[In 1862, more than 900 enslavers living in the nation’s capital
received money compensating them for the immediate emancipation of the
more than 3,000 people they enslaved.]
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HAITI PAID REPARATIONS TO ENSLAVERS. SO DID WASHINGTON, D.C.  
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Gillian Brockell
May 24, 2022
Washington Post
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_ In 1862, more than 900 enslavers living in the nation’s capital
received money compensating them for the immediate emancipation of the
more than 3,000 people they enslaved. _

This abolitionist illustration depicts slavery in Washington, with
the Capitol building in the background, cretit Library of Congress

 

The New York Times published an ambitious series
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week about payments that Haiti, the first nation founded by formerly
enslaved people, was forced to make for decades to the descendants of
the people who had enslaved them.

Those who were previously unaware of “reparations” payments made
to enslavers, and their far-reaching consequences for Haiti, may be
surprised to learn that something like this happened in the United
States, too.

In 1862, more than 900 enslavers living in the nation’s capital
received money compensating them for the immediate emancipation of the
more than 3,000 people they enslaved. The payments — averaging about
$300 per enslaved person, equal to $8,587 in today’s money — came
from the federal budget.

The enslaved people themselves, whose wages had been stolen from them
for their entire lives, received nothing. There was one exception: If
they agreed to leave the country for Liberia or Haiti, then they could
get up to $100.

Lincoln tried to free the enslaved in D.C. years before he succeeded
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It’s the only example in the United States of “compensated
emancipation” — which, again, compensated the enslavers, not the
enslaved — but this was a popular form of emancipation in the
British and Spanish empires.

The D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act preceded President
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation by nine months and was
the culmination of the capital city’s slow walk toward freedom —
one that Lincoln himself had tried to push forward years earlier.

A little history: The capital of the young nation was moved from
Philadelphia to the new District of Columbia, sandwiched between two
slaveholding states, as a result of the Compromise of 1790.
Geographically, it was part of the South, but since it was the seat of
government, it also attracted abolitionists, who called for an end to
slavery in the capital as early as the 1820s
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In 1835, White residents rioted over an alleged plan by an enslaved
man and an abolitionist to incite a rebellion. And in 1848, 77
enslaved Black Washingtonians attempted to escape aboard a ship called
the Pearl, the single largest nonviolent escape attempt in American
history. Unfortunately, weather slowed their escape and they were
recaptured.

Desperate for freedom, 77 enslaved people tried to escape aboard the
Pearl. They almost made it.
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Two years before the escape attempt, about a third of the District had
retroceded, once again becoming part of Virginia. The city of
Alexandria, which was part of the retroceded area, was a significant
port
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the domestic slave trade. Many of the attempted escapees aboard the
Pearl were sent to Alexandria and sold south. Two years later, as part
of the Compromise of 1850, the slave trade was banned in the District,
though slaveholding was still permitted.

In 1849, Lincoln, a little-known congressman, proposed a compensated
emancipation deal
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the District, but it failed. Thirteen years later, with all the
senators and representatives from Confederate states having skipped
town, Congress passed a similar proposal. Lincoln, as president,
signed it into law in April 1862, allowing enslavers in Washington to
receive reparations for the economic loss that freedom for others
caused them.

A list
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recipients of these payments reads like a who’s who of Washington
society. Multiple members of the prominent Carr, Naylor, Throckmorton,
Fenwick and Scott families received payments. The founders of
the Willard Hotel
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Henry Augustus Willard and Joseph Clapp Willard, received $2,430.90
for six enslaved people. William Thomas Carroll, a descendant of a
wealthy Maryland slaveholding family and clerk of the Supreme Court,
received $1,182.60 for three people. Francis Preston Blair Sr., an
adviser to Lincoln, got a payment; so did the Sisters of Visitation of
Georgetown. One person, George W. Young, received nearly $18,000 —
about half a million in today’s dollars — for 69 people he
enslaved.

Some names conspicuously do not appear, because one had to take a
loyalty oath to receive the funds. So, for example, Rose Greenhow
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an important Washington society woman who was also working as a
Confederate spy, doesn’t appear to have gotten a penny.

There are a few payments to people noted as “colored.” This
reflects one of the strange pathways to freedom many African Americans
had carved. People who were born free or became free would often save
up and purchase other family members. Some Black Washingtonians, who
technically held the deeds to family members, may have seen an
opportunity by also applying for compensation. Their payments were
generally smaller than those given to White enslavers; for example, a
Black man named Gabriel Coakley received $1,489.20 for eight people
with the same surname, probably his wife and children.

It is unclear how many, if any, newly freed people took the $100
payment to leave.

A century ago, Mississippi’s Senate voted to send all the state’s
Black people to Africa
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In the end, about $1 million was given to Washington enslavers, the
vast majority of whom were already wealthy. Since there was no income
tax at the time and the federal budget was largely composed of customs
duties, it isn’t really accurate to say this came from taxpayer
dollars, but it certainly came from public money collected to benefit
the nation.

These days, that $1 million given to 966 people would be worth $28.6
million — to say nothing of the wealth produced by investments of
that money over generations. April 16, the day the Compensated
Emancipation Act went into effect, is now celebrated as Emancipation
Day in the District.

The word “compensated” is mysteriously missing.

_Gillian Brockell
[[link removed]] writes for
The Washington Post's history blog, Retropolis. She has worked for The
Post since 2013. As a video editor, she was nominated for an Emmy and
won an NABJ award for producing the commentary series “TL;DR.”
Previously, she was a producer at Federal News Radio and a flight
attendant for JetBlue Airways. Her writing has appeared in
Cosmopolitan, Fodor's Travel and The Washington Post Magazine. Email.
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app.
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* slavery
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* reparations
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* Washington DC
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* Abraham Lincoln
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