Double take: Abolition and the size of transferred property rights*

Abstract

Objective: Abolition is sometimes portrayed as a taking of property rights from former masters. If we consider freedom as the baseline, slavery could instead represent a taking of property rights from slaves. To gauge pecuniary losses to slaves, I estimate foregone wages to former U.S. slaves alive at the time of emancipation. Method: I use slave hire rates and values from colonial times to the 1860s to calculate lost compensation to former slaves. Results: Estimated pecuniary losses to former slaves at the time of their emancipation are nearly $7 billion in 1860 dollars, or about $200 billion in today's dollars. Conclusions: Today's calls for reparations to U.S. blacks appeal to a sense of justice but encounter legal problems because potential plaintiffs cannot show direct harm from slavery. Former slaves, however, arguably possessed legal standing at the time of emancipation to request reimbursement for past wages. Because our nation failed to compensate newly freed persons for lost wages, they and their descendants have suffered a financial disadvantage for generations. KEYWORDS abolition, pecuniary losses to slaves, property rights, reparationsAbolition transferred property rights from former masters to former slaves. This regime change generates two mirror-image questions: How much did ex-slaveowners lose after the government terminated their property rights? And how much did newly freed individuals lose before the government restored their right to self-ownership? Scholars have written extensively about the former-often in the context of whether the Civil War was cost-justified-with lost property value estimated at about $3 billion in 1860 dollars (Ransom and Sutch 1988;Goldin 1973). Yet, if one considers freedom rather than slavery as the reference point, the losses to those emancipated is far more relevant. The research presented here suggests that this number is between $6 and $7 billion in 1860 dollars.Current calls for reparations to black Americans base arguments on uncompensated slave labor, at least in part. These requests have merit and appeal to a sense of justice, but they encounter problems when it comes to plaintiffs' legal standing-no one living today suffered direct losses from slavery. Yet former slaves alive in the mid-1860s would have faced no such difficulty with standing. Much as plaintiffs in