On 16 April 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill called the District of Columbia Emancipation Act. This law was the precursor to the monumental Emancipation Proclamation that was enacted on 01 January 1863.
“This legislation abolished slavery in Washington, D.C. by providing compensation of up to $300 for each slave freed by masters loyal to the Union. Women and children, however, were assigned a lesser value than men. Reflecting Lincoln’s faith in colonization efforts, the federal government provided up to $100 for those freed slaves who chose to leave the United States. As a result, 3,100 slaves received their freedom, at a total cost of approximately one million dollars. This act represented the first and last time the United States government authorized compensated emancipation.” (1)
On the 26th anniversary of the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, Frederick Douglass, a resident of the city, made a very compelling speech. I would like to provide one excerpt, with regards to the economic reality years after Emancipation, from this speech of 16 April 1888. I will provide a link in the reference section if you would like to read the entire speech. The Library of Congress link displays the original manuscript, along with hand-written notes and corrections made by Mr. Douglass.
“Do you ask a more particular account of the question why the negro of the plantation has made so little progress, why his cupboard is empty, why he flutters in rags, why his children run naked and his wife is bare-footed and hides herself behind the hut when a stranger is passing? I will tell you. It is because the husband and father is systematically and almost universally cheated out of his hard earnings.
The same class that once extorted his labor under the lash, now extorts his labor by a mean, sneaking and fraudulent device, which is more effective than the lash. That device is the trucking system, a system which never permits him to see or to save a dollar of his hard earnings. He struggles and struggles, from year to year, but like a man in a morass, the more he struggles, the deeper he sinks.
The highest wages paid to him are eight dollars a month, and this he receives only in orders on a store. A store, which, in many cases, is owned by his employer. This scrip has a purchasing power on that one store and on that one store only. A blind man can see that a laborer is by this arrangement bound hand and foot and is completely in the power of his employer who can charge the poor fellow just what he pleases and give him just what kind of goods he pleases, and he does both.
His victim can not go to another store and buy. As a man with money could do. He is deprived of the protection afforded by competition, and this the store-keeper knows full well. The only security the wretched negro has under this arrangement, is the conscience of the store-keeper—a conscience educated in the school of slavery, a conscious educated in fraud, educated where the idea prevailed in theory and practice that the negro had no rights which white men were bound to respect. An arrangement in which everything in the way of food or clothing, whether it be tainted meat or damaged cloth, is deemed good enough for the negro. And for these he is often made to pay a double price.” (2)
References
(1) D.C. Emancipation Day: The Historical Society of Washington, DC.
(2) The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress.
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