Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh guy. Come on man. You don't negotiate with terrorists. Maybe I should just ask you to get a better idea of how you're thinking about this whole thing, do you think we should have paid the British?
> You don't negotiate with terrorists. So you think the slaveowners were terrorists? You think the British in Colonial times were terrorists? On what basis? > do you think we should have paid the British? I answered this in another part of this subthread: yes, if the British would have accepted payment in exchange for our independence, and we could have afforded the payment, we should have paid them.
Uh... on the basis of them beating, torturing and even killing slaves maybe? Or again, are we not counting any terrorism against slaves?
I mean, what would you call slavery but terrorism? Violence to achieve and maintain a political objective. What is war but terrorism really? When you're dealing with a terrorist, you use their tactics and prove to them you're willing to go further.
But coming to the central point, I think it's clear we just disagree fundamentally about when it's appropriate to use treasury to pay settlements. Paying terrorists or bullies is completely inappropriate. Paying someone you may have wronged inadvertently, or paying for land, is more appropriate. So paying, say, France for Louisiana, or Russia for Alaska, is entirely appropriate. It's just making an offer for a piece of land that's not ours. We don't own it. We don't farm it. We weren't the people making that land valuable. But we wanted to move there so we could do so. An offer of purchase is appropriate under those circumstances.
But paying southerners to free slaves, is tantamount to paying a kidnapper to release their hostages. If you're smart, you just don't do that. The only thing it does is embolden other kidnappers.
And paying someone for land you live on, you farm, and you make valuable, but they take the profit off of it with no input from you at all? Yeah, that's not even something you should consider doing. Just as you shouldn't pay mafia "protection" fees. It's just asking for more trouble down the line.
But you and I just think differently about these things. No worries. I just firmly believe if you tried to do things your way, you would find in very short order that the world is not unicorns and rainbows. There are significant dangers to doing business with bad actors.