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A Plan to Abolish Slavery The slave states of 1805 were all net exporters of slaves by the decade of 18501859 and Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia (which was not a state), Virginia, and North Carolina were already net exporters by the 1800–1809 decade. For these states (and D. C.) at least, many slave-holders would have been willing to sell significant numbers of slaves to the highest bidder. Suppose that the highest bidder for young girls and women of childbearing age had been the U.S. Government. These people could have been set free to live among the population of already free blacks living in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Such a program would have had several effects. First, it would have accelerated the process of converting the black slave population into free blacks. Second, it may have restricted the supply of new slaves and thereby driven up their prices. xviii The impact would have been greatest for the more western slave importing states. xix Slavery survived in the U.S. for as long as it did at least in part because the South had sufficient political power within Congress to resist unfriendly legislation. Under the commerce clause, Congress could have imposed a tax on (or even banned) interstate commerce in slaves and banned slavery in all of the territories (as it did in the Northwest Territories and parts of the Louisiana Territory). The British Empire banned inter-island transport of slaves well before emancipation. Clearly, an anti-slavery policy at the national level could have made the slave system difficult to maintain even within those states where it was established, to say nothing of the territories where it was later established. That the slave importing states provided a ready market for these states having a surplus also helped maintain the system. Without that expansion of the slave system, the original slave states would have become increasingly isolated. Moreover, without the profits from selling surplus slaves, the economics of a slave-based economy would have diminished. So if a policy of having the federal government purchase freedom for female slaves of childbearing and younger ages would have led us toward a peaceful emancipation, could such a policy have been implemented politically? Any plan to begin the process of emancipation, even a voluntary plan, would have been difficult to sell to the power structure. Still, a voluntary plan would have had some important advantages. Rather than a constitutional amendment, a plan to purchase freedom for some female slaves over time would have only required Congressional appropriation and some degree of cooperation from the states involved (and not all slave states would have needed to cooperate). While not easy, these approvals would have been a lot easier to obtain than would a constitutional amendment. One thing in such a plan’s favor would have been the economic interest of the slave selling slave-holders. The plan would have added to the demand for their surplus slaves. Any slave-holder wishing to sell some or all of his or her slaves should have been 15primarily concerned with obtaining the best price. If the purchase program offered a higher price than the slave traders, why not sell to them? Thus, we return to the question: Could a plan of purchased freedom for potential childbearing slaves have been implemented politically? This question breaks down into two sub-questions. First, could Congress have been induced to pass the necessary legislation? Second, would the relevant states have been willing to allow the policy to proceed? Put in somewhat different terms, the first question becomes: Could a strong push by a popular President (i.e. Jefferson) have pressured Congress into adopting such a plan? The argument could have been cast as follows: We agreed, “all men are created equal” when we declared our independence. Let us now begin moving in the direction of making all men free. We all believe in property rights and fair compensation. We all believe that owners should be able to sell their property to whoever offers the best price. I propose that we use the government’s property (i.e. the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase) to purchase freedom for some of the slave population. Some states now have a surplus of slaves. Let the federal government pay a fair price for the less productive girls and women and then set them free. We already have communities of free blacks. These newly freed blacks would simply add to that population. This plan will help maintain the market value for slaves by absorbing the surplus while not forcing anyone to sell any more slaves than he or she wants. What about the individual states? Those states like North Carolina that restricted emancipation would have presented a problem. Slaves could have been purchased there and transported to more receptive areas but only if the states (like Virginia and Maryland) that allowed communities of freed blacks to exist did not pass laws against their importation. Moreover, any state could have passed its own set of laws designed to thwart a federal policy of purchasing female slaves for freedom. At least some states might have resisted. Still if the plan could have been implemented in at least a few states (particularly Virginia, Maryland and Delaware), it would have gone a long way towards restricting the availability of slaves to populate the more western states. Once again, Virginia would have been key. A few political facts need to be kept in mind. Many of the founding fathers, while slaveholders themselves, were at least philosophically opposed to slavery. In particular, the first four Virginia presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe all expressed a desire to see the practice end. Washington freed his own slaves in his will while Jefferson and Madison each devised plans to end slavery gradually (Mellon). xx In addition, early in U.S. history (just after the Revolution) the U.S. Congress voted to ban slavery in the Northwest Territories and came within one vote of banning it in the territory that later became the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Jefferson himself was very disappointed by this result. However, for a single vote, slavery might well have been restricted to the eastern seaboard from Delaware to Georgia (Mellon, p. 115). Finally, the further importation of slaves was banned after 1808 (although the ban was not effectively enforced for some years thereafter). If Congress had the will to ban slavery north of the Ohio River and prohibit further importation after 1808, perhaps it could have been induced to set up a system for purchasing freedom for some southern slaves with an eye toward eventual total emancipation. 16Would the slave states have gone along? Georgia and the Carolinas might have prohibited the freeing of slaves within their borders and the export of slaves to states where they could be freed. On the other hand, Virginia actually facilitated a limited amount of emancipation during this period. According to McColley (p. 141), Virginia’s free black population expanded from 3,000 to 30,000 from 1780 to 1810 through voluntary emancipation. Accordingly, Virginia might have been willing to cooperate. If so, Maryland, DC, and Delaware would have almost certainly gone along. By 1860 Maryland’s population of free Blacks almost equaled its slave population while Delaware had three times as many free Blacks as slaves. What Kentucky and Tennessee would have done is difficult to predict. To be acceptable to the South, any plan to move towards emancipation would need to have been gradual. As we have seen, Virginia was willing to accept a small amount of voluntary emancipation in the post-Revolutionary War period. Free Blacks were also a significant part of the populations of Maryland, Delaware, Louisiana and Washington DC. Voluntary emancipation was happening in the pre-Civil War South. Only a relatively small percentage of the freed blacks returned to Africa. Quite possibly some of the southern states could have been persuaded to allow somewhat larger numbers of slaves to be freed by voluntary purchase and emancipation. Such a program would have needed to satisfy the white South on two points. First, their safety could not be compromised. Slave revolts were an ever-present fear. Nat Turner’s uprising and John Brown’s raid were examples of what could happen (as was the experience of Haiti). All of these events involved violence in which slaves participated and whites were victims. Second, the slave-holders would not want to see their labor force disappear. Only a relatively gradual plan could have met these tests. On the other hand, gradual emancipation was frequently followed by a sudden, complete and noncompensated emancipation within a short number of years in the countries and states where it was implemented. This phenomenon may help explain the stubbornness of many slave-holders to any plan to end slavery gradually, even if such plan included full compensation. With hindsight, we can see that the freed slaves would have remained available as laborers. Black migration out of the South was very slow until the First World War. The safety issue is a tougher one. Blacks were in the majority in many southern counties. White (racist) southerners effort to control the black population (KKK, lynching) and thereby “protect” the white population was a reality until recent times. Jim Crow laws and white primaries were manifestations of an attitude that continued well into the Twentieth Century. Any realistic gradual emancipation plan should have anticipated other methods of “race control” as slavery gave way to emancipation. Political equality for Blacks would have been very slow to follow emancipation (as indeed it was in the postCivil War South). Still, had emancipation begun sooner, progress toward true political equality might well have been quicker. A voluntary birth-into-freedom policy would have faced some further questions. Freeing women and girls would have created gender imbalance in both the slave and free black communities. Single women and younger girls would have presented a problem of family break up but an effective policy would have required a more aggressive purchase 17program. Would freedom for the wives and daughters of families be viewed as an improvement by those freed or those left behind? Finally, we come to the big question: Could a voluntary purchase program have led to the end of slavery within a meaningful period? Only a relatively small percentage of the slave population came onto the market in a given year. A program that sought to purchase the available females would have at best been a very slow way of ending slavery. Conclusion Could sale proceeds from our western land have been used to purchase freedom for the slaves and thereby have led to a peaceful emancipation? This complex question breaks into two important sub-questions. First, could the nation have afforded the cost of the purchase? Second, would the South (and particularly its power structure) have been willing to agree to the transaction? Our analysis finds that the 1805 slave population had an estimated total market value of $223 million, $16 million of which may be attributed to the “reproductive value” of the slave population. Given the size of the 1805 economy and the then current value of the government held lands, $200 million or more represented a staggering sum. A proposal to raise and pay such a sum for ending slavery was unlikely to have been taken seriously, especially in light of the limited government attitude of the times. As valuable as the Louisiana Territory land was, few if any 1805 slaveholders would have been willing to accept a value for that land that would have been needed to use a land-for-slave exchange to end slavery. Any other source for financing a slave buyout in the $200 million plus range is equally difficult to envision. Borrowing the funds for the Louisiana Purchase was itself a bit of stretch for the young nation. Issuing bonds to purchase the slaves’ freedom raises another set of problems (debt service, inflation, and market value discount). Thomas Jefferson was well aware of the impossibility of financing a complete emancipation plan: 18“There are in the United States a million and a half of people of color in slavery. To send off the whole of these at once, nobody conceives to be practicable for us, or expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five years for its accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled. Their estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual property has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully take it from the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars each, young and old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars, which must be paid or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their transportation by land and sea to Mesurado, a year’s provision of food and clothing, implements of husbandry and of their trades, which will amount to three hundred millions more, making thirty-six millions of dollars a year for twenty-five years, with insurance of peace all that time, and it is impossible to look at the question a second time. I am aware that at the end of about sixteen years, a gradual detraction from this sum will commence, from the gradual diminution of breeders, and go on during the remaining nine years. Calculate this deduction, and it is still impossible to look at the enterprise a second time. I do not say this to induce an inference that the getting rid of them is forever impossible. For that is neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that it cannot be done in this way.” xxi The $16 million estimate for purchasing freedom for the unborn slaves of 1805 was, in contrast, a much more manageable figure. The land value of the Louisiana Purchase was clearly well in excess of that sum. Similarly, the 1805 federal government probably did have the capacity to borrow such a sum and service the debt. A plan to end the practice of classifying babies of slave mothers as slaves themselves would, if implemented in 1805, have largely eliminated slavery by 1860. A policy of apprenticing newborns to the slave mother’s owners until a certain age (e.g. 18) could have dealt effectively with the issue of care for the infants. A gradual emancipation of the slave population could have allowed time for a wage system to develop in the South. An end to the gang system would have increased production costs (ignoring the non-pecuniary costs to the slaves) but cotton would still have been a profitable southern crop. The increased production costs from such a nongang wage system would have been borne by three basic groups: the former slaveholders, northern business interests, and consumers of the cotton production. Compensation to the former slaveholders would have offset much of the adverse economic impact for that group. Thus, the answer to the first question appears to be “yes,” the young nation could have afforded that cost of purchasing freedom of at least the newborn slaves from 1805 forward. Jefferson’s gradual emancipation plan, sketched in 1824 but already envisioned on “Notes to Virginia” considered the emancipation of the after-born: “…leaving them, on due compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes on Virginia, under the fourteenth query. The estimated value of the new-born infant is so low, (say twelve dollars and fifty cents,) that it would probably be 19yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to thirty-seven millions and a half; leaving only the expense of nourishment while with the mother, and of transportation.” xxii Jefferson considered financing the plan selling land: “…And from what fund are these expenses to be furnished? Why not from that of the lands which have been ceded by the very States now needing this relief? And ceded on no consideration, for the most part, but that of the general good of the whole. These cessions already constitute one fourth of the States of the Union. It may be said that these lands have been sold; are now the property of the citizens composing those States; and the money long ago received and expended. But an equivalent of lands in the territories since acquired, may be appropriated to that object, or so much, at least, as may be sufficient; and the object, although more important to the slave States, is highly so to the others also, if they were serious in their arguments on the Missouri question. The slave States, too, if more interested, would also contribute more by their gratuitous liberation, thus taking on themselves alone the first and heaviest item of expense.” xxiii Would the South’s power structure have accepted the compromise? Genovese argues persuasively that the South would not because it would have ended the “southern way of life” for the ruling plantation class. Similarly, Phillips argues that the nonslaveholding white southerners supported slavery as a means of “race control”. Indeed Jefferson himself wanted to end slavery (gradually and with compensation and colonization) but chose not to propose his plan because of his fear that it would be soundly rejected and thereby set back the cause. While we cannot know for certain, the writings of contemporaries imply that non-economic factors would have made any attempt to end slavery through economic compensation very difficult. Economists are very reluctant to accept the proposition that no level of economic incentives could have succeeded in enticing slaveholders to support a gradual emancipation plan. Perhaps a generous above market value bonus would have been sufficient inducement to obtain support from the slave-holders raised from the entire population. On the other hand, the higher the premium, the less likely, the rest of the nation would have been to support the plan. Quite possibly any level of premium that would have obtained the slaveholder’s support would have been so high that it would have lost the support of the rest of the nation. Perhaps the Civil War was inevitable even though a peaceful alternative was economically feasible. References Aldrich, Mark, “Flexible Exchange Rates, Northern Expansion, and the Market for Southern Cotton: 1866–1879,” Journal of Economic History XXXIII (June, 1973): 399–416. Ball, Douglas. Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991. 20Bassett, John Spencer. Slavery in the State of North Carolina, Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1899. Reprinted in Slavery in the States: Selected Essays.