[Paul repeated his claim that Abraham Lincoln should not have started the Civil War to get rid of slavery. "Six-hundred-thousand Americans died in the senseless Civil War," he said. "No, he should not have gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original tenet of the Republic," he told NBC's Tim Russert.

"Slavery was phased out in every other country in the world," Paul continued, responding to the question if America would still have slavery had there not been the Civil War. "The way I'm proposing that it should have been done is do it like the British Empire did -- you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans?"

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/12/23/532376.aspx