Dr. Paul refers to European solution to end slavery

There is a terrific book (not especially kind to either the Southern or Northern governments) about the nature of the ideological issues surrounding the civil war, including the overall effect of the Civil War, which was to end slavery at the price of destroying America's experiment in limited government. The title is EMANCIPATING SLAVES, ENSLAVING FREE MEN by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a professor of economics and history at San Jose State University (and a pure libertarian).

It includes a very interesting speculative discussion about the peaceful abolition of slavery that would have occurred without war, focusing on the enormous difficulty slaveholders would have had without the socialization of the costs of capturing and returning slaves (including the Fugitive Slave law and government-paid patrols to prevent and recapture runaways). It is NOT a book about the battles, like most civil war histories, but about the ideas. It also discusses how the South might have won the war with a different military strategy (not that the author wanted them to win). Paul's interview has me wanting to reread it.

http://www.amazon.com/Emancipating-Slaves-Enslaving-Free-Men...

First, I will say that slavery is a travesty before a Creator that has endowed man with his life, that is no man may rightfully be owned except by himself, further, that this institution has served as a black smear through the history of a nation founded on the principle that "all men are created equal".
That being said, I would like to make the following points:
1 - The original articles of secession of the Confederacy cited slavery issue as the prime reason for secession.
2 - The response of Lincoln and the then Republican dominated Congress was the passage of a presumptive 13th Amendment which would have guaranteed the right of slavery of the southern states and in the territories and newly admitted states in perpetuity. Said Lincoln, "If I could preserve the union without freeing any slaves, I would do so."
3 - The southern states sent a delegation to Washington to resolve the differences. When Lincoln found out that the south would not rejoin the union unless the Morrill Tariff was repealed, he refused to meet with them and the south continued the process of secession.
4 - The attitude of the north was to just let them go and there was no support for a war with the northern business and money interests. However, the south set up what was in effect a free trade zone and the north considered this to be a danger to their business interests and began the clamor for war.
5 - Slavery could have well been ended without a war, but the great war of the northern aggression was not about slavery except as a propaganda ploy for the north. History also shows that the constitution adopted by the Confederacy outlawed the "african slave trade" and that Jefferson Davis was the first president on the North American continent to have black man on his cabinet.
6 - If the war was to free the slaves, then why did not slavery end with the conquest of the south? Why did U.S. Grant continue to own slaves until a revamped 13th Amendment became law in 1866?
7 - The issue of slavery was one that divided much of this country, but was not the causus belli of the altercation. This war, as all wars this country has fought - was about money. Qui bono?

It seems that they have done it, they found the issue that will divide us. If I may I would like to say a few things regarding slavery; not the slavery of the past, we all agree that is was a crime and should have been prevented from the beginning. I want to talk about the slavery that is happening right now. Our being slaves to the government, forced to pay huge amounts of our income to governments that provide little or no advancement to our society. In just about all our lives we have seen the government give to those that are once in need of assistance and turn them into welfare cases, that we all have to pay for. The skin color is not the issue, nor is their religion, back ground or heritage, they have become dependent on the aid and will vote to keep it. We become the slaves to this kind of state. I say no more let us put behind us the interview and concentrate on the Presidency for Ron Paul. Grab your neighbors hand without regard to its color and lets raise them in unison for freedom.

I'm very tired right now and will respond to this in more detail tomorrow. But for you, Babayhuey, to claim that it is more just to defend against foreign enemies [translation: self-preservation] than to put a stop to domestic injustice is the height of self-seeking egoism, low-mindedness, and primitive tribalism. The function of a government, established on the principles of justice and disinterested benevolence, is to protect the natural, God-given rights of every individual human being, by the threat and, if necessary, the use of coercive force. The African Negro was not the property of the lazy, slothful, good-for-nothing slaveholders, but of God, and could not have been purchased by the State for any amount. These inhuman taskmasters ought to have been flogged, forced to make restitution to those whom they exploited, and imprisoned for life for high crimes against humanity, not compensated for their iniquities you uncouth savage!

My ancestors were virtuous abolitionists and it boils my blood to hear southerners try to defend themselves with disingenuous, phony talk about 'states rights' and about how they just loved the Negro with loving kindness until the carpetbaggers came from the North and ruined their pleasant relations. This is pure bullshit, plain and simple and can be easily proven with any objective history of the ante-bellum South . One that comes readily to mind, is the splendid, austere account of American slavery by Professor Kenneth Stamp, The Peculiar Institution (1956). It is impeccable as to writing style, presentation of plain, irrefutable facts through primary sources and quantitative statistics, and tone of disinterested, humane scholarship [he even commends the few, very few, masters that treated their slaves with some shred of decency]. Thank you Mr. Hill, for simply being a humane and civilized human, with noble, enlightened sentiments unlike so many of the rogues and rascals that populate these forums. I'd like to buy you a drink if you come down through South Florida.

I infrequently disagree with Dr. Paul (the next President of the United States) but his answer about the Civil War on MTP is wrong. Freeing the slaves in America was worth the lives lost. To free the slaves, would have been worth 2 million lives. Indeed, it would have been worth the life of every able bodied adult in the land, if that would have been required to end slavery.

It would have been wrong, and also ineffective, to buy the slaves freedom and then outlaw slavery. Slaveholders were committing a monstrous crime. They were extreme human rights criminals. For the U.S. to have paid a slaveholder even one cent would have ratified slavery by allowing the slaveholders to profit (or to at least avoid loss) from their crimes. Wgpitts wrote in the original post: "by following the Constitution and justly compensating the slave holders for their loss of property, all of this could have been prevented." But the Compensation Clause applies to property. Humans can never rightfully constitute property. A government never should respect property rights in humans. Not even to end property rights in humans. "Just compensation"? How can a slaveholder be justly compensated with anything but lead? Or at least harsh punishment.

Morality aside, paying off the slaveholders wouldn't have averted the Civil War. After the slaves were freed by purchase, many, if not all, southern states would have rejected laws abolishing further slavery. War would have been required to enforce anti-slavery laws. Slavery ruled the Southern economy. It is not inevitable that slavery would have withered without a complete destruction of its supporter's institutions and power. Sure, technology would have rendered slave labor less valuable. Coupled with boycotts and moral persuasion, slavery might have toppled. But maybe not. Without force of arms, slavery could easily have persisted to this day. Modern governments have employed slave labor or allowed private industry to. How often has a society relinquished what it perceives to be its economic lifeblood without human shedding human blood? Very rarely.

The U.S. should not police the world. But the Civil War was not a foreign police action. The U.S. had a moral duty to police itself. And is does not beg the question, especially about slavery, to deem the South part of the U.S. even though it sought to secede. The U.S., as a whole, created and institutionalized slavery. The Constitution itself provided for slavery. The U.S. Supreme Court, the court of the whole country, blessed slavery. Thus, the U.S., including non-slave states, had to rectify the wrong that it as one country had created and had perpetuated. For the North to allow the South to secede would have been for the North to abdicate its duty to undo the ultimate wrong that it had done. The Civil War was a just war.

Bob Hill (Los Angeles)

Let Freedom Ring