Activist Clergy Members in Boston Want $15 Billion in Slavery Reparations From ‘White Churches’
“We call sincerely and with a heart filled with faith and Christian love for our White churches to join us and not be silent around this issue of racism and slavery and commit to reparations”
A group of clergy members in Boston are seeking $15 billion in slavery reparations and want ‘white churches’ to cough up the cash. It’s not clear which faith qualifies as the white church, but that’s the language they use, as you’ll see in the video below.
FOX News reports:
Boston activists seeking $15B in reparations, call on ‘White churches’ to commit to extending wealth
The Boston Task Force on Reparations called on “White churches” to step up and pay the Black community back for racial inequities that root back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to reports.
The Boston Globe reported that Black and White clergy members met in Roxbury for a press conference intended to be held outside, though it was instead held in the basement of the Resurrection Lutheran Church on Saturday because of rain.
The commission was established through a 2022 Boston City Council ordinance and made up of 10 members, including two from the youth community.
In February, the Boston activists called for the city to “fully commit to writing checks” and for a $15 billion payout since the city’s wealth was built on slavery.
“We call sincerely and with a heart filled with faith and Christian love for our White churches to join us and not be silent around this issue of racism and slavery and commit to reparations,” Rev. Kevin Peterson said.
Watch the video report from CBS News in Boston below:
Slavery was ended in Massachusetts in phases, but most historians agree it was ended completely by the late 1700s, long before it was abolished throughout the nation.
Why are these activists going after churches for the money? I have a working theory about that. I assume it’s because they know that the state and the city of Boston are spending every spare penny on illegal border crossers. There is simply no money for reparations, so they’re hoping they can get it from other churches.
And when I say there’s no money left, I mean there’s no money left.
The Boston Herald reports:
Massachusetts spending $75 million a month on shelters, cash could run out in April without infusion
Massachusetts is spending about $75 million each month on state-run shelters, a massive jump in expenses that comes as Gov. Maura Healey’s administration is expected to run out of cash for emergency services in early to mid-April without another financial infusion.
Beacon Hill lawmakers have spent most of the new year putting together a plan to pay soaring shelter bills just as state revenues have consistently come in below expectations, Washington has offered no help, and demand on services continues to persist at historic levels.
With cash likely running out ahead of an April time window, the Legislature is now locked in negotiations over a new spending plan that could allow Healey to access dollars at a critical moment. Top budget writers say they are confident they can find a compromise before time runs out.
House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz said he understands the need to produce a deal on a spending bill “as quickly as possible.”
The people who are calling for reparations can thank the Democrats they keep in power for this.
Imagine being a Catholic in Boston who is descended from Irish people who came to America with nothing after slavery was abolished and now being told that your church is on the hook for reparations. Does that make any sense?
Featured image via YouTube.
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Black has had several years of really bad branding now.
I guess they can’t get money like everyone else. They have to demand it from white people. Perhaps they need to travel south where the slaves were kept. I don’t recall slaves being in Mass of Two Shits.
There were thousands of “slaves” in Massachusetts, but they were mostly white “bond servants” who could work off their slavery and eventually become free. I wonder if that makes the Irish qualify for reparations.
Don’t leave out those who are descended from Scottish Prisoners of War who were sold as indentured slaves in Massachusetts and other colonies following their defeat at Dunbar and Worcester.
Black grifters need to travel south all the way to Africa. The truth is that most slave were literally morons. They needed and greatly benefited from generational care. Are American blacks better off today than they would have been left in Africa,
I am not saying slavery was a cake walk. I am saying that they did benefit from in a multitude of ways that they refuse to acknowledge. Roman slaves also benefited.
Another thing, I am a quarter native American, there are still people in my family who fail to thrive. Slaves were valuable property; they were fed well. Natives were viewed as worthless and systematically exterminated.
My attitude was to learn as I could and to strive to succeed, there was no point in wallowing. Some of my relatives have spent their whole lives wallowing.
per the article, not since prior to 1700. So, HOW ya gonna decide who gets and who don’t? Will they require everyone holding tht black hand out for another load show their personal family tree going back to before 1700? No? Of COURSE not. NONE of those folks know their family history back that far. My bet is most of their ancestors came in well after 1700,because the slave trade was minimal until well after our Independance.
this is SUCH a load of rown stuff. Any “white” church that would pay into this madness needs to be turned upside down by their memebers. If a man can’t figure out how to make a living by the time he’s forty or so in this society he’s probbly condemned to a fetime of grifting anyway.
Further, why do not these schemers take into account the $Bns expended on many of their intended “beneficiaries” (recipients of this free money) through all the welfare programmes that hve been feeding. clothing. housing, “educating” these folks for generations now? Millions hve been freeloading and grifting off he main population for a century now, and they now want MORE? GROW UP. MAN UP.
The bible declares (God speaking here…) “if a man WILL NOT WORK, then DO NOT FEED him. Let him eat the fruit (or lack thereof) of his own hands. Now if a man is UNABLE to work, as in injured, disabled, etc, that’s another story, not covered by this statement.
If anyone owes reparations it’s the Democratic Party. It fought to keep blacks in chains and fought to keep blacks oppressed with Jim Crowe for hundreds of years. Now they refuse to accept responsibility for their past and want everyone else to pay.
“We call sincerely and with a heart filled with faith and Christian love for our White churches to join us [and pay up – like pronto]”
Take it away, Sam Cooke,
Griftin’ the night away,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTArYTvpLZA
This is the essence of the Cain story here. Resentment and Envy.
I’m old enough to remember when envy was a sin instead of a sacrament.
“Does that make any sense?” It makes perfect sense under The Gospel of Victimhood, a basic tenet
” but most historians agree it was ended completely by the late 1700s, long before it was abolished throughout the nation.” Just not quick enough to avoid paying the Danegeld. The irony of this is Boston and its suburbs never grew cotton, rice or sugar cane.
But day shure doo grow dem some grifters. But like most reparations whiners, day be slow on the uptake.
As a maritime city they focused on supplying the ships and to some degree the financing of the transatlantic slave trading ventures. Lets not get into the whole BS argument that Northern States were pure, virtuous and played no part in slavery merely b/c they ‘only’ supplied much of the transportation and financing of the slave trade. Nor should we forget that a not insubstantial portion of those crops you mentioned were bought by merchants in Northern States.
” Lets not get into the whole BS argument that Northern States were pure…” I agree. But those Northern States sho’ nuff looked down on us backward po’ white trash Southerners for a lot of generations. Kind of like the school bussing thing in the ’70s. It was okay when it was Charlotte and Birmingham and Memphis etc. But when it came to Northern cities…whoa now! No No not us, it’s those people ‘down there’.
Yep. There’s a good deal of wilful historical blindness in the North East as if everything to do with slavery was confined to the South and the other States had zero to with any of it.
I remember the school bussing thing in the 60’s, and how it did little for black children, the reason being piss poor parenting, but it did greatly degrade school quality for those who wanted to learn. I remember walking a bit over a mile to school because getting on the bus meant loss of my lunch and any money or worse.
https://youtu.be/IeuaTpH6Ck0?si=syiqo9tWnQMu2Zhp
The triangle of slaves, sugar and rum ended with the Revolutionary War,
Did it?
Slavery, rum production, and sugar cane production weren’t addressed by either the declaration or the initial constitution.
If I recall the musical 1776 didn’t make it seem so, they had a whole production number covering the subject and the failure of the founders to address the immorality of it.
No edit function, so let me add here cotton production only later became a major slave-dependent business in the Americas, without Eli Whitney’s invention cotton wasn’t nearly as profitable a cash crop.
I love the musical 1776. Which made it very clear that keeping the 13 colonies together as a unit would only be possible if the subject of slavery was not addressed. The musical number you refer to was the effort by the southern delegates to shame the northerners trying to outlaw slavery in their newly created country.
Ok lets accept that for the moment despite it being a bit disingenuous argument.
Does that mean that importation of slaves in ships owned by Northern investors stopped in 1783? Nope.
Did Northern Mariners and independent ship owners suddenly refuse to transport slaves or products produced by slave labor? Nope
Does that mean Northern manufacturers didn’t buy agricultural goods largely produced by slave labor for refinement, manufacturing and resale? Nope.
Does that mean Northern financiers both individual and Institutional stopped underwriting or investing in the purchase or transport of slaves? Nope
The slave trade continued unabated until 1808. In fact it probably increased in those years, since the traders knew they had to get as many slaves in under the wire as they could, because after 1808 there would be no more.
The irony is that in the 1700s initial American slaves were white indentured servants – many Irish. Slavery, in its many forms, wasn’t an American invention or unknown on any continent except Antarctica. And I notice no one is asking the descendants of the African and Arab slave traders who captured and sold slaves to white slave traders to pay up – without the first providing product to the second there would have been very few slaves imported to the Americas.
Boston and it’s suburbs traded with the British Caribbean plantation owners – who DID depend on slave labour to produce their crops.
A deeper irony is that between 1801 and 1815 the US fought the Barbary Wars to defeat North African (Black) pirates and slavers.
The Barbary slave trade involved the capture and selling of (White) European slaves at slave markets in the Barbary states. European slaves were captured by African Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, estimates that slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli enslaved 1 million to 1.25 million Europeans in North Africa, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th century.
On the other hand, less than 400,000 Black slaves were shipped from Africa to North America.
So how about the Africans pay up first? Then we can talk about divvying up the money by race. And blacks can prepare to tell other blacks that they don’t rate the cash because they emigrated after slavery ended. Good luck with that.
I do believe that Constitutionally, Blood Debt/Blood Corruption is not permissable. “Reparations” should not be a thing – not individually, and by extension, not as a group.
Not entirely. Article 3, Section 3:
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
It only applies to treason here. It’s not otherwise addressed.
Individually “reparations” can be appropriate, I’m thinking at the least of wrongly convicted prisoners who lost years or decades of freedom.
But I’d agree that reparations usually are not inheritances, just as sin or criminal liability is not inheritable. Any argument otherwise resembles the “Christian” defense of slavery as inheritable (children of slaves also being slaves) and moral (blacks supposedly are “children of Cain”).
No corruption of the blood is necessary to demand reparations from:
1. Corporations that owned slaves and that still exist.
2. The estates of those who owned slaves and that still hold assets, or assets that can be specifically identified as having been part of such estates, and that are still held by the slave owner’s heirs.
That doesn’t mean the demand is justified, just that it can be, and that the attainder clause would not be a barrier.
1. Corporations that owned slaves and that still exist.
The letter demanding reparations does not claim that churches owned slaves. The claim is that clergy and parishoners who belonged to churches owned slaves. Churches named in the letter were King’s Chapel, Arlington Street Church, Trinity Church, and Old South Church. These churches were built in the 1600s and 1700s, and hundreds of slaves were owned by clergy and parishioners.
I don’t know the value of the assets of these four churches but I doubt is in the neighborhood of 15 billion dollars. I suspect that any reparations would have to come from the pockets of current church members.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: if you have never been a slave, you aren’t entitled to reparations for slavery, and if you’ve never owned a slave, you don’t owe anyone reparations for slavery.
Addendum: Stop stirring the hate and get a job doing something productive instead of parasitic and destructive.
But, but, but day’s be Revrends! Days men of Gawd! Who gonna be da replacement for when Da Revvvvrend Al SharpTongue gonna retire?
How about 40 acres of land from the Bureau of Land Management and the present value of a mule circa 1865? Go have fun turning it into a homestead. Gonna be plenty of hands to help b/c it would be split between the descendants of documented freed slaves so after this many generations since.. that’s not gonna take long to get into good shape with all the many sets of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins all the uncles and aunts and so on.
I wanna know how much reparations I get because my grandfather, 5 generations ago, fought as a Union Soldier during the Civil War and lost his life.
I’m sure someone has an answer for you according to whatever scheme they laid out to get their own grift.
Ah, but what is the answer going to be to blacks who arrived in the US in say the last 4 decades when they put their hands out for the cash?
Well since I specified that this proposed grant would be limited to ‘descendants of documented freed slaves’ if they can’t prove they belong in that category the answer is a big fat ‘Nope, you are ineligible, who’s next in line?’
How much do you get from me since my ancestors five generations ago fought for the Confederacy? Ummm … let me get back with you on that.
.
Yeah. But the North and the South became friends again, until BLM, Biden, and the Race baiters decide that Confederate statues and monuments had to come down, as well as the renaming of Rucker, Gordon, Bragg, Benning and lots of others had to be done.
Most quick reading draws a careful distinction between the slavery of Blacks and the ‘Indentured Servitude’ of Irish in “America” (as opposed to the United States which came later). However a little research shows that “Slavery by any other name is still Slavery.”
Essentially promises made were not promises kept and many Indentured Servants were de facto slaves.
Here’s some reading on this subject.
https://journals.openedition.org/mimmoc/2777?lang=en
Starting Afresh : Freedom Dues vs Reality in 17th Century Chesapeake
There are millions of slaves around the world today, and many thousands of those slaves here in the good ole USA. When are they gonna be set free?
Time to cancel Boston Task Force on Reparations for toxic anti-white rhetoric.
Task force is such a fraud. There will be no reparations.
sincerely and with a heart filled with faith and Christian love
Bullcarp. You’re not sincere at all, and your heart is filled with avarice and hatred. Repent!
And the freak show passing the plate just rolls on. This is hilarious.
Dear Reverend’s:
Sit down and shut up..
-signed-
White Folks
Actually…
-signed-
Christians
Christian White Folks
Hey, this is an important point.
ALL Christian churches are “white churches.” If blacks joined them, that’s just their cultural appropriation, which we were previously polite enough not to complain about.
Black churches are things like Santeria and Voudoun. They need to put their hands out to people just like this.Reverend.
Ummmm, no. That is wholly and entirely wrong and against the written Word of God.
Well then if you want to take that tack, then NO Christian churches are “white churches,” and the same argument applies. It’s a poor argument if it won’t cut both ways!
Aw, come on Big Bear. I don’t see anything wrong with innocent people paying non-victims for alleged crimes.
Hey, it works for Letitia!
NYC city is doing something similar as we speak, issuing debit cards paid for by the taxpayer to illegal aliens.
Send them a pack of Kools and a 6 pack of Colt 45. There, we’re even.
Mad Dog 20/20 or Thunderbird
the basement of the Resurrection Lutheran Church
Note this is an ELCA church. They are progressive, not Lutheran, no matter the name on the church or the denomination. Their scripture is not authoritative nor is their worship of the Triune God. They deny Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, and Sola Fide.
pay the Black community back
And how many of those people in the “Black community” are even descended from any “Black comminuty” that existed in Boston at the time? (Probably somewhere in the single digits, percentage-wise, I’m guessing.)
Because, see, you don’t get to demand satisfaction for this thing that was hundreds of years and tens of generations ago. Sorry, but the statute of limitations has run out, your greed is apparent, and if you couldn’t make it in 324 years, then maybe the problem really is you and not some distant ancestors’ “oppression.”
Meanwhile NYC black mayor adams is handing out free debit cards to illegal aliens.
Blacks being forced to the back of the waiting line behind illegal aliens in leftie cities. Nothing left in the budget for legal black americans. Sorry not sorry.
It’s really fun watching the blacks and the black community come to the realization that they’re no longer the favored minority of the democrat party and that all the gibs me is now going to the illegals that are flooding across our southern border.
I wonder:
–how did they arrive at the figure of $15 billion?
–what do they plan to do with the $15 billion?
They had judge Erdogan come up with a figure.
“what do they plan to do with the $15 billion?”
The answer is simple … nothing beneficial. For decades we’ve thrown money at black communities and causes … changed laws to give them a leg up over other people … given them subsidies and economic programs taylored mostly for them … reduced law enforcement and prosecution to appease them and further enabled criminal behavior … let them run wild in cities with their protests … etc … etc.
We’ve bent our backs over trying to help them. Has it even made a dent?
No … and it won’t.
They shun personal and collective responsibility. Give ’em a buck now and they’ll want five later. They created their own culture … they made their own bed. It’s not up to white people to help blacks … it’s up to blacks to help themselves.
“We point to them in Christian love to publicly atone for the sins of slavery”
How should they atone? Serve one year in jail?
No! We want cash payments.
“So because some people today pray in the same building that was occupied by slave owners a couple hundred years ago, they need to pay up to “atone” for the sins committed by those slave owners? Guilt can now be passed from one group of people to another hundreds of years later based on the history of the building one uses to worship in?” (Christianpost.com)
Request denied,
Vinnie, an Italian wiseguy in Boston, says, “Yeah, some stronz’ once tried to muscle me for ‘reparations.’ Won’t see him no more.”
No, we’ve paid you enough reparations (aka welfare) and pandered to blacks enough to say any debt that we might have owed you has long since been paid off. The White Church doesn’t owe you anything.
blacks owe white people reparations for inventing games in which they can make a lot of money
“We call sincerely and with a heart filled with faith and Christian love for our White churches to join us“
Uh huh. Sounds to me like they are “coveting thy neighbor’s house” among other things, I guess they get to pick and choose which commandments they follow?
Join hands….put yo money in yur hand and leave it in mine yo.
Reparations for what? Never were enslaved and to think about it, all things being equal, if your ancestors were not brought here as slaves, just where in the hell do you think you would be right now,…in some shithole country in West Africa begging for your next meal,…be happy that you are where you are
“just where in the hell do you think you would be right now”
“in some shithole country in West Africa begging for” reparations from UNICEF.
Good luck with that Shaquante’
.
.
.
And what’s with the Kamala Harris wanna-be saying “write the check?”
What bullshit.
I’m surprised you can tie your own shoes without an instruction manual.
It never ceases to amaze me that you can come to these pages and find racism in comments that people make here, but yet you NEVER point out the racism of the people we ridicule.
Why have you not found racism in black people who have never been slaves demanding money from white people who never owned slaves?
You are a hypocrite of monumental proportions.
No it’s really quite easy once you put your mind to it. Ask your daddy to show you how to do it, if you know who he is.
Justice would be comparing what blacks have now vs how much they’d have had if they’d remained in Africa and get blacks to pay whites back the difference.
Pretty soon there is going to be an all out fight for money among all the Democrat ‘groups’. Should be fun to watch them cut ahead of each other.
not fun, tragic
What address is used for the “White Church of Boston?” How many parishioners? Do they have billions of dollars for reparations?
Don’t stress out, just write him one of those giant cardboard checks, sign it “White Church of Boston,” and say, “here ya go, now we even.”
That check is gonna Bounce!
It takes Decades of Grit to Defy expectations.
As the Scriptures quote Jesus: “The poor you will always have with you.”
It was written as He was preparing to be crucified, which I hope these fellow clergy will remember this Friday. Then they need to ask themselves
if it is moral to demand money from fellow church people who likely do not have the money, and spend both time, property, and manpower to meet the needs of the poor.
The first relevant question to this request needs to be: “Who will receive these payments, and will it help those who receive them?”
Sadly, we all know most of that money will never get to all the black people ‘harmed by slavery’, but it will end up in the hands of the same special interests, non-profits, and individuals who push these causes. It will never help those who desperately need help.
It’s another employment program for useless lazy grifters. The cost to administer anything like reparations will eat up most of the money they think they will get, but clearly don’t deserve.
All the ill-gotten mammon in the world isn’t going to solve the problems afflicting black families and communities in the U.S.
Blacks’ problems and ills stem from the ideological shackles that have been placed upon their minds, intellects and values, by their racist and corrupt Dhimmi-crat overseers — shackles that have enslaved them as surely as the iron shackles that were placed upon their forebears’ bodies, also by the Dhimmi-crats.
LOL…as an agnostic I say get fucked!
I guess they forgot about Galatians 3:28
I’m guessing this is expected to be paid directly to black churches where it will then mysteriously disappear because racism.
A group of clergy members in Boston are seeking $15 million in slavery reparations which they will put in their pockets and live happily ever after.
As a white church goer you can kiss my Polish ass.
DTA=Disinclined To Acquiesce
(aka “Hard No”)
To be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t try this tactic years ago. White, progressive “churches” have to be the easiest marks the race-baiting “churches” (as opposed to the orthodox, Bible-believing Black churches) will ever find in their game of racist blackmail, easier even than elite universities and ESG-enslaved corporations. These “churches” have empty pews but real-estate and denomination-backed endowments worth more money than any televangelist snake-oil salesman could ever dream of. My guess is that these race-baiting “churches” get every penny they are seeking, along with an obsequious and nauseating apology on bended knee.
Boy … that’s a good-looking bunch in that picture at the top.
Dirtbags. Their organizations all need to have their tax-exempt status yanked. Any reasonable nation would strip these turds of their citizenship and shoot them over the border out of a cannon.
Booker T. Washinton had these people pegged way back in 1911, even if they are people of God.
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
This is going to cause some people to be upset. I am throwing it out for a theoretical discussion. First, there is the question of exactly how many blacks are owed these reparations according to the black church group? All blacks in the country regardless of when they or their families got here? All the blacks in Massachusetts? All the blacks in Boston? It does not say for sure, so let us say in Boston; keeping in mind that the calculations can be redone with the other parameters.
According to the COMMONWEALTH BEACON, in April 2023 the black population of Greater Boston was 485,000 of all ethnic mixes. That $15 Billion divides out to a hair under $31K apiece. Now think about that.
We live in a country where the laws, the Constitution, and the Social Contract [think Thomas Hobbes] are pretty much ignored. For the record, I have spent most of my working life wearing a badge and seeing things that y’all probably would not want to. I have literally seen someone stabbed to death by someone else for what worked out to 50 cents at the time. After accounting for inflation, it would be a couple of bucks today.
It just strikes me that those kinds of demands, especially if enforced by what is perceived as a less than friendly State, in a less than unified country or society might be considered a trigger for civil and societal violence. And once that trigger is pulled, it cannot be un-pulled. Feel free to discuss it amongst yourselves.
Subotai Bahadur
That is well put. We seem to be back to 1856-57 with black people taking bids. Back then, the Supreme Court was asked to rule if a black man could not be counted as a whole person.
These people are not clergy…Jesus to the Pharisees, “You brood of vipers.”
They can go to Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, Angola and Tanzania and make their case for reparations.
“white” Churches in northern States are the reason slavery was ended in the US.
The movement to abolish it was based entirely on the belief that slavery was un-Christian.
And the Republican Party was founded as a single issue third Party – their issue was the abolition of slavery.
If anything, descendants of slaves owe an enormous debt to the descendants of the families that sacrificed half a million of their sons in the Civil War.
If Democrats had their way, the Confederacy would be an independent nation and, having been founded for the sole purpose of preserving the practice of slavery, would likely still be a slave holding nation to this day.
The writing was on the wall with respect to mechanization of agriculture. The real money in slavery was selling slaves, which is why they were upset that northerners were mostly settling the west and turning them into free states. Then, there would be the international political pressure as trade would be way more valuable for the common man who owned zero slaves. The CSA would probably have ended slavery bloodlessly in the 20th century.
No, if there had been no war and the CSA had been established as an independent slave-holding country, the immediate result would have been to move the terminus of the underground railroad from the Canadian border to the USA-CSA border. All a slave from Virginia would have had to do to make good his escape would have been to make it over the line into Maryland, rather than having to get all the way to Canada.
Within a short time, the northern tier of the confederacy would have been emptied of slaves, and once that happened those states would have turned abolitionist. Meanwhile the underground railroad would have extended itself into the Deep South and those states would have experienced a significant increase in escapes, much as the northern tier had experienced before secession.
Meanwhile, while the Confederacy would probably have legalized the importation of new slaves, the UK and France were busy suppressing the trade, so there wasn’t much of a supply any more.
Also meanwhile, Brazil was already well on its way to abolition; once it abolished slavery in 1888 the CSA would have been under redoubled pressure, both internal and external. So I think slavery would not have lasted into the 20th century, and certainly not into the 21st.
Overall this is a very good analysis of the likely course of history except for a few points. First if there’s no Civil War and the Slave States were allowed to simply form their own independent nation then there’s no deployment of Union Troops to Maryland to effectively hold it hostage. Lincoln came in last in the Maryland race for President getting about 3% of the vote in the election which was won by Breckenridge.
Second to expound on that Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware and Missouri were all Slave.States who did not secede to join the Confederates. While Delaware would likely not have joined if the ‘don’t break the Union’ argument and the ‘don’t fight a nasty Civil War’ arguments were neutralized b/c it was to be an amicable split then Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri likely join the Confederates.
Finally there were two drivers of abolition that are little touched on. One is the damage to the soil and productivity of the land by planting cotton. It really n wears out the ground. Down South we call it ‘played out cotton land’ and about the only thing that grows well are pine trees. The other was an emerging populist movement pitting large landowners who had the bulk of slaves v small farmers who mostly used traditional family labor. IMO, slavery was doomed without western expansion b/c the agricultural practices were destroying the soil and the lack of access to capital to retrain slaves in large numbers to more skilled labor would leave the slave owners with unproductive mouths to feed.
One thing (other than CommoChief’s analysis) that would put a stick in your possible timeline would be the resistance of many Northerners to those escaped slaves.
While abolition was more common in the North, there were a lot of Northerners – including some abolitionists – that didn’t want those runaway slaves among them. Some advocated sending them back to Africa, and others advocated sending them on to other states or to Canada. And many blacks in the North didn’t want them around, either, as the escaped slaves were 1) competition and 2) very unskilled and uncouth. They were from the wrong side of the
tracksLine.The reasons to get the Hell out of Massachusetts grow by the day!
Or any ‘blue’ state/city
The $15B might be worth it if there’s a condition attached: Anyone accepting a check moves to Africa and never comes back.
Sorry, I’m all tapped out. You’re on your own
Here’s a few numbers:
Number of Christian churches in Boston area = 700
Based on black / white population, I estimate that about 30% (200) are Black churches and would be exempt from payments. I would also assume that mosques would be exempt from payments. There are 13 synagogues.
So 700 – 200 + 13 = 513.
$15,000,000,000 / 513 = $29.2 MM per church.
This seems like a reasonable proposal. Just pass the collection basket a second time for a year or two and the problem is taken care of.
Maff is hard.
My retort- I never owned any slaves and you never picked any cotton.
Reparations? The first payments go to the descendants of Union soldiers that died eliminating slavery.
America withdrew from the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. With The Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, both the United States and Great Britain agreed to work towards ending the slave trade.
The US Navy began deploying Squadrons of ships to the Anti-Slave Patrol off the west coast of Africa in 1819 and continued until the start of the Civil War in 1861.
US Revenue Cutters also participated in anti-slavery patrolling. On 29 June 1820, the Dallas captured the 10-gun brig General Ramirez carrying 280 African slaves off of St. Augustine, Florida. On 25 March, the Alabama captured three slave ships. By 1865, revenue cutters had captured numerous slavers and freed nearly 500 slaves.
A very large portion of the US ships which spent 40+ years in the Anti-Slave Patrol were based in Boston. Do descendants of their crews get a pass or do they owe as well?
If things were so intolerably awful in the American South, why is that in 2024
half of America’s descendants of slaves
continue to reside in America’s South?
After the Civil War, these folks could have moved en masse to the West or North.
They might have gone to Mexico or Canada too but they didn’t
Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about this?