Quote Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger View Post
That is because they were possessions under the law.

Then make it your plowing horse. The type of animal is not really important to the point I was making. Slaves were animals... property... under the law. It's great that the law changed, but punishing those who acted within the old law is in itself illegal.

I feel like I made my point earlier, but I'll take a stab at it from another angle.

The land legally belonged to the owners, not the slaves. Neither morality nor the ability of the slaves to succeed on their own has any real bearing on the situation. In owning slaves, the owners were not violating any laws. Retroactively punishing the owners for acting in a completely legal fashion violates Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.

Not really. While a perfect example of such a situation does not present itself, ex post facto case law suggests that the owners would not be oh the hook for providing for them, which is aligned with the historical outcome.
I don't have a problem with punishing people who were committing horrible injustices even if it was legal all the time, as such a legal protection would be unjust and thus no valid law at all.

Mexico.
Could you actually elaborate for those of us who don't know Mexican history very much? Was there a situation in Mexico where freed slaves were given the land they worked as recompense for being held as slaves?