Compensated Emancipation
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Compensated emancipation was a method of ending slavery in countries where slavery was legal. This involved the person who was recognized as the owner of a slave being paid for releasing the slave. This typically was part of an act that outlawed slavery outright or established a scheme whereby slavery would eventually be phased out.
Nearly all countries that eliminated slavery did so through some form of compensated emancipation. The only country that did not end slavery through compensated emancipation was the United States of America. In the US slavery ended after the war to prevent the secession of southern US states.
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[edit] Why the United States was different
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The war against the Confederate States of America originally began as a war over tariffs and their disproportionally higher collection in southern states than in northern states. Feeling this was unjust, the states that eventually formed the Confederate States of America seceded from the United States of America. This resulted in Lincoln's northern invasion of the Confederacy to retain them as part of a more centralized nation state. This war that originally began as an effort to restore the previous national boundaries and regain the tarriff revenue from foreign goods imported to the southern states was given the additional slavery issue. Slavery being legal in the Confederate States, Lincoln used the symbolic Emancipation Proclamation to add the issue of slavery to his war effort midway through the war. Slavery was not outlawed by the US Constitution until years later after the war ended and Reconstruction began.
[edit] Nations and empires that ended slavery peacefully through compensated emancipation
- Argentina
- Bolivia
- British Empire
- Chile
- Colombia
- Danish colonies
- Ecuador
- French colonies
- Mexico and Central America
- Peru
- Spanish Empire
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
[edit] US congressional joint Resolution on Compensated Emancipation
April 10, 1862
Joint Resolution declaring that the United States ought to cooperate with, affording pecuniary Aid to any State which may adopt the gradual Abolishment of Slavery.
Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the United States ought to cooperate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.
APPROVED, April 10, 1862.
