Reparations Paid To Slave Owners
When I was a teenager my friends and I often revealed others’ well kept secrets and ended the telling of the tale with the slang “as quiet as it’s kept!” As we grew older we learned that societies as well as individuals kept secrets buried out of public view-- out of sight, out of mind for a long, long time.
One of this society’s best kept secrets relates to the issue of reparations for the descendants of American slaves. It has long been assumed that no payments to any one connected to American slavery were ever made and herein lies one of the best kept secrets in America’s closet: government payments not to ex-slaves but to ex-slave owners in a sick kind of reverse reparations.
This usual payment of reparations resulted from issuance of the District of Columbia Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln on April 16, 1862, nine months before he issued the national Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The District’s proclamation freed approximately 3,100 slaves held in the Capitol city and enriched their former owners to the statutory tune of $300 per slave. The payments were supported by President Lincoln as a kind of reward for slave owners who were being forced to do the right thing.
Under the provisions of the D.C. Proclamation the Government paid $1,100,000 to former owners of approximately 3,100 slaves. The Government also offered to pay $100 to each of the ex-slaves who agreed to permanently leave the country and “return” to Africa or Haiti. It set aside $100,000 for such payments, but there were next to no takers of the offer.
In September, 1862 President Lincoln issued the so-called Draft Proclamation, which was a trial balloon alerting the country to what he planned to say in the final proclamation document that he would issue January1, 1863. In this draft proclamation the President proposed the reparations like payments for slave owners in all the states that were in rebellion. The reparations for slave owners did not make it into the final Emancipation Proclamation however, “costing” slave owners across the South a bundle. This made District of Columbia slave owners the only beneficiaries of reverse reparations and they took full advantage of the situation by collecting in full for sure, and possibly collecting in excess of what was designated in the law. Do the math: payments for 3,100 slaves at $300 each come to $930,000, $170,000 less than what was paid out. A reasonable theory about what happened to the extra $170,000 is that the owners were permitted addition payments if they argued for such. That was certainly the case with one of the Capitol City’s most famous slave holders named Clark Mills.
Clark Mills owned and operated the Clark Mills Foundry in the Washington suburbs of Bladensburg. Clark Mills received a government contract to cast Thomas Crawford’s plaster model of the Statue of Freedom in bronze, utilizing his mixed workforce of slaves and free men. In June, 1862 Mills submitted a petition to the District of Columbia Commissioners claiming substantially high values for his eleven slaves than the $300 each allowed by the Proclamation, to wit:
Lettie Howard, age 33 $700
Letties’s six children:
Tilly, age 10 $500
Tora(?), age 8 $500
Ellick, age 6 $400
Jackson, age 5 $250
George, age 3 $150
Emily, age 3 months $ 50
Levi Thomas, age 59, “over 6 feet high” $300
Rachel Thomas, Age 49, “Levi’s wife” $400
Anu (?) Rofe, age 48, ”mullato” $500
Philip Reid, 42, “mullato, good worker in foundry,
has been employed by the government at one dollar
twenty-five cents per day,” $1,500
Philip Reid was the slave who supervised the casting of the Statue of Freedom…..quiet as it’s kept!
Eugene Walton,
Author of “The Biography of Philip Reid”
http://stores.lulu.com/dreugenewalton
When I was a teenager my friends and I often revealed others’ well kept secrets and ended the telling of the tale with the slang “as quiet as it’s kept!” As we grew older we learned that societies as well as individuals kept secrets buried out of public view-- out of sight, out of mind for a long, long time.
One of this society’s best kept secrets relates to the issue of reparations for the descendants of American slaves. It has long been assumed that no payments to any one connected to American slavery were ever made and herein lies one of the best kept secrets in America’s closet: government payments not to ex-slaves but to ex-slave owners in a sick kind of reverse reparations.
This usual payment of reparations resulted from issuance of the District of Columbia Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln on April 16, 1862, nine months before he issued the national Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The District’s proclamation freed approximately 3,100 slaves held in the Capitol city and enriched their former owners to the statutory tune of $300 per slave. The payments were supported by President Lincoln as a kind of reward for slave owners who were being forced to do the right thing.
Under the provisions of the D.C. Proclamation the Government paid $1,100,000 to former owners of approximately 3,100 slaves. The Government also offered to pay $100 to each of the ex-slaves who agreed to permanently leave the country and “return” to Africa or Haiti. It set aside $100,000 for such payments, but there were next to no takers of the offer.
In September, 1862 President Lincoln issued the so-called Draft Proclamation, which was a trial balloon alerting the country to what he planned to say in the final proclamation document that he would issue January1, 1863. In this draft proclamation the President proposed the reparations like payments for slave owners in all the states that were in rebellion. The reparations for slave owners did not make it into the final Emancipation Proclamation however, “costing” slave owners across the South a bundle. This made District of Columbia slave owners the only beneficiaries of reverse reparations and they took full advantage of the situation by collecting in full for sure, and possibly collecting in excess of what was designated in the law. Do the math: payments for 3,100 slaves at $300 each come to $930,000, $170,000 less than what was paid out. A reasonable theory about what happened to the extra $170,000 is that the owners were permitted addition payments if they argued for such. That was certainly the case with one of the Capitol City’s most famous slave holders named Clark Mills.
Clark Mills owned and operated the Clark Mills Foundry in the Washington suburbs of Bladensburg. Clark Mills received a government contract to cast Thomas Crawford’s plaster model of the Statue of Freedom in bronze, utilizing his mixed workforce of slaves and free men. In June, 1862 Mills submitted a petition to the District of Columbia Commissioners claiming substantially high values for his eleven slaves than the $300 each allowed by the Proclamation, to wit:
Lettie Howard, age 33 $700
Letties’s six children:
Tilly, age 10 $500
Tora(?), age 8 $500
Ellick, age 6 $400
Jackson, age 5 $250
George, age 3 $150
Emily, age 3 months $ 50
Levi Thomas, age 59, “over 6 feet high” $300
Rachel Thomas, Age 49, “Levi’s wife” $400
Anu (?) Rofe, age 48, ”mullato” $500
Philip Reid, 42, “mullato, good worker in foundry,
has been employed by the government at one dollar
twenty-five cents per day,” $1,500
Philip Reid was the slave who supervised the casting of the Statue of Freedom…..quiet as it’s kept!
Eugene Walton,
Author of “The Biography of Philip Reid”
http://stores.lulu.com/dreugenewalton
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home