A few points:
1) Lincoln's compensated emancipation plan failed because he proposed to deport the slaves to various colonies in Africa rather than allow them to stay here on American soil. Like many in the Republican party at that time, he wanted an ethnically pure nation (a "white dream," if you will) devoid of anyone with slightly darker-colored skin. And that simply wasn't possible with the existence of slavery as an institution.
1856 Republican platform: "...all unoccupied territory of the United States, and such as they may hereafter acquire, shall be reserved for the white Caucasian race – a thing that cannot be except by the exclusion of slavery."
Many people who opposed slavery at the time opposed it not out of humanitarian or altruistic concern for the plight of their fellow human beings in bondage, but because the elimination of slavery would've spelled the beginning of a new era in which new territories would have been preserved for the Master Race. I believe Illinois at one time, a free state, barred blacks (even free ones) from entering their borders.
David Wilmot, though a Democrat, opposed slavery for similar reasons. As a legislator, the Wilmot Proviso (which he proposed as an attachment to an appropriations bill during the Mexican War) would have banned slavery in all newly acquired territory. Did he oppose slavery because he felt sorry for the poor slaves? No, not at all actually. His exact justifications for the proposal were as follows:
"I would preserve to free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance, where the sons of toil, of my own race and color, can live without the disgrace which association with Negro slavery brings upon free white labor."
2) Anyone on this forum defending John Brown needs to have their heads examined. In one particular raid, he and his supporters dragged innocent men from their homes (none of whom owned slaves, but apparently belonged to the wrong Kansas "faction") and butchered them in front of their families, with their wives and children screaming in horror. I read a comment on here along the lines of, "He didn't kill any women, so it's okay." What. The. Fuck. Why is it any more horrible to kill an innocent woman than it is to kill an innocent man? The killing of innocents is never, ever justified. EVER.
3) Compensated emancipation, though a splendid proposal that the Northern abolitionist Lysander Spooner himself supported, was not the only alternative to the war,
in case anyone who dismisses it ipso facto concludes that the war was the only other option. One method was to have the fugitive slaves escape to the North, who would then be under no obligation to return the slaves to the seceded South, since the North/South were separate jurisdictions not bound together by fugitive-slave laws. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, in fact, heartily supported this position, saying before the Civil War that the North should secede from the South for this purpose. The cost of slavery would then become prohibitive, and the institution would collapse upon itself. Another was to allow for gradual emancipation. Slavery was already on its way out. Most Southerners at the time did not own slaves. By 1828, there were more than four times as many anti-slavery societies in the South as there were in the North. There existed an array of newspaper publications in the South publicly denouncing the institution of slavery. Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson described slavery as a "moral and political evil." Blacks fought alongside the Confederate troops, most by voluntary choice, and in defiance of laws written by Southern legislators prohibiting them from doing so. Another solution involved emancipation societies, whereby members would persuade slaveowners to voluntarily free their slaves. You also have to note that most civilized nations at the time were ending slavery. In order to maintain healthy trade relationships with other countries, the South would have had to end slavery eventually, lest trading partners refused to exchange goods with them on the basis that trading with partners who condoned slavery would generate barbaric symbolism. Also, the South would have most certainly lost its competitive edge in the world market, seeing as free laborers who reap rewards for their work and choose their areas of specialization, as any good libertarian knows, are more efficient, productive, and motivated to work than unpaid slave labor. The Southern economy would be devastated if it decided to keep slavery much longer. From an economic point of view, indefinite slavery is completely undesirable if you wish to generate prosperity.
Anyone who demonizes the South as being "vicious" and "backwards" and "racist" must also do the same for the colonists who fought for their independence in the American Revolution. They, too, were fighting to maintain their institutions of self-government and traditional "English" liberties. Like the Confederate South, they owned slaves. Like the North, the British offered to free the slaves of the American colonies in exchange for their loyalty and allegiance. So you can definitely see the parallels. But does anybody –
anybody – on this board side with the British?
