Reparations through monetary policy get shut down and can never repair for the violence of slavery.

The petition read: To the Senators and Representatives of the Congress of the United States of America: Whereas, Generation after generation of Colored people served this country as slaves for two hundred and forty-four years or more, and Whereas, This government owes the unknown and deceased Colored Soldiers a large sum of money which is unclaimed, and Whereas, Many of those soldiers have brothers, fathers, mothers and sisters among us, who are destitute and starving, and Whereas, It is a precedent established by the patriots of this country to relieve its distressed citizens, both on land and sea, and millions of our deceased people, besides those who still survive, worked as slaves for the development of the great resources and wealth of this country, and Whereas, We believe it is just and right to grant the ex-slave a petition: Therefore, We, the undersigned, citizens of the United States of America, appeal to your Honorable Body to pass Senate Bill, No. 4718, introduced June 6, 1898, by Senator Mason, of Illinois, providing pension for Freedmen, etc.14 Six ex-slave pension bills in total went before Congress between 1890 and 1903. All of the bills were identical, according to Walter Hill, ‘‘each providing a pension to ex-slave[s] based on a scale. Ex-slaves 70 years and older were to receive an initial payment of $500 and $15 a month; ex-slaves 60–70 years would receive $300 and $12 a month; ex-slaves 50–60 years would receive $100 and $8 a month; and those ex-slaves less than 50 years old would not receive an initial payment, but a $4 a month pension.’’15 All were finally defeated. Frustrated by these legislative defeats (and encouraged by House to pursue a new path), Cornelius J. Jones in 1915 filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Treasury on behalf of H. N. Johnson, C. B. Williams, Rebecca Bowers, Minnie Thompson, and ‘‘others similarly interested.’’16 They alleged that between the years 1859 and 1868 they and their ancestors ‘‘were subject to a system of involuntary servitude’’ in the states of the South, and that as a result of such servitude ‘‘many million bales of cotton were produced.’’ In their attempt to recover the monetary value of their unpaid labor and that of their ancestors, they argued that the federal government had benefited financially from slave labor in the form of the ‘‘Internal Revenue Tax on Raw Cotton.’’ In Jones’s estimate, the unpaid labor of the slaves amounted to $68,072,388.99. The U.S. government was a state in debt and the plaintiffs injured creditors. Assessing debt and calculating injury was itself a formula for justice. The federal appeals court did not agree and dismissed the appellants’ case on the grounds that there was no proper defendant. The government, unlike an individual defendant, could not be sued without its consent. The government possessed ‘‘sovereign immunity,’’ which was a defense against legal action. The rationale that undergirded the government’s ‘‘sovereign immunity’’ was protecting the ‘‘public fisc.’’ In this case, the protection of the public fisc had as its cost the perpetuity of This content downloaded from 35.0.62.139 on Wed, 19 Jul 2023 14:43:36 +00:00 All use subject to http Fugitive Justice 7 unremunerated slave labor and the continued failure by the government to return funds it had obtained through unjust means. The decision by the court of appeals nullified not only the specifics of the litigants’ plea but also, and more important, the very conception of the government as culpable or obligated. Redress could only obtain when the state recognized itself as negligent, when it acknowledged its unjust enrichment. The redress Jones sought was possible only if the state assumed a sense of continuity between itself and its predecessor—a continuity made visible by the accusation of ‘‘involuntary servitude’’ in ‘‘the years 1859 to 1868,’’ a charge that denied the barricade between the slave past and the emancipated present. The state, in addition, had its own designs for House, Jones, and their compatriots. The Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service, acting at the behest of the Pension Bureau, charged the backers of the various ex-slave pension bills with using the mails to defraud ‘‘poor negroes’’ of their ‘‘hard-earned money’’ and making promises the postmaster considered impossible to perform—the outlandish promise that the state would redress slavery. As the Office of the Attorney General explained, the ex-slave petitioners knew that ‘‘there had ‘never been the remotest prospect’ that Congress would appropriate pensions for African Americans.’’17 For sure, the state too was concerned with the stolen wages of poor negroes; but the culpable agent brought before the bar was not the U.S. government; rather, it was the very petitioners who appealed on the ex-slaves’ behalf. House served eight months in a Missouri penitentiary for this fraud. Sovereign immunity protected the government from all charges of culpability as regards the institution of slavery. This seems to be the lesson learned by those who currently argue for reparations. Today, it is too late to invoke the crimes of the U.S. nation state.