40 Acres and a Mule

So once again there is discussion of reparations going on in the US government. I don't have a dog in the fight because my parents came to the US after 1965. No slavery. No Jim Crow. No violation of voting rights. None of that. I have not been injured therefore I "deserve" nothing. Everything I can do now is because of those African-Americans who put their lives on the line and I respect and appreciate that. That said, I'll throw in a few cents on the subject.

One of the thorny issues with the current calls for reparations is that it makes claims against people who had no hand in "the crime". Generally under US law, you cannot hold the descendant of a criminal liable for what his ancestor did. Even if it is his father. If that were not the case a lot of people would be in legal jeopardy for things they know nothing about. Breaking this rule shouldn't be taken lightly at all.

Secondly, it is improper to compare to Jewish or Japanese internment reparations because in both those cases, the damaged parties were still alive and in cases where they are not, researched claims showing direct connections were established. In the case of reparation for African-Americans, the claim is that blacks as a class have been "injured" and that whites as a class are the responsible party, regardless of actual evidence of either injury or participation in an specific event.

This line of thinking also involves an implicit (and sometimes explicit) claim that blacks as a group would be in a different social and economic situation had x,y or z not happened and whites as a group would be in a different social and economic situation. That's a pretty hard thing to prove. Of course legislation doesn't require proof. But what about actual damaged parties? Let's take a look.

It should be noted that the idea of reparations was not foreign to the US government. The Freedman's Bureau was created as a means of helping formerly enslaved Africans. Then we have the infamous 40 acres and a mule rumor.

According to a letter Sherman wrote a year later, Secretary Stanton concluded that if given land, the freed slaves could "take care of themselves." And as land belonging to those who rose up in rebellion against the federal government had already been declared "abandoned" by an act of Congress, there was land to distribute...

Following the meeting, Sherman drafted an order, which was officially designated as Special Field Orders, No. 15. In the document, dated January 16, 1865, Sherman ordered that the abandoned rice plantations from the sea to 30 miles inland would be "reserved and set apart for the settlement" of the freed slaves in the region.

According to Sherman's order, "each family shall have a plot of not more than 40 acres of tillable ground." At the time, it was generally accepted that 40 acres of land was the optimal size for a family farm.

General Rufus Saxton was put in charge of administering the land along the Georgia coast. While Sherman's order stated "each family shall have a plot of not more than 40 acres of tillable ground," there was no specific mention of farm animals.

General Saxton, however, did apparently provide surplus U.S. Army mules to some of the families granted land under Sherman's order.

It's important to note that this field order was for Georgia. I'm going to skip a few lines to get to this part:

It has been estimated that approximately 40,000 former slaves received grants of land under Sherman's order. But the land was taken away from them.

So 40,000 formerly enslaved Africans received at least 40 acres of Ga land which was later take away from them by the government. Why did the government take this land "back"?

Andrew Johnson became president following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. And Johnson, on May 28, 1865, issued a proclamation of pardon and amnesty to citizens in the South who would take an oath of allegiance.

As part of the pardon process, lands confiscated during the war would be returned to white landowners. So while the Radical Republicans had fully intended for there to be a massive redistribution of land from former slave owners to former slaves under Reconstruction, Johnson's policy effectively thwarted that.

I've often mentioned to people that the Civil War wasn't about slavery but about preserving the Union. Had the confederate states not decided to break away (as they apparently had the right to, but that's another discussion) and kept hammering away in congress over the issues that they had with the northern states (all of whom benefited from southern slavery produced materials, along with their own slave populations that were NOT freed in the Emancipation Proclamation), then there would have been no Civil War. Johnson, like Lincoln wanted the Union and slavery was a means to threaten the rebellious states. Hence it should not be surprising that in order to preserve the Union, Johnson would throw a few Africans under the bus...cart...plow.

So returning to this 40,000 people with 40 Acres of Georgia land we should ask what would that land value be today had:

1) They had not been tossed off of it.
2) The laws of the land were not corrupted to disenfranchise them?
According to MSN Money the current average value of land in Georgia is:

So $14,242/acre x 40 =$569,680 per person. Multiplied out by 40,000 it equals:
$22,787,200,000

Yes, that's 22 billion dollars.

Now that's average. Clearly the specific plot of land could be of a higher or lower value. But that can be found out and dealt with.

So I think that any honest discussion of reparations should start with finding the names of the 40,000 people granted land by Sherman. Finding their descendants and paying them out $570k each.

Some could argue that not all those families would have kept the land or whatever. That isn't relevant. All over the country there are wrongful death lawsuits in which the families are able to claim "lost wages" and the like, even though there is no way to know whether such wages would have ever appeared. It is based on what they had at the time of the event. Here the event was reneging on a land grant.

I think this also shows an example of how reparations can be dealt with legally without the whole holding a class of people who had no direct or even indirect part in slavery (and I'm not even getting into Jim Crow). Find cases where the rights, privileges and immunities (as laid out in the 14th Amendment) of black person(s) were infringed upon by the Feds and repair each and every case. Where the Fed is not the culprit, then the state or municipality should be held to account so long as the evidence is there.