, the Delaware legislature would pass a bill, immediately freeing all Delaware slaves over the age of thirty-five and gradually freeing all others when they reached that age; in return, Congress would pay the state of Delaware just over $700,000 in United States bonds, which would then be used by the Delaware legislature to finance compensation for Delaware slave owners who would lose their slave “property” to emancipation. Under an optional accelerated timetable, slavery in Delaware could have been extinguished as early as 1872.

A buy-out is not as dramatic as a proclamation, but the end result would have been the same, and Lincoln had good reason for thinking that this plan was, in fact, the best way to make the extinction of slavery legally permanent. After all, American slavery was the creation of state, not federal, enactments, and in this era before the Fourteenth Amendment and the “incorporation” doctrine, a constitutional fire wall separated the state and federal governments. Good lawyer that he was, Lincoln had no reason to believe that proclamations, presidential or otherwise, would penetrate that wall. If anything, a presidential emancipation decree would be followed by a procession of slave owners into the federal courts the next morning, complaining of unconstitutional interference by the president in state matters. Considering that the federal court system had been stocked for sixty years with pro-Southern judicial appointees, and that the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney, was the man who had written the decision in Dred Scott, barring the federal government from interfering in slaveholding in the federal territories, there was no reason to suppose that the courts wouldn’t use such cases as the means for hammering a stake through the heart of emancipation for good and for all.

But if Lincoln could use the financial leverage of the federal government to entice slave-state legislatures into doing the work of emancipation voluntarily, then the same fire wall that tied his hands on the federal side would also tie the hands of the federal courts. Successful emancipation must, as Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley in 1862, have “three main features, gradual, compensation, and [the] vote of the people...,” or at least the voluntary action of their legislatures. It would cost money, to be sure, but a lot less money than a civil war was costing.

Not only was the legislative option unquestionably legal, but it had a certain momentum of its own that might hasten the end of the war. Since every slave state that took the bait of compensated emancipation diminished the territory in which slavery was legal, the existing number of slaves would be forced into a smaller and smaller area, driving the supply up as the demand decreased, since there would be fewer markets to sell slaves to. As demand dropped, so would price, and the process of emancipation, which looked so slow on paper, would accelerate as slave owners rushed to accept compensation before their slaves lost all value whatsoever. As one of Lincoln’s political friends wrote, “It seemed to him that gradual emancipation and governmental compensation” would bring slavery “to an end.”

The problem was that the border states stopped their ears and refused all cooperation. The Delaware legislature stalled over the emancipation proposal, and the congressional delegations of the other border states rejected federally financed emancipation with contempt. By the spring of 1862, the only place in which compensated emancipation had actually worked was the District of Columbia, and that was only because the federal government had (as it still does) direct legislative jurisdiction over the District.

Lincoln’s notion of gradual, voluntary, and compensated emancipation avoided these problems because it bribed slaveholding states, through the promise of compensation, to begin emancipating slaves through their own statutes, and that got the whole process beyond the reach of the federal courts. It mattered little that a legislature might balk the first time that an emancipation plan was proposed. Drawing on his own personal experience as a state legislator back in Illinois, Lincoln knew that he only had to await the next round of state legislative elections in the fall of 1862 and 1863 at which point the financial bait might well overcome border-state resistance. But that would have required time. In the summer of 1862, time was what Lincoln ran short of, and that was largely the result of his armies and of his other generals, chief among which was Major General George B. McClellan.

 

[Luis]

Collectivist thinking

I find it mind-boggling that in all the commentary so far not one single individual has raised the issue of compensation to the slaves only to the slave-owners. Wow! Did anyone raise the issue back then?

 

[Zippyjuan]

Back then they were only viewed as property. Today they would be demanding compensation. In fact, some people have tried to sue companies who used to use slave labor- even though none of the people involved in the lawsuit were slaves themselves (some had ancestors two or three generations ago) nor do the companies presently use slave labor. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0328-03.htm

 

[Doktor_Jeep]

I expect the Jews to sue Egypt any day now.

 

[hawks4ronpaul]

See

http://hawks4ronpaul.blogspot.com/2007/12/lincoln-endorses-ron-paul.html

 

[Truth-Bringer]

Interesting. Thanks for posting this. Of course, Lincoln was quite the hypocrite on the issue of slavery:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois" (September 18, 1858), pp. 145-146.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388.

 

[Nathan Hale]

hmm, I'm a bit suspicious of the letters, to be honest--Lincoln was a Communist-fascist....it seems strange that he'd come up with a plan like that...either way, even if he did, it doesn't remove the many sins he committed against the Constitution and his own people.

Lincoln was a communist? Forgive me, but I really must insist on some evidence you have of this.

 

[jmdrake]

hmm, I'm a bit suspicious of the letters, to be honest--Lincoln was a Communist-fascist....it seems strange that he'd come up with a plan like that...either way, even if he did, it doesn't remove the many sins he committed against the Constitution and his own people.

Not likely. The communist manifesto wasn't published until 1848. Possible that Lincoln read it but unlikely. And what Lincoln did to end secession was no worse than what Andrew Jackson threatened to do. He threatened to hang John Calhoun and got authorization to invade South Carolina if it didn't resend it's threat to not pay the tariffs. But somehow Jackson gets praised by the same people who condemn Lincoln. I'll never figure that out.

Anyway, this was a real plan. Lincoln tried to enact it to emancipate slaves in the states that didn't secede. But the slave states wanted more money than $400 per slave and congress wanted to pay less. Google Lincoln compensated emancipation for more information. I discovered this shortly after the infamous "Tim Russert interview" and posted the info on the forums but I was roundly criticized for having dared mention Lincoln and Paul in the same post. I also wrote a letter to the Paul campaign about this and hand delivered my points about this and another issue to Rand who was nice enough to email me back. I don't know if this info will ever be used and hopefully it won't have to be. (Since the racism issue has died down). The point isn't to praise Lincoln. I don't care what people think about him. The point is that this shows Ron Paul's idea on this wasn't "kooky".

Regards,

John M. Drake

 

[jmdrake]

I expect the Jews to sue Egypt any day now.

Actually if you read the account in Exodus carefully you'll find that after the firstborn were slain the Israelites went to the Egyptians and "borrowed" gold and jewels before leaving. They sure knew how to be emancipated.

Regards,

John M. Drake

 

[Truth-Bringer]

Lincoln was a communist? Forgive me, but I really must insist on some evidence you have of this.

Lincoln was definitely a collectivist statist. That may have been what he meant to say.

 

[wv@SC]

Interesting. Thanks for posting this. Of course, Lincoln was quite the hypocrite on the issue of slavery:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois" (September 18, 1858), pp. 145-146.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388.

Very good post. It truly is a widespread fallacy that A. Lincoln was the Great Emancipator. The purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation was purely strategical and political, aimed at keeping England from recognizing the Confederacy as a valid country (and to keep them out of the war!). There were many sympathizers for the South in Parliament.