Reparations Case Study S.1176

Compelling Policy Question: What, if anything, is owed to those who were enslaved in America?

Key vocabulary:

What is a Pension?

Case Study: S.1176: A BILL for an Act to provide pensions for freedmen released from involuntary servitude, and to afford aid and assistance for certain persons released, that they may be maintained in old age. (excerpts/link to original document pages 39-40)

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled:

Section 1. That all persons released from involuntary servitude, commonly called slaves... shall be and hereby are made pensioners upon the bounty of the United States, and also such persons... (supporting) freedmen who are unable by reason of age or disease to maintain themselves.

Section 2: (see chart below)

Sec. 3. Relations or others who may be charged with the support of aged or infirm persons released from involuntary- servitude... shall be entitled to and receive the monthly- pension awarded to such aged or infirm persons… (as long as) such support is afforded in a humane and becoming manner...

Sec. 7. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after the

first day of January, A. D. 1891.

Historic Context:

Enslaved people first arrived in the American colonies in 1619. Throughout Colonial American history slavery was legal in all 13 colonies. By 1776, 20% of the colonies’ population were enslaved people. America declared independence in 1776. Vermont became the first state to ban slavery in 1777. When the Constitution was signed in 1789, five Northern states had made slavery illegal. However, the Constitution itself had legal protections for slavery, and many businesses in the North profited from slave labor in the South. In 1861 eleven Southern States seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America out of fears the American Government would soon make slavery illegal (see “Cornerstone Speech” by Alexander Stephens).

The secession of those 11 states led to the Civil War. In 1861 & 1862 the U.S. Government passed laws that allowed the U.S. Army to “Confiscate” property (enslaved people) being used to help the Confederate Army, or owned by anyone committing treason. The laws also stated that any runaway slaves would be given shelter by the Army. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves held in areas in rebellion. Finally, in 1865, after the Civil War ended the 13th Amendment is ratified making “involuntary servitude” illegal.

Once the enslaved people were freed, the question for the Federal government became, “what should be done with the freedmen?” Knowing the freedmen would be starting their new lives with little to nothing, many thought the Government should provide them some form of assistance. One of the first attempts to help the freedpeople was Special Field Orders No. 15, issued by Gen. William T. Sherman in January 1865. It promised 40 acres of abandoned and confiscated land in South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida (largely the Sea Islands and coastal lands that had previously belonged to Confederates) to freedpeople. Sherman also decided to loan Army mules to former slaves who settled the land.

But by the end of 1865, thousands of freedpeople were evicted from land that had been distributed to them through Special Field Orders No. 15. President Andrew Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation of May 29, 1865, and his Presidential pardons of former Confederates gave the land back to the former owners.

Two years later, in 1867, House Speaker Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania introduced a bill (H.R. 29) that would have given land to the formerly enslaved people. The policy would have given forty acres to each adult male, whether the head of the family or not, and forty acres to each widow who is the head of a family. This bill never became law.

In the late 19th century, the idea of giving pensions to ex-slaves—similar to pensions for Union veterans—developed. If soldiers who were disabled during the Civil war were paid for their years of service, why shouldn't former slaves who helped build the nation be paid for their years of forced, unpaid labor?

By 1899, only about 21% of the black people living in America had been born into slavery.

Section #1 Guiding Question: Why do some people believe the U.S. Government owes something to those who were enslaved in America?

In the late 1800's, the Chief Clerk of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief , Bounty & Pension Association, T. Starr Murfree wrote "Please Listen to my Plea"

Dear friends, please listen to me

While I attempt to make my plea

For the Negro, because he is a Nation

And mankind is a brotherhood, and that by Creation.

The famous Declaration of Independence was passed without his request

But it entitled him to life, liberty, and pursuits of happiness.

It was the Magna Charter, while daughters of America sang,

And the fathers of the Republic shouted; then, the old Liberty Bell rang.

The Star Spangled Banner was hoisted and commanded to wave.

“Over the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

Notwithstanding all of this, the Negroes were treated rude-

Whipped and made to work, under involuntary servitude.

I have often wondered about that painful sight:

To see men and women worked as slaves in defiance of human right.

They were freed by Lincoln’s Proclamation, that I don’t deny,

Yet some were turned out from homes of plenty to “root, hog or die.”

The universal law provided for them something they failed to get.

And our government has never paid it, so they owe it yet.

It may seem very _______ to you, but please bear in mind,

That those liberated should have been given a compensation of some kind.

From the dark ages of the world, we see that all nations gave

An indemnity of compensation to the emancipated slaves.

Whereas, common custom makes a common law,

Then universal custom makes a universal law;

For it is a poor rule that don’t work but one way,

And a poor Government that will owe a just debt and won’t pay.

Therefore, it is the duty of all public men occupying every station in life.

TO help the old e-slaves in every way possible, and give them good advice.

I appeal to the law-makers of this country to take under consideration,

That no government can continually prosper that suffers injustice to such a large part of its population.

The old ex-slaves have suffered, and they are suffering still,

And praying for the passage of the “Ex-Slave Pension Bill.”

In Walter R. Vaughn's preface to his 1891 book "VAUGHAN'S 'Freedmen's Pension Bill", Vaughn said...

Source: BEING AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF MEN RELEASED FROM SLAVERY. AMERICAN FREEDMEN AND A Rational Proposition to Grant Pensions TO Persons of Color Emancipated From Slavery, 1891 (Excerpts/link to original document pages vii, viii)

Biography: Vaughan was a white Democrat and the ex-mayor of Council Bluffs, Iowa. He came up with the Freedmen's Pension Bill and recruited a Republican member of Congress from Nebraska named W.J. Connell to introduce the bill into Congress.

...I have been moved in the direction of asking the Government to provide pensions for former slaves by a sense of duty which I esteem the Government to owe to (them)... [A]n enslaved black race has been set free after a lifetime of service to masters not of its own choosing.

During the years of Negro servitude colored men, women and children have been (treated as property) and taxed as such for the exclusive benefit of the white race. Courts, schools and benevolent institutions have been established and maintained upon the blood and sweat of the Negro race...

But the freedom of the Negro has not compensated the families... In old age, and many in the throes of poverty, they appeal to the Government that made them free to furnish them a necessary support...

Be just to the blacks of the days of slavery. Their recognition as citizens, worthy of compensation for past errors of the Government, will do more to elevate the fame of a great nation that dares to be just, even at a late hour... The glory of American freedom will be made perfect in the pension of the surviving slaves of the ante-bellum period.

Walter R. Vaughn included "the Capitol Washington, D.C." as the fourth illustration in his 1891 book...

Source: VAUGHAN'S 'Freedmen's Pension Bill." BEING AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF MEN RELEASED FROM SLAVERY. AMERICAN FREEDMEN AND A Rational Proposition to Grant Pensions TO Persons of Color Emancipated From Slavery, 1891

Walter R. Vaughn's first illustration in his book was of a freeman...

Source: Walter R. Vaughn, Illustration #1, VAUGHAN'S 'Freedmen's Pension Bill." BEING AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF MEN RELEASED FROM SLAVERY. AMERICAN FREEDMEN AND A Rational Proposition to Grant Pensions TO Persons of Color Emancipated From Slavery, 1891

Walter R. Vaughn, Illustration #3, VAUGHAN'S 'Freedmen's Pension Bill." BEING AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF MEN RELEASED FROM SLAVERY. AMERICAN FREEDMEN AND A Rational Proposition to Grant Pensions TO Persons of Color Emancipated From Slavery, 1891

Caption: The South furnishing revenue for the Nation with a liberal hand, contributing millions for the pension of Union soldiers at the North, while supporting their old, maimed and decrepit ex-slaves, who has been freed by the Government.

Section #2 Guiding Question: Why do some people oppose the United States Government paying reparations?

In Kansas' Republican Senator Preston B. Plumb's letter to Walter R. Vaughan in 1883, he said...

Excerpts from Senator Plumb's letter to Vaughn:

"I am not quite prepared to agree to the pensioning of able bodied people who are quite capable of making a living - at least until the Government has fully taken care of its disabled soldiers."

"[I]f all governments are to be held responsible for all damages resulting from the passage and execution of laws, the unfortunate tax-payer would be constrained to sell out"

In 1883, John Mercer Langston, Response to

"What we want is the means of obtaining knowledge and useful information which will fit the rising generation for honorable and useful employment"

In 1863, Harper's Weekly magazine published a drawing by Thomas Nast titled "The Emancipation of the Negroes, January 1863 – the Past and the Future–".

What did the policymakers decide to do, and what were the consequences of that decision?

All of the pension bills including Vaughn's bill (S.1176) never made it through Congress. In 1915 an organization filed a class action lawsuit in federal court for a little over $68 million against the U.S. Treasury. The lawsuit claimed that this sum, collected between 1862 and 1868 as a tax on cotton, was due the appellants because the cotton had been produced by them and their ancestors as a result of their "involuntary servitude."

The Johnson v. McAdoo cotton tax lawsuit is the first documented African American reparations litigation in the United States on the federal level. Predictably, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied their claim based on governmental immunity, and the U.S. Supreme Court, on appeal, sided with the lower court decision.

Despite pushes for pensions/reparations for the former enslaved people/their descendants from the late 1800's, all the way to present day, the United States Government still has not agreed to create such a program.