The Reputation of Presidents Takes a Hit in Their Second Term

[David Lockmiller]

(09-03-2022 01:15 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Offhand I think I agree with the Cabinet. A plan that gives money to the slaveholders, but not to the slaves themselves, just doesn't seem right to me. If the proposal had also included help for the former slaves, then I would be more supportive of it. I realize adding such a proposal would be dismissed by the Confederacy, but it (the Confederacy) wasn't going to accept Lincoln's proposal anyway.

That is a good point: "A plan that gives money to the slaveholders, but not to the slaves themselves, just doesn't seem right to me."

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged."

Perhaps the plan should be considered in two phases.

The object of the first phase was to end the Civil War as one nation and with Black slaves gaining their freedom forever. The former slave holders were to be compensated for the loss of the constitutional property right to own the slaves, as an accepted term of defeat.

In the second phase, cotton would be still the "king." The former slave holders now had a substantial cash surplus to pay for the labor on the open market, free blacks and free whites. Cotton production was highly profitable. When costs rise, the prices paid to the cotton plantation owners also increase. Free black families could start a new life in the west very cheaply. However, many northern states had enacted their own exclusionary black laws, fearing cheap labor. Congress may also authorize payments to former slaves.

But in the first phase, the former black slaveholders had to be compensated for the loss of their property rights. But that did not happen, and so . . . .