The federal government paid enslavers to free fewer than 3,200 people in DC.

Evidence

President Lincoln signed the DC Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862, freeing all enslaved people residing there. The act included a financial provision that set aside 1 million (30 million today) for compensation—to be paid to the enslavers, not to the enslaved—in exchange for their loyalty to the Union, among other things. The bill also provided additional money to assist the newly freed black Americans to leave the country. Ultimately, the Compensated Emancipation Act freed roughly 3,100 people and cost the federal government 993,406.35, just shy of the allocated 1 million. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 74

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reparations-as-accounting frame — the federal government already chose sides by compensating enslavers; a decisive precedent for Brown’s argument that compensation went the wrong way.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: are there surviving records of the names, amounts, and petition processes of DC enslavers who filed for compensation, and did any later become Confederate sympathizers?