Viability of program to buy & emancipate slaves gradually in US?

[Vabasion]

There’s fundamental lack of understanding on slavery and racial issues here.

Northern whites didn’t oppose slavery solely because slavery is bad, they saw slavery as an attack on their own ability to earn money and feed their families as slaves would displace them. It’s the same reason why they opposed freed blacks moving North and taking up jobs. It’s why you had race riots in the North. If you free then what do you do with them? Almost no one wants them for a neighbor up north. Forcing them to move in loses you elections. And thus power to enforce it. Sending them to Africa would be costly although more palatable to people.

Buying slaves gradually also is never going to work. They are slaves. You could if you wanted to rape them day and night. Or force another slave to do the same. Either way you will never buy out the slaves as more can be produced. The reason slaves in the south weren’t made into breeding machines was fear of Haiti situation, fear of becoming a minority and keeping the prices of slaves up.

The only way it could work is a negotiated nationalization of slavery with long term repayment to slave owners, interim period of post slavery training where the slaves are trained useful skills and then sending them to Africa. Which could still be economically ruinous.

 

[DominusNovus]

There’s fundamental lack of understanding on slavery and racial issues here.

Northern whites didn’t oppose slavery solely because slavery is bad, they saw slavery as an attack on their own ability to earn money and feed their families as slaves would displace them. It’s the same reason why they opposed freed blacks moving North and taking up jobs. It’s why you had race riots in the North. If you free then what do you do with them? Almost no one wants them for a neighbor up north. Forcing them to move in loses you elections. And thus power to enforce it. Sending them to Africa would be costly although more palatable to people.

Buying slaves gradually also is never going to work. They are slaves. You could if you wanted to rape them day and night. Or force another slave to do the same. Either way you will never buy out the slaves as more can be produced. The reason slaves in the south weren’t made into breeding machines was fear of Haiti situation, fear of becoming a minority and keeping the prices of slaves up.

The only way it could work is a negotiated nationalization of slavery with long term repayment to slave owners, interim period of post slavery training where the slaves are trained useful skills and then sending them to Africa. Which could still be economically ruinous.

There is a limit on how many slaves can be born in a given year, and that limit is even lower when female slaves are being emancipated.

 

[Vabasion]

There is a limit on how many slaves can be born in a given year, and that limit is even lower when female slaves are being emancipated.

There is also a limit on funding. Buying 3000 girls and 30000 is not the same. It was however clear that American slaves were not forced to breed for the most part and that they could be made to do so resulting in far far more pregnancies and births.

 

[durante]

Upper Canada had a law from the early 1800s explicitly stating that any slave became free by setting foot on Canadian soil and could not be sent back to the USA.

The abolitionists could buy the slaves and send them north.

 

[DominusNovus]

There is also a limit on funding. Buying 3000 girls and 30000 is not the same. It was however clear that American slaves were not forced to breed for the most part and that they could be made to do so resulting in far far more pregnancies and births.

There’s a limit to how much a slave owner could force their female slaves to have children. Risking their health could backfire quite quickly. Meanwhile, 50% of those births aren’t going to help take advantage of the market pressures imposed by this program.

As to how much it costs, I already addressed that.

 

[Vabasion]

There’s a limit to how much a slave owner could force their female slaves to have children. Risking their health could backfire quite quickly. Meanwhile, 50% of those births aren’t going to help take advantage of the market pressures imposed by this program.

As to how much it costs, I already addressed that.

What’s a woman worth to them if they have a steady stream of buyers? Those that aren’t bought can work.

 

[A_simple_pilgrim]

Any sort of purchasing of real scale, (thousands of female slaves), would have to be done by some sort of organized group. within a few years, the scale and objective of this group will be obvious to slave owners. They will simply refuse to sell to this group or it's intermediaries, perhaps passing some sort of law about permits, and the idea would be dead in the water.

Further, slave owners never tried to create excessively large slave populations (as someone mentioned above, due to fear of a Haiti situation and to keep prices high). If such a group came in, and started raising prices, then slave owners might just compensate by 'encouraging' their slaves to have more children, and then have 2 major sources of income, slave labor and unwise abolitionists.

Fundamentally I think this misses a critical point though. The people who were devout abolitionists, who would be willing to spend millions to emancipate slaves, would not take the utterly callous and dehumanizing action to buy out fertile female slaves to prevent the growth of future populations. They wouldn't think to do that because it's horribly unfair to millions of people. We are talking about idealists, not utilitarians, generally.

Could there have been some sort of buy back program, run privately? Yes. Would it have worked? No, probably not, because the US was a very different beast to the UK, and we had our own factors and possibilities. The only time a mass buy back of slaves would have worked is in the conditions that were given about for the UK case, and those probably wouldn't come about without a civil war.

 

[spectrum]

There's a few errors here. First off, if they're in the north, they can't really be re-enslaved (NJ was the last northern state to abolish slavery, in 1805). Second, miscegnation laws were only in a few northern states at the time - the entire North east of Ohio, minus Maine, Rhode Island, and (until 1843) Massachusetts, allowed such marriages.

Lets consider the the issue of my $4.5 million figure, per year. First off, we can hold antebellum inflation as pretty constantly negligible, due to the economic policies of the era. Of course, this program would put upward pressure on the price of slaves, but other economic indicators should be fairly constant. We can see that the population of the North was 3.7 million in 1810, 5.6 million in 1820, 7.06 million in 1830, 9.73 million in 1840, 13.4 million in 1850 (note I'm compiling this from two different sources because I'm too lazy to look up the state by state data and add it up myself, so there's some discrepancy in the 1820 figures, but nothing huge). We can also see that the GDP/cap of the US as a whole was $56 in 1810, $61 in 1820, $77 in 1830, $91 in 1840, and $100 in 1850 (all in 1840 prices, but since inflation was so negligible in this time period, I'm not worried about that). Those numbers are probably not perfectly accurate for the North exclusively, but they'd get us in the ballpark. There's also much debate on whether those numbers are accurate for the nation as a whole, and they're probably not, but they still get us in the ballpark, and I'm very happy to see any better numbers.

So, the GDP of the North works out to $207 million in 1810, $341 million in 1820, $543 million in 1830, $885 million in 1840, and $1.34 billion in 1850. So, for reference, if the North, as a united whole, were to attempt this project in 1810, it would cost just over 2% of its GDP, every year. However, its 1.3% if started in 1820, 0.8% in 1830, and 0.5% in 1840. These are not, of course, negligible numbers, and there are likely problems with looking at the problem this way, but it gives an idea of how much it would cost (I'm forgoing calculating any economic advantage of bringing these girls north) . As a reminder, this program would last less around 13 years at a minimum, and 20 years at a maximum.

It also occurs to me that, while I've been conceding that the overall expenditure could easily go above $4.5 million/year, that doesn't necessarily follow - if there's few enslaved girls left, then even if their per capita price is constantly being pushed upward, the actual number available could keep the overall cost relatively low. Put more simply - the last 10 enslaved girls in the South are not going to cost $450,000 each. I could easily see a bit of a ceiling around the price of a healthy enslaved man - $300 - that would only be broken through once there was a severe shortage of enslaved girls - at which point, it is the shortage of girls, rather than their price, that is really dictating the cost of the project (and said shortage will be limiting the cost).

Slave, Free Black, and White Population, 1780-1830

demographics of slave and free states, 1820-1850

$1 in 1810 → 2024 | Inflation Calculator

The 1.52% inflation rate means $1 in 1810 is equivalent to $25.39 today. This inflation calculator uses the official US consumer price index published by the Department of Labor.

www.officialdata.org

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c8007/c8007.pdf

Unfortunately actions do not occur in a vacuum. As I stated earlier, slave owners will respond by breeding more and more slaves until a new market equilibrium is established. Owning slaves is not like owning a mine - unlike the mine which only has so much gold in it, you can always make more people, and as the price of slaves (and especially female slaves) rise - so will the economic incentives to hold onto and continually use breeding stock.

While I am loathe to compare people to livestock, unfortunately that is exactly how the slave market will react. For most forms of livestock (a good example are cows) the vast majority of produce sold is female, due to the more aggressive tendencies of males (in this case bulls). Yet despite the vast increase in beef consumption experienced worldwide in the last 50 years (driven mainly by changing food consumption habits in East Asia) there is no risk of cow supply running out. Prices have simply found a new equilibrium, and global beef supply has continually risen as more and more of the worlds land supply has been given over to ranching. The same will happen with slaves……slave owners will dedicate more of their resources into a newly profitable commodity. Unless your plan allows for all current and future breeding females to be purchased at once (And how will you achieve this without government intervention?) it simply cannot work.

 

[Wendell]

You could have Virginia's gradual emancipation plan proposed in the walk of Nat Turner's revolt pass and then become a model for other states. Having a federal emancipation program strikes me as being a much taller order, but might be a necessary outgrowth of other states following Virginia's lead.

 

[Cryptic]

Three states out of many. Those riots were in NYC, were they not? A city prone to riots.

Detroit had deadly race riots in WWII (blacks appearing in traditionally white factories) and Boston had significant civil rights issues when blacks started appearing in historically white schools.

Though as with anybody else, I cant "prove a negative", the large scale of settlement of freed slaves in the north was not tenable in the 1840s to 1850s. Sure, free blacks were welcome in nearly every northern state- so long as the following conditions were met:

- Small numbers, strong preference for high education / low social impact individuals and families, fully sponsored and housed by abolitionist societies- and again small numbers .

Large scale manumissions were going to violate everyone of those conditions.

 

[kruscica]

Detroit had deadly race riots in WWII (blacks appearing in traditionally white factories) and Boston had significant civil rights issues when blacks started appearing in historically white schools.

Though as with anybody else, I cant "prove a negative", the large scale of settlement of freed slaves in the north was not tenable in the 1840s to 1850s. Sure, free blacks were welcome in nearly every northern state- so long as the following conditions were met:

- Small numbers, strong preference for high education / low social impact individuals and families, fully sponsored and housed by abolitionist societies- and again small numbers .

Large scale manumissions were going to violate everyone of those conditions.

Exactly. If there are 30,000 manumitted black girls or even ex-slaves in a state instead of 300 then opinions will harden and you will end up with new or stronger anti-free-black and anti-miscegenation laws.

 

[Wendell]

Exactly. If there are 30,000 manumitted black girls or even ex-slaves in a state instead of 300 then opinions will harden and you will end up with new or stronger anti-free-black and anti-miscegenation laws.

Or more pressure to "return" the freed slaves to Africa.

 

[DominusNovus]

Exactly. If there are 30,000 manumitted black girls or even ex-slaves in a state instead of 300 then opinions will harden and you will end up with new or stronger anti-free-black and anti-miscegenation laws.

Are you sure?