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Amanda Laury Kleintop, "Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)
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Ryan Tripp
Welcome, everyone, to New Books in History. I'm your host, Ryan Tripp. We're here today with Assistant professor of History at Elan University, Amanda Kleintop. Professor Kleintop, welcome.
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Amanda Kleintop
Thank you. It's great to be here.
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Ryan Tripp
So we're going to be discussing Professor Kleintop's book, Counting the Cost of Freedom, the Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War, published earlier this year by the University of North Carolina Press. So let's get into it. Great question. How did you come to research and write this book? If you want to address, you know, different 15th or, excuse me, 15th, fifth amendment clauses like the takings clause, Calhoun and Clay, kind of some key players. And then I thought Madison's perspective from the book on this issue was really interesting, so no pun intended. So take it away.
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Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, sure. So I got started on this book, actually, as my dissertation project at Northwestern University ages ago now, and it was a little bit circuitous. After going to undergrad in Richmond, Virginia, I originally thought that I would look at Richmond slave trade during the Civil War. And while discussing that topic in a meeting with my advisor, Kate Mazur, we got kind of sidetracked by the question of, like, well, what were slave buyers purchasing enslaved people like, at the end of the Civil War kind of expecting here? Were they expecting compensation? And then we were like, well, maybe. So I decided to look into that, and once I began to review the literature, I really found some contradictions in how particularly early Denning school era historians of Reconstruction were talking about how former enslavers accepted immediate uncompensated emancipation as it happened. But at the same time, those historians would mention, like, offhand moments where white Southerners totally didn't accept uncompensated emancipation and they asked for it during Reconstruction. At the same time, too, that I was doing my starting my grad work, the new histories of capitalism were growing and coming up, and they were really emphasizing the centrality of slavery to the US's legal and financial systems before the war. So that also kind of raised a question like, why would former enslavers simply have accepted uncompensated emancipation other than perhaps as the outcome of the war? So these questions and contradictions kind of inspired me to dig a little deeper into those moments and the project developed from there. And I guess, yeah, to kind of start talking about those arguments that former enslavers would have been making. I think it's really important to really start with the world that they lived in before the Civil War. Right. Enslavers across the world where emancipation had happened had been reimbursed either directly or indirectly for emancipation. For example, the British emancipation Act of 1833 both paid enslavers directly for. For slavery, essentially, and then also paid them indirectly by forcing freed people to work. Right. For their former enslavers for years. So that was one precedent. You also kind of alluded to some of the US precedents too. Within the US right, Northern states had abolished slavery with free womb laws, which again, kind of indirectly paid enslavers by forcing some of, or rather, sorry, directly paid enslavers. Because, you know, it didn't actually free any enslaved person, it just freed their children. And this was very deliberate on the part of Northern states. Who really didn't know if they could abolish slavery without directly compensating enslavers to do so. And so that kind of legal ambivalence really remains throughout the first half of the 19th century. Pro slavery advocates are going to develop these theories of property rights that would protect legally sanctioned slave trading practices and ensure that their state governments at least aren't able to protect or sorry, are able to protect property rights in people. And they really want the federal government to do that too. Of course, one of these theories was the argument that the fifth Amendment's Takings clause prevented government sponsored emancipation with eminent domain, essentially saying that the government can't take private property without compensating the property holder. So this is a really great example of how politicians would use legal debates for their political ends. And one example here is with Henry Clay. He uses the Takings clause to kind of emphasize the impossibility of emancipation in different contexts. He says emancipation is impossible because it's far too expensive for governments because they'd have to pay for slavery if they abolished it. On the other hand, folks like John C. Calhoun are arguing that governments can't tamper with property rights and people at all because enslavers had a kind of vested rights, vested right to own property and people right. And so this is, this is the argument that kind of even folks like Madison are considering as they're thinking about what is does the Takings clause apply to slavery or not? And there's no real resolution in the antebellum era. There's no court case or policy that's written to actually say yes or no. And that becomes a conversation that the Civil War era politicians have to continue.
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Ryan Tripp
So how did dual categories of loyalty become kind of intertwined with northern Republican consideration of compensated emancipation? And you can address the confiscation acts. I am. If you kind of focus a little bit on Frederick Douglass arguments on the natural rights of former slaves and the D.C. emancipation Act. That would be a great focus for this particular question.
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Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, and I think Frederick Douglass also helps us transition here between the antebellum era and Civil War because he's essential making an argument that abolitionists have been making throughout the antebellum era in response to any kind of debate about compensation. So again, these, as when the war starts, this conversation about compensation is still kind of legally ambiguous, but that kind of use of that the legal debates continues as a political tool. And folks like Frederick Douglass are saying no, like there is no kind of right or claim to compensation to former enslavers, because enslaved people have a natural right to themselves. Right. And this is, I think, a pretty familiar argument to folks who study abolition and slavery in the US this is an argument that revolutionaries are making, too. In the moment that the northern states are abolished, slings are abolishing slavery. But Douglass even says, you know, to compensate enslavers isn't even like a legal requirement of compensation, but instead it's a ransom of a person. And we also see abolitionists in the antebellum era making that argument too, about manumission, such as in the case of Frederick Douglass himself. Right. And so that idea especially fuels abolitionists, more radical Republicans, ideas that maybe loyal enslavers are owed compensation or can have compensation. That is a compromise measure, especially in the beginning of the war, to kind of say, well, we don't want to go to war, and we know that war will cost a lot of money and lives. So fine, like, at least some loyal enslavers might be able to have compensation, but you still have to give up slavery. And this is kind of how loyalty becomes a political tool. Over the course of the war, Republicans are going to build this arguments and legal architecture early on to distinguish between loyal and disloyal enslavers, property rights, and people. And we really see how this culminates in the D.C. emancipation act of 1862, which abolishes slavery in D.C. while compensating enslavers up to $300 for each freed person. So Republicans like Charles Sumner kind of echo Frederick Douglass. They're like, no, this isn't, isn't. This isn't compensation. This is a ransom or even a gratuity that, that the government, the federal government is taking right to avoid turning the DC Emancipation act into a precedent for compensation writ large. And of course, you know, this really angers border state politicians who are still, like, desperately trying to preserve slavery in their states. Like Henry Clay before them, they see compensation as a legal necessity, but they also mobilize the. The cost of emancipation as a reason of why the US can't actually abolish slavery in the border states. So while they're trying to protect their property rights and people, Lincoln is trying to figure out how to destabilize slavery in disloyal states. And he's proposing all sorts of different compromises with the border states and even with former Confederate states, or, excuse me, Confederate States at the time. He, In December of 1862, he proposed an alternative 13th amendment that gives all slave states the option to end slavery with compensation from the federal government. But neither border states nor Confederate states kind of take him up on that. And so he issues the Emancipation Proclamation is kind of how the story usually goes. Most historians argue that the Proclamation is the end of compensated emancipation policies from the US But I'm really saying not so much. Lincoln actually is just turning to other military emancipation policies, especially framed around loyalty. For example, he actually, the War Department and then later Congress under the 1864 Enrollment act, actually promises loyal enslavers up to $300 in compensation for any enslaved man who, who enlists in the U.S. army or up to $100 for any man who is drafted into the U.S. army. So there is still a promise there of compensation. And we see Lincoln continuing to use that as a tool to kind of persuade loyal enslavers to, to support emancipation in at least some way.
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Ryan Tripp
So let's go into the causes. Well, contributing factors to the formation of the Louisiana Free State Party as well as the Committee on the Compensation of Loyal Owners for Slaves emancipated. If you can go into the factors behind that, just a couple of them, you can do the 10% plan or whatever, the enrollment acts. That would be great.
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Amanda Kleintop
Yeah. So these debates, these wartime debates, especially about loyalty and compensation, get a little more complicated when we consider places like Louisiana, which, unlike the border states, did secede. Right. And it begins, unlike other Confederate states, it begins the process of reconstruction relatively early. So the 10% plan is one of Lincoln's kind of reconstruction plans. The idea is that when, when 10% of voters registered in 1860 have taken a loyalty oath, and that loyalty oath actually does say that they will obey the wartime acts of the government regarding emancipation. But when 10% of them of those registered voters have taken that loyalty oath, then the state can re enter the Union by rewriting its state constitution and appointing a new governor. So in that plan, Lincoln is essentially saying, like, you know, you have to, you have to abolish slavery in your state constitution, but it's a little ambiguous about how they have to abolish slavery from the loyalty oath. They are kind of bound at least, or have some kind of guidance to say that they have to accept, like the Emancipation Proclamation. But that doesn't mean that things like compensation aren't off the table, especially in the eyes of many of these Unionists. So the Unionists in Louisiana and the Free State Party there, as well as some of their opponents kind of go into the state Constitutional Convention in the spring of 1864 and they do abolish slavery, but not without a very protracted fight over, you know, whether there will be gradual emancipation, compensated emancipation. And those delegates really want the assurance of not state compensation. They don't think Louisiana should be paying, but they think the federal government should pay because it's the federal government that kind of put them in that situation, as they see it, to have to abolish slavery. So after a lot of debate and like chaos on the convention floor, emancipation really only goes through once. One of the delegates says, okay, fine, like, we'll have a committee to try to get compensation for loyal enslavers. And this really shows a shift in how pro slavery politicians and former enslavers are seeing compensation. So, and I should note too, that many of the folks who are pushing for compensation, at least in the 1860 census, they don't have any. They don't claim ownership over any enslaved people. So this is something, right, that we're seeing not only, not only those with direct financial interests making this argument, but many politicians are also saying this because they see this as a reward, right? They're like, well, we agreed. We, Louisiana, agreed with Lincoln and Lincoln's terms for the end of the war and emancipation. So we should get compensation as a reward for that loyalty and that acquiescence. So they're starting to see this as loyalty and not just as a legal claim based in like, vested rights or eminent domain.
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Amanda Kleintop
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Marshall Poe
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Ryan Tripp
So if you could explain how, you know, the supporters of compensation pursue their cases in state and federal courts that could, I think, facilitate things for the rest of our interview, if you can maybe address. I know Andrew Johnson was involved and then you mentioned, you know, or you alluded to federal state ratification of the 13th Amendment. Just, you know, a brief kind of rundown of the factors for the pursuit of compensation. Of course.
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Amanda Kleintop
Sure. Well, so not only they don't go to court for a lot of reasons, one of those reasons is the war and secession itself. Right. It's. And within our legal system, if you think about it, the former Confederate states had at least like what, 1, 2, 3, 4, like as many as four different governments over the time between secession and throughout Reconstruction. And so that backed up the courts in and of itself. Right. And cases actually then had to go through different systems under different constitutions. Also, there's a question over whether the citizens of seceded states can even go into federal court because this question of secession comes up. And so, yeah, that's where I think Johnson really comes in here. After Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson essentially requires that former Confederate states abolish slavery in new state constitutional conventions. And this works somewhat similar to the 10% plan. But Johnson requires that states both do two things. One, abolish slavery, but in their Constitution, not necessarily with the 13th Amendment, which is on the table at the time in the summer and fall of 1865. But then he also requires that they declare their ordinances of secession kind of null and void. So this really reinforces the idea that the US Owed enslavers compensation because throughout the war, US politicians had debated the status of seceded states. There's like a lot of secession theory on this. I highly recommend Cynthia Nicoletti's work here. But the basic idea is that if secess was legal, then the states had left the Union and the administration of Reconstruction fell to Congress. And the US doesn't have to acknowledge the rights of enslavers to compensation because they're not US Citizens. Right. They left. But if secession wasn't legal, or as Johnson's kind of saying, it never happened, then the states never left. The president can direct Reconstruction and the US Kind of still has to respect a claim to compensation, because those former enslavers are citizens of the US So if they had a vested right, or if they had a right from eminent domain to get compensation, then they can still kind of make that claim to their governments. And this also means that former Confederate states that are reentering the Union have literally every reason to cooperate with Johnson's plan. And so a lot of the conventions that are debating emancipation and abolishing slavery in their state constitution in the summer and fall of 1865, they actually decide not to do anything to compensate enslavers. They're. They're like, well, let's, you know, just abolish slavery in our constitutions, and then we'll go to Congress, and once we're back in Congress, then we'll make that. That move. And they also know, like the Louisiana delegates, that if there's going to be a shot at federal compensation, it has to come through Congress. It can't, obviously, come through the states. So they accept Johnson's terms and they decide that they'll pursue compensation through Congress. Other states, actually, Georgia, notably, if you go into their 1865 constitution, their amendment abolishing slavery actually also has a clause that says, by abolishing slavery, we are not giving up any future right to compensation. So this is very much kind of on their minds, even though they're going along with it for now.
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Ryan Tripp
All right, who are the Potterytes in Mississippi and what was their widows and children compensation tactic?
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Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, so the Potterytes are a relatively conservative group of delegates in the Mississippi State Constitutional Convention in, I believe it's like, late August of 1865. They are. Mississippi is notably one of the first states to have its constitutional convention. And so it knows that everyone is watching, and it knows that what these delegates know, that what they do and what they say, they. They're going to print it. They're. And they're. It's going to be circulated throughout the. The country. So Potter and the Potterites, his kind of followers in Mississippi, they are, I would say, one of the most for sure, conservative, but also vehement vocal groups in favor of compensation. And one way that they push for compensation is by essentially, well, if nobody else gets it, widows and orphans should get compensation. And I kind of argue that this tactic does a few things. It's kind of distracting from a question that many listeners may already have had, which is like, how can people who fight, who fought and lost a war for slavery, like, turn around and ask for compensation? Right. The Potterites are saying, well, widows and orphans, the Kind of Innocence of the War should get that compensation because they are stereotypically politically unpolitical or apolitical. Right. Of course, a lot of women and gender historians have kind of debunked this notion, like Stephanie McCurry, Laura Edwards. Women are absolutely very much involved in Confederate politics, not to mention slavery, as Stephanie A. Jones Rogers reminds of us. But Potterites are kind of pushing this argument because it helps them play up a kind of need and that politics of dependence to try to get other delegates to go along with them on the compensation debate. It's also kind of preserving some of the. Some of the kind of vestiges of slavery in the Southern economy. Right. Women's property laws had been passed in 1830, and Southern families often used them to shelter property in slaves under kind of women's. Under kind of women's ownership. So that if the patriarch and the head of household ever, like, defaulted or went into debt, those enslaved people could not be collected as collateral from the whole household because they were those, the, you know, the woman's property or even children, too. And so this is something then that, you know, many, many delegates would have seen as totally logical then, that widows and perhaps orphans should get that compensation. This is also playing off of the politics of playing up and playing off of the politics of dependency by emphasizing that the innocence of particularly white women and orphans, I would argue, right. These delegates are not concerned at all about, say, the widows of black soldiers, for example, who are going to petition for things like pensions. Instead, these delegates are very concerned that the most deserving women and children are going to get state protection in the form of compensation after a devastating war.
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Ryan Tripp
All right, so if you can explain state suicide theory and the conquered province during the context of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, and then, you know, the idea that slaves were never property and then also the elections of 1866.
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Amanda Kleintop
Sure. Let's see. That's a lot. Let me start with. I think I'll start with this idea about whether enslaved people were property or not, especially under the federal Constitution. This is something I was kind of alluding to earlier about the ambiguity of whether compensation is owed. Part of the ambiguity is rooted in the question of whether or not the federal government recognized right, a right to own property and people. Certainly a lot of slave law comes from state law, but we have that debate still about, you know, what is the role of the Constitution and slavery. This is in part because clauses of the Constitution that discuss slavery often do not name slaves or slavery, but instead the, you know, labor, labor Service owed to an enslaver. So the. This. I. This idea becomes particularly complicated for Republicans in 1865 and 1866 who have to respond to these claims for compensation from white Southerners after the war.
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Marshall Poe
The.
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Amanda Kleintop
I had mentioned, right. That the many white Southerners and politicians coming at the state constitution conventions are thinking, well, we'll just push for compensation in, in Congress. But very significantly, Republicans in Congress don't let that happen. And on December 4th of 1865, they. They essentially kick out all of the elected congressmen from former Confederate states and say, nope, you're not coming in. And we are like, maintaining this power, maintaining our political power here. And so that Congress, the 39th Congress, does a lot of really important things right, in Reconstruction history, but one of them is to draft the 14th Amendment and Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. I think we focus a lot on. We as historians focus a lot on Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which is completely understandable, especially in this political moment. I hate to say, hey, let's look at a different section, but obviously the birthright citizenship, the due process clause, equal protection clause, have been really pivotal to civil rights claims in the past 150 years. But I'm also arguing, alongside of scholars like Mark Graeber, that other. These other sections of 14th amendment are actually really important, particularly important because they represent a kind of political use of constitutional change where Republicans are using the 14th Amendment to preserve their political power and as Graeber puts it, punish treason and reward loyalty. I also add to this that Section 4, particularly the 14th Amendment, which actually essentially nullifies any claims to compensation to former enslavers from either the state or federal governments, is also a really important economic intervention as well on the part of Republicans who are trying to ensure that. Yeah. That these claims for compensation coming out of the former Confederacy and even the border states too, at this time, are put to bed. So this section becomes one of the first section in the Constitution to actually name the category of slave. And I argue that this is actually a really important moment because it kind of. It retroactively essentially puts to bed that question of whether or not enslaved people are property under federal law. And it's kind of saying in after the fact, like, no, they, they are not. And you do not have this, this claim to compensation.
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Ryan Tripp
So you make a argument that. I mean, I. I thought this was really, really not compel. Oh, compelling. But that black delegate, black African American delegates in, like South Carolina joined moderate white supporters in repudiating contractual indebtedness and connected to creditors to the slave trade. Why did they do this?
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Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, so this is kind of part of the aftermath of the compensation debates. You know, the, the 14th Amendment again nullifies any claim to, to a right to compensation. But you still have a lot of other kind of legal issues and questions coming out of slavery's afterlives. And one historian too, I'll mention here is Juliana Peron, who's, who's written extensively about this, this conversation as well, particularly from the perspective of the courts. What I'm looking at is an issue, is particularly an issue around outstanding contracts for slave sales. So this is where I'll take a second and just say, okay, imagine it's very common practice in the antebellum south to purchase enslaved people on credit or mortgage them. And so a number of that means a number of people after emancipation are actually going to be left, left owing debts for the value of enslaved people who are no longer considered property under the law. So the question becomes, well, who takes the haircut, right? The, the slave buyer or the slave seller? Now, debt repudiation, and this is really to get at your question, start getting at your question. Debt repudiation writ large is a huge issue in the Reconstruction south, no matter what the debt is. And in my case, I'm looking specifically at debts for enslaved people. But. Right. The south is very cash poor in part because neither enslavers aren't compensated and enslaved people also do not get any kind of reparations. So this idea of repudiating debts is just absolutely a widespread political platform during Reconstruction. The repudiation will serve a lot of different politicians goals, particularly at the state level. Moderate white Southerners, right, they want to try to convince their states to go along with Reconstruction. One thing we didn't talk about was that Congress also kind of disregarded throughout those 1865 state constitutions and is now instituting yet another kind of constitutional, state constitutional plan or method. And so white Southerners need people to go along with that so that they can come back into the union kind of again. But also a newly enfranchised black politicians as well are kind of looking at this repudiation debate and they're like, well, this may not actively help any of my black constituents, but it's certainly a Republican party platform will help me get, you know, support from the Republicans. And we can make these kind of, you know, we can make these alliances with more moderate white politicians to try to push our political agendas forward. Now repudiating outstanding contracts for slave sales specifically is a way to, as Many black politicians see it to acknowledge the kind of extensiveness of abolition, saying, like, not only does abolition apply to property and people, but it also applies to contracts for the sale of people. Right. And it could also help white Southerners, at least some white Southerners, economically, was their argument. Of course, the book goes more into how that that argument might not actually be correct, at least the economic side of it. But this debate nevertheless helps build those alliances for that reason.
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Ryan Tripp
All right, of course, we're going to have to address Supreme Court construction of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. If you can select one, maybe two. I know it's kind of a tall order cases in the case law. I think that would be, that would again facilitate a transition to what happens next.
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Amanda Kleintop
Sure. And I'm going to choose, I think, Osborne v. Nicholson here. So there's a series of court cases in 1871 that are going to do this or that are going to address these issues. But I think first I'll say that in part because of the those many changing legal regimes that I mentioned earlier. Right. It's going to take a while for this question of contracts to go up through the courts. You've got different constitutional amendments at the state level, you've got different court cases at the appellate levels as well, and opinions. And so all of this means that it's going to take some time for this conversation to get to the Supreme Court. And spoiler, the Supreme Court says that, that contracts, outstanding contracts for slave sales, are valid contracts. They were valid when they were made and they are valid still after emancipation. I should say too, that this is again, where I think Juliana Perrone's work comes in and is really important. It's, it's not entirely surprising that the Supreme Court makes that ruling. This means that the folks who purchased or owe debts for enslaved people are going to have to pay that those debts back again. We don't know actually, though, the extent to which that that was enforced. But the, I think that the Osborne v. Nicholson case is really interesting, particularly for my purposes, because it, there was actually a, a circuit court, a federal circuit court judge who ruled before the Supreme Court that the Section 4 of the 14th Amendment not only nullified claims for compensation, but also nullified these contracts for slave sales under the same kind of logic that the, that folks claiming compensation were making essentially with the idea being like, well, how can they be expected to pay the V for the value of an enslaved person when they never received compensation? And he actually reads Section 4 of the 14th Amendment very broadly. There's Another part of it that says that all debts or obligations, losses are null and void, but it's not quite clear what those debts are applying to. It's a very long amendment right or long section with a lot of semicolons. So you're not really sure where, you know, what. What's applying to what other word. But he is cobal. This judge is reading it very broadly. And the Supreme Court really later on takes, puts that aside and says, hope we're not going to read Section 4 so broadly. We are going to uphold these contracts. And I think the thing that I find really compelling is that when we place these court cases in the political context of Reconstruction, I think that the picture gets really complex. It's really tempting to say, oh, the courts should have nullified these contracts, because that would be the same thing as abolishing property rights and people by also abolishing these contracts. But I don't think it's that simple. I think these conversations were already really circumscribed by Americans concerns about the economic effects of uncompensated emancipation on the Southern economy. And we also see debtors kind of portraying themselves as victims. Right. They're saying, well, we didn't get that compensation, and so we, you know, should get relief from these outstanding or outstanding debts. And so I think that we really see instead how the, once again, these, these legal debates are really shedding light on like the political justifications for different grasps of power of different kind of branches and levels of government during Reconstruction.
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Ryan Tripp
So in any discussion of Reconstruction, we have to bring up the Radical Republicans versus the liberal Republicans. What prompted the Radical Republicans to accuse Horace Greeley, the presidential candidate in 1872, of reviving compensated emancipation? And then what about that argument by Robert Hunter?
- [39:00]
Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, Well, I think even just to kind of connect the debt conversation, I think we start to see what this and what the Supreme Court is doing, a kind of just glossing, beginning to gloss over the complexities of slavery legally and financially. Right. And so this is kind of what's going to continue to happen throughout Reconstruction. So we have in the 1872 presidential election. Yeah. The rise of these liberal Republicans and the election in the race between Horace Greeley and Ulysses S. Grant. One thing I didn't already go into too much was how Section 4 of the 14th Amendment and the compensation debates is also very much tied in, into the bloody shirt kind of campaign strategy that I think a lot of historians talk about in Reconstruction. Right. The idea is essentially that the Republican Party is the party that won the war and will protect those legacies of the war. And one of those legacies isn't just the loss of lives, but also immediate uncompensated emancipation, as it happened. And so Horace Greeley gets caught up in all of this because during the war, you know, in multiple occasions he had proposed that Lincoln actually compensate or compensate former Confederates, most famously at the Niagara Peace Conference of December of 1864, where he really, he goes to negotiate with Confederate commissioners and really comes out looking like a fool. Especially in the aftermath of Lincoln's reelection and when Northern support for the war is kind of going back, taking an upswing.
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Ryan Tripp
Now.
- [40:42]
Amanda Kleintop
The liberal Republicans and Horace Greeley kind of get targeted in 1872 because of his history, but also because white Southerners are actually kind of saying like, well, we should still get compensation, right? The 14th Amendment nor the court cases, really, they, they don't stop the white southerners claims or desire for compensation. And so Republicans can continue to use the bloody shirt and, and emphasizing these claims for compensation to kind of scare northern audiences away from Horace Greeley. And, and this is a really good idea, right, because it essentially sp splits the liberal Republican and Democratic alliance with, around Horace Greeley. Sectionally, it means that white Southerners, including those former Unionists who, you know, were in places like Louisiana, they aren't going to, you know, vote or try to ally with Republicans at all anymore. They're going to go solidly Democrat. At the same time, it, that campaign is really going to convince northern voters that Democrats are just going to keep challenging Reconstructions, the results of the war, like immediate uncompensated emancipation no matter what. And so the bloody shirt debates are really going to finally convince Southern Democrats by 1872 that they have to shut down talk of compensation if they are going to make any kind of national political moves.
- [42:23]
Ryan Tripp
So let's move to the Gilded Age and the transition to progressive era in the wake of the panic of 1893. This is a argument how did a compensated emancipation become perceived as a cause? Old bogeys in the south, of course, by younger white Southerners. And also if you can address, you know, debates over Section 4 and the 14th Amendment, how that, you know, cast doubt on the 14th Amendment. I think there should be a book entitled the ordeal of the 14th Amendment. Please do address that.
- [42:58]
Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, I mean, it is an ordeal. One thing I will talk about sometimes, this is not to the question but to your comment. I mean, there were over 70 like 70 proposed amendments that eventually turned into the 14th amendment, which is also part of my argument here, right? Like, we might think of compensated emancipation as just something that didn't happen, but yet here it is. It made it through those 70 proposed options into our Constitution. Right? But yeah. So I think one of the things I'm most interested in is I think how Section 4, you know, even though compensation doesn't happen, Section 4 continues to be this kind of political target off and on from Reconstruction into Jim Crow and the Progressive Era. And you particularly notice it in the south during, like, panics of 1893, also the panic of 1873, right? When. When economics are bad, people start imagining again, these alternatives to immediate uncompensated emancipation. And so I think, like to first answer your question about the old fogies, right? This is part of that. The results of the 1872 election, right? A lot of younger white Southerners are looking at older politicians and saying, like. Particularly older Democrats and saying, like, you can't keep pushing for compensation. But some people do because they see it not only as a way to appeal to white voters, but even as a way to appeal to black voters. And so we start seeing in the 1870s and moving forward, both black and white politicians starting to say, well, hey, one way that we could help rebuild the south economically is by compensating both enslavers and the formerly enslaved. And I think, you know, for me, at least for a modern observer, those seem like very diametrically opposed issues, right? Like, they're morally completely different. Also, they're legally different claims as well, right? Compensation to former enslavers is kind of like a damages claim that they're making. Like, this harmed me and you owe me the money. Whereas reparations for enslaved or even just payments or pensions as they are kind of alternatively imagined over the course of the late 19th century, those are making a different argument. They're saying, you stole our labor or the labor of our ancestors, and you continue to pillage and plunder our wealth. And so you owe us, right, for that injustice. And they're also much more kind of reparative claims as well, right? So the idea of repair is really important in a way that I don't think applies as much to claims for enslavement slavers. So you see, right, Younger white Southerners kind of being like, well, like, this argument is not. This argument for compensating enslavers is not. It's not helping us here. And the. You also start to see black politicians, writers saying, like, well, it's not surprising at all, all that. That white Southerners would be seeking compensation even despite the 14th amendment. We actually think one man, John Williams, a historian, he says, you know, of course they want compensation, their property rights and people had been protected all that, all that time. And so that's the, the converse logic kind of coming together, right? If, if law had recognized enslavers property rights in people and seen slavery as ess property and finance and money, then then black Southerners could in turn make a similar argument for what, what we today call reparations. Well, if they deserve compensation, then, then so do we.
- [47:11]
Ryan Tripp
So a bunch of groups wanted to deemphasize white Southerners claims for compensation and then deny Abraham Lincoln's offers of compensation. The Dunning School or the United Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy. I was particularly interested in the Dunning School, but you can address whatever you want. But I think maybe the Dunning School, perhaps you can focus on.
- [47:36]
Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, sure. So one thing I do like to note is that like, I didn't find a smoking gun here. The kind of connections that I just described, you know, we have the folks like the Ex Slave Pension association, one of their lawyers says, well, if you. If Lincoln wanted to compensate enslavers, then we should all. We can also compensate the formerly enslaved. I don't at any point find the. A document from the Dunning School or some of the Confederate Veterans. I'm about to talk about saying, hey, black Americans are claiming reparations on the same with similar logic as we use to claim compensation. But the timing is awfully suspect, I would argue. So around, yeah, the 1990s, essentially right around when the Ex Lay Pension association is kind of at its height, particularly former Confederate veterans are starting to talk about in depth, in really confusing depth, the Hampton roads Conference of 1865 in regional newspapers. So. So for those who might not know, in the Hampton Roads Conference, Lincoln boarded a steamer in Hampton Roads and he spoke with three Confederate commissioners, including the Vice president, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens, about surrender terms. And Lincoln required essentially the full surrender of the Confederacy, but also offered compensation by most extensions accounts. And one thing that's really notable here is that all the accounts are written years after the event happened. They're written after Lincoln died. And so in the 1890s, white Southerners start to debate. Right. What actually was said. We do, however, have a resolution from Lincoln that's presented to his Cabinet after the meeting itself, proposing that Congress appropriate funds to compensate state former Confederate states for abolishing slavery if they surrender. His cabinet was like, nope, don't do that. And that got shut down pretty quickly. But we, we do actually have every reason to believe historically that, that Lincoln did still propose compensation to former enslavers up as late as Spring of 1865. And it didn't happen simply because the Confederacy still refused to surrender. So these former Confederates are like, well, wait, why did Davis this do that? Why did, you know, Confederate President Jefferson Davis not go for what was obviously a better deal than Appomattox? And so this is for them a way to rethink their history and the role of slavery in the war. And so they basically, after years of debate back and forth, and frankly, without much real evidence, they say, say, okay, no, Lincoln never offered compensation, but we also didn't want or need it because slavery wasn't profitable, essentially. And so this is actually the start of Dunning School arguments about the profitability of slavery. I think, and I think this is rooted right in the compensation debates. They say the logic is that if, if slavery wasn't profitable, then how could the war, then how could slavery have started the war? Like, why would the Confederacy have fought for it? And I think where we start to see this connection back to reparations a little bit is that the Dunning School not only helps perpetuate this myth, right, that slavery was unprofitable, but like Walter Fleming, one of our classic Dunning School historians, he also is writing at the same time about, about the ex slave pension frauds. Right, I used air quotes for frauds there, but. And he's arguing that there is no basis right for any, for any claims for, for pensions for former slaves. So we see how these, these conversations about slavery and profitability and law kind of intertwined to cast a lot of doubt on not just, just white Southerners claims for compensation in the historical record, but also black Southerners claims for reparations.
- [52:07]
Ryan Tripp
So this surprised me. Why did black African American activists and scholars, you know, George Washington Williams, John Williamson, etc, why did these, these black African American activists join lost cause Southerners in supporting uncompensated emancipation for former slaveholders?
- [52:26]
Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, not all of them did. Right. But I do think there's one notable case at least, John Williamson, he's in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I think that these folks are a really good example of the kind of the complexity essentially of Southern politics in the 1890s. Right. This is actually in a moment when Jim Crow is starting to consolidate. The Democratic Party across the south is consolidating its power in different places and in different times. And this debate about compensation really plays a role in that, I argue. And I think, like Williamson is an interesting case right. In North Carolina. We historians generally consider North Carolina to be one of the last states that kind of falls to Jim Crow. And he is trying to make, I think, a third party appeal. He's trying to find a way to get white votes and black votes still to. And to find a way in between the Democratic Party, right. And the Republican Party. And so I think that's what we're seeing. I mentioned earlier too, things. Right. It's a way to. To. To try to bring money in. Into the south or. And promise your constituency as well some economic relief. And it's also a way to try to appeal to both black and white voters in a time when the Democratic Party is really trying to. To get all white voters right on to vote for the Democratic Party.
- [53:57]
Ryan Tripp
So we've come to our final question here. How did these organizations for the National Ex Slavery Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension association, as well as the Ex Slave Owners Registration Bureau, out of these organizations, couple, on the one hand, former compensation with slaveholder compensation, former slave compensation with slaveholder compensation, ultimately go dragging down black African American compensation?
- [54:25]
Amanda Kleintop
Yeah, and I think a note on terminology for. For myself, for kind of reasons I explained, I really do talk about slaveholder compensation and then. And, and some folks will say like reparations, but I really do avoid that word for slaveholders because they're really making that damages claim. And then, you know, I'll use the term reparations for, for formerly enslaved because they often have that kind of justice and, and reparative claim behind them, which I think is also the Ex Slave Pension Association. But essentially you're alluding not just to the Ex Slave Pension association, but also the Ex Slave Owners Registration Bureau, which is one of many strange scandals I kind of came across in the 1880s and 1890s. From just a series of newspaper research, you start to see some weird mentions of compensation to former enslavers, often alongside compensation or representation, reparations to the formerly enslaved. And a lot of those are, you know, very highly interpretable. I will say I would love for somebody else to take a look at some of these papers and tell me how they're reading them. But they really appear essentially by. When people are pushing for compensation to enslavers like the Ex Slave Owners Registration Bureau, which is kind of this mailing campaign to get former enslavers to send them some money. And they're saying, well, if you send us some money, we'll include you in like a lawsuit to the government to try to get money for the enslaved, for formerly enslaved people. And so they're, they're accused of fraud, just like the Ex Slave Pension Bureau is, which historian Mary Francis Barry is really famously talked about that, that history, I think. But it's interesting to me how the government and journalists really put things like the Ex Slave Owners Registration Bureau, which is very clearly fraudulent, alongside the National Ex Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pensions association and kind of say, look, these journalists are like, hey, like these are both ridiculous claims. Like it's impossible. It's impossible to imagine enslavers getting compensation and it's impossible to imagine formerly enslaved people getting reparations. And, and like, and, and so in that way, things like the compensation for enslavers is really used to drag down any claims for, for reparations and to, to really treat them as, as jokes almost in the same way that they're treating claims for compensation to enslavers.
- [57:09]
Ryan Tripp
So in the foregoing, you mentioned some more research. Is there any. What are you doing going next, really, just briefly?
- [57:16]
Amanda Kleintop
Well, I think I mentioned those border state policies earlier, very earlier in the interview. So the federal government, as I mentioned, did promise loyal enslavers in the border states up to 300 or $100 for enslaved men who enlisted or were drafted in the army. And I, I don't believe, and I talk a little bit about why in the book, I don't believe that most of those claims were paid 25 in Maryland. Definitely were. I sure. But this promise embodied in the Enrollment act did create a vast bureaucracy within the federal government and the military of claims for compensation to enslavers. And so it created a lot of records of former enslavers and formerly enslaved soldiers. And so I kind of hope to go down that rabbit hole and figure out a little more. There's not a lot of research on those claims at all. There's a lot of research on that policy. And I think it could be a really great way to understand not just compensation debates in the border states, but the process of emancipation as a whole there.
- [58:27]
Ryan Tripp
Well, sounds promising. Hopefully you remembered new Books in History for that project. Professor Kleintop, thanks for joining us today.
- [58:37]
Amanda Kleintop
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [58:40]
Ryan Tripp
So the book is kind of the Cost of Freedom, the Fight Over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War War, published earlier this year by University of North Carolina Press. On behalf of Professor Kleintop. This has been New Books in History, a channel on the New Books Network. Please tune in next time. Thanks for joining us. Foreign.
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Ryan Tripp
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Amanda Kleintop
Everything.
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