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Even though the bloodiest war in American history ended
nearly 137 years ago with the abolition of slavery, the
peculiar institution
just won't go away. Last week,
a suit was filed in federal court against three companies,
seeking reparations on behalf of 35 million descendants of
slaves who were imported into the United States.
The three defendants are Aetna insurance, FleetBoston financial services and the CSX railroad, and more will likely be named if the litigation proceeds.
Now, I haven't seen the filing, but I've seen other arguments along this line, and they go like this:
Aetna, or some company that became part of the present Aetna, used to insure slaves as property, just as it would insure a house. Presumably, Aetna made money on these polices (if it hadn't, there wouldn't be an Aetna to sue), and so it profited from slavery.
Likewise, some bank in FleetBoston's corporate family tree might have used slaves as collateral on profitable loans long ago, and some antebellum southern railroad, whose trackage is now part of the gigantic CSX system, made money by hauling slaves and the produce of slaves.
Nowadays, there's widespread agreement that slavery is
abhorrent and immoral, but that wasn't the case in America
before the Civil War. It was quite legal in many states,
and those who turned to the Bible for moral guidance found
verses like Exhort servants to be obedient to their own
masters
or Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids,
which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are
round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and
bondmaids,
rather than Thou shalt not keep
slaves
or Any among ye that shall buy and sell
bondmen and bondmaids, he shall be stoned unto
death.
Slavery and its products were integral to American commerce then, and not just in states where human beings were bought and sold. New York City, for instance, was in a state that had abolished slavery by 1804, but it handled most of the banking and export paperwork for American cotton, and as that trade grew, so did Wall Street. Even if there were no slaves inside the city limits, New York was built on slavery just as much as Charleston or New Orleans.
Further, slavery didn't affect just a few cities or
states or companies. Some historians argue that the Civil
War was really about state's rights,
not
slavery.
But when northern border states exercised their
state's rights
by passing personal liberty
laws
which hindered the recovery of runaway slaves, the
South demanded, and got, a stronger Fugitive Slave Act
which put slave hunters under the protection of federal
marshals and made it a federal crime to interfere with
them.
Thus if you were an American citizen of a free state in
1855, you were under a legal obligation to help return
slaves, no matter how much you might personally detest
slavery. Quakers went to prison rather than be law-abiding
citizens, and the first secession movements in the United
States were not in the South, but in abolitionist New
England, where the U.S. Constitution was denounced as a
covenant with death and an agreement with hell
and
publicly burned.
Nor is slavery remote to Colorado's history. Some of our state was part of the Louisiana Purchase -- Napoleon wanted to sell because he didn't have enough troops to keep his American holdings after losing thousands of soldiers in a futile attempt to quash the slave revolt in Haiti. Other portions were acquired in the Mexican War of 1846-48 -- widely denounced at the time as a slaveholders' conspiracy effort to extend bondage into areas where it had been outlawed. For that matter, the Utes bought and sold slaves.
Slavery infected just about every pore during our
nation's formative years. Abraham Lincoln knew that, and
refused to blame any single entity in his second inaugural
address: If we shall suppose that American slavery is
one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must
needs come, but which, having continued through His
appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives
to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offense came ...
Given all that, it would be easier to build a political case for reparations than a legal case against some modern company which happened to be around, in some form or another, before 1865. Slavery was legal then, and if the companies were operating in accordance with the law of the time -- a time when people were jailed for acting against slavery -- it hardly seems right to penalize their current stockholders.
But this litigation inspires some thought. What sorts of things do we routinely practice or tolerate today that might be seen a century or more hence as reprehensible in the same way that we view slavery today? Abortion? Our treatment of animals? Products from China? Importing oil from despots? Capital punishment? Our penal system in general?
I have no crystal ball, but it's troubling to think about, and maybe that's my biggest problem with the reparations lawsuit -- it brings up things I'd prefer not to think about.
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