Historical Background of the Slave Reparations Debate

[Tony]

What are the historical arguments for the slave reparations advocates? I know that they like to bring up the fact that each freed slave was promised a mule and an acre of land. Are there more reasons than that?

[The idea]

I don't have an answer, but what do you think about this? Suppose that before emancipation, there had been a referendum on slavery and voters had been secretly watched to see how they voted and those who voted in favor of continuing slavery had been themselves enslaved, with the profit from their work used to pay reparations to the original slaves.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Tony
What are the historical arguments for the slave reparations advocates? I know that they like to bring up the fact that each freed slave was promised a mule and an acre of land. Are there more reasons than that?

Actually, it was 40 acres and a mule. An acre is about the amount that one person with an animal can plough in one day. 40 acres was considered a reasonable amount of land for a single independent farmer.

There was a proposed Federal law to do this. Unfortunately, it didn't pass.

[Giz]

Originally posted by Tony
What are the historical arguments for the slave reparations advocates? I know that they like to bring up the fact that each freed slave was promised a mule and an acre of land. Are there more reasons than that?

It's not just the proposed 40 acres and a mule. There is a claim that much of the USA's economic growth was fuelled by slave labour and that the decendents of those immorally forced to create that wealth (without recompense at the time) should have a cut of its present value.

Personally, I think it's just too far in the past.

[Tony]

Originally posted by epepke
Actually, it was 40 acres and a mule. An acre is about the amount that one person with an animal can plough in one day. 40 acres was considered a reasonable amount of land for a single independent farmer.

There was a proposed Federal law to do this. Unfortunately, it didn't pass.

Can you please provide a source?

[epepke]

Originally posted by Tony
Can you please provide a source?

For which claim? That there was a Federal law? A quick Google turned up this: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/4/40/40_acres_and_a_mule.htm

Apparently, though, I was wrong. Although the first version of the bill was vetoed by Andrew Johnson, altered version did pass, overwhelmingly enough to override Johnson's second veto.

As for the claim that an acre is about the amount that one person could plough with an animal in one day, there's info at the same source: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/a/ac/acre.htm

[Moliere]

Originally posted by Giz
It's not just the proposed 40 acres and a mule. There is a claim that much of the USA's economic growth was fuelled by slave labour and that the decendents of those immorally forced to create that wealth (without recompense at the time) should have a cut of its present value.

Personally, I think it's just too far in the past.

How do we decide who gets the money? Can we reliably trace descendents back 150 years? How much do we give them? The present value of 40 acres in CA or Alaska?

The USA's economic growth was not fuelled by slave labor. The Southern economy wasn't very strong compared to the Northern industrial non-slave economy.

The people who most deserved (and received) reparations were those held in the Japanese internment camps during WWII. Yet another of FDR's sins often glossed over.

[Giz]

Originally posted by Moliere

The USA's economic growth was not fuelled by slave labor. The Southern economy wasn't very strong compared to the Northern industrial non-slave economy.



Note that:

a) I don't actually support the claim.

b) Regarding your above point, Southern cotton production supposedly both fuelled Northern factories directly (as raw materials) and indirectly (by cotton exports to the UK etc providing a favourable balance of trade that enabled capital to flow into the expanding Northern economy).