The state compensated masters for executed slaves to prevent concealment of slave crime
Evidence
In North Carolina, at least as early as 1715, there were special courts for slaves who disobeyed the law. Whipping was the common mode of punishment. Serious crimes called for the death penalty, but when a slave was put to death, the master got back the value of the slave, out of public funds. Slaves, after all, were valuable property, and the law did not want to give the master an incentive to hide or protect slaves who broke the law. For serious crimes, castration was a possible punishment, though this was eliminated in 1764. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 467
A dead slave was a capital loss for his master. This put at least some natural check on the cruelty of masters. It was irrational, economically speaking, to harm a slave. Unfortunately, not everybody is rational. It is irrational to wreck a car, or to beat a wife in a drunken rage, but people do it. A rational master, however, was tempted to hide the crimes of his slaves; if the state hanged a slave, the master lost an asset. To avoid this situation, many states paid off owners of slaves put to death (though not all of them: Georgia did not). — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1378
Categorization
- XREF: Pays off the earlier ch11 claim that states compensated masters for executed slaves to prevent concealment of slave crime — this passage gives the economic rationale for that practice. — connects to: Enslavers had to prove Union loyalty to receive compensation. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 77; The US’s first emancipation-compensation scheme paid enslavers, not the enslaved — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 102
- ADDENDUM: A concrete mechanism of state-priced harm sits adjacent to the sacrifice article: the state assesses a monetary value for a condemned life and pays the owner half — commodified life pricing.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 467; Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1378
Broader Connections
- The US’s first emancipation-compensation scheme paid enslavers, not the enslaved
#expands(0.85) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 102 - Enslavers had to prove Union loyalty to receive compensation.
#expands(0.75) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 77