Ci>8l

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

EQUITY AND EXPEDIENCY
OF
COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION.

No candid man, North or South, can hesitate to admit, that the an
tagonisms and estrangements generated by the system of slavery, Im
peril the life of our beloved Union far more than a world of foreign
toes could do. I ¦
Fifty years of the nation's experience prove, that peace, harmony
and brotherly unity can never pervade this great continental family of
States while slavery exists; but that, on the contrary, the embittering
struggle will grow more anil more intense and calamitous, until some
competent measure be adopted for the extinction of that system.
Jf the Union were at war wiih a coalition of European Powers, and
could only escape subjugation by the extinction of slavery,' the Consti
tution, as well as the law of self-preservation, would fully sanction the
summary act. Both these sources of authority would authorize the
Federal Congress to take equitable and adequate steps for putting an
«nd to the same evil, in order to vanquish a domestic foe, more danger
ous to the Union than all the external enemies that could be arrayed
against it.
If slavery were abolished in time of war as a national act of self-
defence, the slaveholders of the South would claim and receive indem
nification from the Federal Government for the act of manumission.
If the system Is to be abolished to destroy an internal enemy, which is
sapp ng the very soul of the Piepublic, they should be equally compensa
ted for the emancipation of their slaves.
For neorly fifty years, the legislates of the Southern States have
dene all that their acts could achieve, to legaiVzifand sustain slavery ;
TQ encourage the people of those States to invest their capitai'in slaves.
They cannot now justly turn round and treat those legislative acts as
immoralities, and destroy the property which they have, de factn, crea
ted, without compensating its present holders for the loss entailed upon
them What the Southern States cannot do by themselves, consistently
with justice and equity, all the States ofthe Union caDnot do together.
The utter extirpation of slavery frcm American soil should bd
achieved in a way and in a spirit that would attach all the members of
the Confederaticn to each oiber by stronger bcDds than have ever exis
ted between tbem ; which should bequeath to its numerous posterity of
States a rich legacy of precious memories, deepening and perpetuating
iheir sense of fraternal relationship, as co-heirs ot the noblest chapters
of American history.

2
Of all parties to this great moral struggle, the well-being of th<3
slaves must be most dependent upon the prevalence of a spirit of broth
erhood and benevolence throughout the nation at the time of their
manumission. Nothing but slavery itself, of the most atrocious stamp,
could be worse for thera than emancipation in a tempest of malignant
passions, and fierce and fiery hate.
Great as the system of slavery has grown, it may be equitably abol
ished, without increasing the taxation of the country by a single farth
ing per head of its population. The public lands alone would be suffi
cient to p;iy for the emancipation of all the slaves iu the Union, if ap
propriated exclusively to that object. Without including the lands
acquired from Mexico by the treaty of 1853, this national domain
contains 1,6>>0,000,000 acres. At 75 cents per acre, it would yield,
in the end, $1,200,000,000. Admitting §250 per head for the whole
slave population to be a fair average price, taking infant and aged, sick
and infirm, three millions aud a half would amount to §875,000,000.
Thus this landed estate of the nation would not only emancipate all the
slaves in its borders, but would yield a large surplus for their moral
elevation and improvement.
A considerable portion ofthe national domain lies in the slave States,
and consequently has but little demand and value. The removal of
slavery would create both, by the continually increasing influx of men
and capital from the present free States and from Europe. In Mis
souri, for example, there are 13,000,000 acres of the public lands un
sold and unappropriated, of only a nominal value. The extinction of
slavery would bring these lands immediately into market, and at a
price which would yield a sum sufficient to pay for the emancipation of
all the slaves in the State. Thus Missouri might be freed from the
evil, withouL sending her a dollar directly from the national treasury,
or the proceeds of a single acre of land lying outside of her borders.
The pecuniary results of emancipation in Missouri would be imme
diate and immeasurable. There would be such a rapid development of
her mineral and agricultural resources ; such a great and sudden en
hancement of the price of her lands, that Kentucky, Tennessee, Mary
land, Delaware and Virginia Would be induced to follow her example,
one after the other, in comparatively quick succession.
 By lifting the incubus of slavery from a. single. State like Missoi/i^-
not only a powerful precedent would be established to work upon the
remaining slave States, but great additional wealth would accrue to the
nation, increasing its capacity to carry on the enterprise of general
emancipation. There is no object more national, patriotic, or politic, to which the
public lands could be appropriated, than this peaceful and gradual ex
tinction of slavery. State by State, They constitute a resource fully
adequate to remove the great evil from our land, without imposing a
tax, or occasioning a loss, which its poorest inhabitant would feel. Un
less appropriated to this patriotic enterprize, they will be frittered away
upon speculating railway companies, or upon objects of a local charac
ter, in the new States and Territories.
Even in thus appropriating the public domain to the emancipation of

the slaves, it would not be absolutely necessary to withhold judicious
grants to railway companies; for it is assumed that the every alternate
section reserved by the government, in conceding these donations, will
produce as much money as both the sections without the railway.
Thus, no honest and useful railway enterprize in the new Slates would
necessarily be deprived of any legitimate aid by the plan proposed.
The Federal Congress would not in the slightest degree transcend ita
legitimate prerogatives nor impinge upon the sovereignty of any South
ern State, by making this generous offer of compensation whenever it
might be disposed to emancipate its slaves. Such an offer would not
impair its right to retain or abolish slavery at its own will. Should it
prefer, on due consideration, to put an end to the system, it would per
form in and by itself every act of legislation necessary to effect that
object. It would distribute the money received from the national treas
ury among its slaveholders in its own way and by its own officers.
Suppose that $250 per slave should be the average compensation al
lowed to every Southern State for emancipation, it would require
the income from the public lands for nearly three years to pay Mary
land for manumitting all her slaves. In case she should follow the ex
ample of Missouri at an interval of only a year, about $15,000,000
over and above the revenue from the national domain, in that space,
would have to be raised for her. If the current expenditures of the
government were properly economized, a sum equal to this balance,
might be saved from "the other sources of revenue. If the annual ex
penses of the government were limited to $60,000,000, a surplus ave
raging $20,000,000 a year might be realized, up to the end of the
century, from customs and duties alone. This surplus might be loaned
to the Emancipation Fund from Public Lands, should it be needed in
any year, to pay off such a state as Virginia. Thus it might be seldom,
if ever, necessary for the nation to borrow money for carrying on this
great work of gradually extinguishing slavery. Even in case of such
a necessity, it would greatly elevate political morality and promote na
tional economy and virtue, even to be in debt, or under the necessity of
saving money, for some grand reproductive enterprize.
The Free States can afford to be not only just but generous to the
South; their commercial, religious and political partnership With it in
sus—ining slavery having been most intimate and extensive. They
have had the handling of all the great staples of the' South. Cotton,
rice and tobacco have constituted their currency in trading with Europe.
In this they have mostly paid for their importations of foreign goods,
which they have again sold to the South ; thus making large profits
from their various transactions in slave-labor produce. They have
doubtless realized more than half the wealth that sinews bought and
sold have ever earned in America. They would, with the same cer
tainty, share equally with the South in all the increased wealth and
prosperity which emancipation would bring to that section of the
Union. Compensated Emancipation is the only way by which slavery can
be abolished, without entailing upon the North an incalculable pecuniary
loss. There is a great number of persons, of great intelligence and

¦influence, who think the restriction of slavery to' its present limits-
would grow into crnnpressi/m, s.ai compression produce pleihnra, anil
plethora work out the death of the system. Or, in other words, the
cumber of slaves would so increase in the end, that they would become
valuless for want of increased area oo which to spread them This re
sult, if possible, must be very distant; for there is room enough within
the present boundaries of slave territory for fifteen millions of slaves,
with as many of them to the square mile as in South Carolina. Hut
remote or near, this anticipated result of restriction involves the abso
lute certainty of a long, and complete financial break-down in the
Southern States. Those entertaining this idea must suppose that the
whole pecuniary value of the slaves would be destroyed ; that the planters
and farmers of the South would have nothing but their exhausted lands,
and accumulated debts with which to commence the system of free la
bor. How would they pay for that labor,- black or "white ? What-'.
would become of the African population released from bondage under •
such circumstances? Those who owned the land would have no capital
wherewiih to pay them wages, and without working for wages how could
they, feed, clothe and shelter their families, and in the end buy land for
themselves ? .And who could measure the damage which the North
would incur from such a condition of things, even for five years in the
Southern States ?
The dissolution of the Union, that desperate and fearful method of
abolishing slavery, which a few persons of acknowledged talent and
personal worth recommend, would be ten times more disastrous to the
Free States than ihe result of compression and plethora. It involves a
terrible and bloody struggle betwei-n the slaves and whites, in which
the latter are to be overpowerd, and mostly exterminated, if the self-
freed b.aeks are to remain in the South as conquerors of the soil as well
as their former masters. If we had the heart only to estimate ther
pecuniary bearings of such an event, who could estimate the calamity of
such a revolution to the North? But suppose that the victorious mil
lions of negroes should not proceed to such extremities, but merely fight
their way across Mason and Dixon's Line, and distribute themselves
equally among the Free States, detailing to each 200,000. What wel
come would Illinois, with its "Black Law," give to the quota of this
colored population assigned to her? What would liberty-loving M;rssa-
«;h ¦„ :ttij say to the iugress into her borders even of 100,000 of {.his
great IsraelitisL army from the land of boudar'e?
The peaceful extinction of slavery by Compensated Emancipation, is the
only mode by which it ran be effected in harmony with all those objects
and interests which should be so dear to the heart of an American
Christian and Patriot , ., - :J}, J}.
This little tract is a brief abstract of tie arguments developed at length in a.
Pamphlet of -18 pages, published by Dnyton- & Burdick, 20 Ann Street, New
York, entitled " A Plan of Brotherly Copartnership of the North and South, for
the Peaceful Extinction of Slavery, by EHhn Burritt," Price 10 cents.-

This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in
cooperation with Yale University Library, 2008. You
may not reproduce this digitized copy ofthe book for
any purpose other than for scholarship, research,
educational, or, in limited quantity, personal use. You
may not distribute or provide access to this digitized copy
(or modified or partial versions of it) for commercial purposes.