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LINCOLN SUGGESTED BUYING SLAVES' FREEDOM
MSNBC - 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
was digitally scanned and posted online along with easier-to-read
transcriptions. . .
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.
Calculating costs 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.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23434604/
LINCOLN ARCHIVES
www.library.rochester.edu/rbk/lincoln
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LINCOLN SUGGESTED BUYING SLAVES' FREEDOM
MSNBC - 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
was digitally scanned and posted online along with easier-to-read
transcriptions. . .
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.
Calculating costs 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.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23434604/
LINCOLN ARCHIVES
www.library.rochester.edu/rbk/lincoln
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