The D.C. emancipation act also funded colonization of freed people abroad.
Evidence
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11 “Sec. 11. And be it further enacted, That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, is hereby appropriated, to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent now residing in said District, including those to be liberated by this act, as may desire to emigrate to the Republics of Hayti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine: Provided, The expenditure for this purpose shall not exceed one hundred dollars for each emigrant.” An Act for the Release of Certain Persons held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia, 37th Cong., Sess. 2 (April 16, 1862). — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 682
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SHARE: A concrete statutory detail showing federal funding steered freed Black people toward emigration while enslavers got paid — useful for the reparation case.
- XREF: Directly supports the compensation-to-owners vs. nothing-to-freedpeople asymmetry that is a centerpiece of the reparations accounting argument.
Related
- The 1862 DC emancipation law funded Black emigration abroad (similarity 0.93)
- The federal government paid enslavers to free fewer than 3,200 people in DC. (similarity 0.81)
- The federal government paid enslavers, not the enslaved, to end DC slavery. (similarity 0.80)