Slaves are freed, their erstwhile owners compensated while the former slave receives nothing ... yet how much is freedom worth?

Problem being that freedom, as we understand it, didn't occur for the black American. Regarding Horowitz's ten points, I know he carries the authority of the one-time-leftist-who-has-seen-the-light. But, based on those points, he is either stupid, or intellectually corrupt.

And we know he's not stupid.

Getting back to the issue of compensating slave owners, however, were you a slave suddenly manumitted, would it bother you that said freedom came from someone paying your owner? Ideally you would be no less free.

This gets me to the point about Lincoln (who is, I know, tangential to the main points of your article, the bulk of which I agree with completely). People criticize the Emancipation Proclamation as having freed hardly any slaves, but fail to credit Lincoln with pushing the 13th amendment past Congress. It's passage into law was a sure thing by the time of his murder. Yet I've noted several prominent Medium anti-racist authors claim he had nothing to do with it because it didn't pass until after his death.

Had he survived it seems likely he would have supported General Sherman's order granting land (& granting separation from whites, which was also requested by the freemen who met with Sherman & War Sec Stanton prior to the order). Lincoln's push to colonize freemen might have been an error, but is there an example, in history, of an ethnically distinct people who, after centuries of enslavement, are freed & then integrated successfully into the same society that enslaved them? After all, the Israelites built much of dynastic Egypt, but once Pharaoh said "go" they boogied ... they didn't wait for the bread to rise. They needed a land of their own.

Could that be what Lincoln was thinking?

Anyway, thanks for the article, & especially the ad from Horowitz. It's really enlightening.