The Price They Paid

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A prizewinning historian uncovers one of the earliest instances of reparations in America—ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly, paid to slaveholders, not former slaves "A spectacular achievement of historical research. Forret shows for the first time just how far the American government went to secure reparations." —Robert Elder‚ author of Calhoun: American Heretic In 1831, the American ship Comet , carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau, over the outraged objections of the ship's owners, set the rescued captives free. American slave owners and the companies who insured the liberated human cargo would spend years lobbying for reparations from Great Britain, not for the emancipated slaves, of course, but for the masters