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Comment by throw_away | Hacker News Reader

Piketty, in his most recent book, brings up the point that when all these former colonialists ended slavery (by their own hand or otherwise), the big concern was how much the former slaveholders would be paid back in exchange for their lost 'capital'. No concern was ever given to how much those former slaves should be owed for what was done to them. The US civil war in some ways allowed the US to avoid both questions.

He also points out the rather shocking fact that eleven out of the first fifteen US presidents were themselves slaveowners.

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Here's why this seems unsurprising to me. The switchover from slavery to non-slavery will (if it's not forced from outside) happen around the time when the forces for and against this change are evenly matched.

One way to move that balance is to bribe some of the powerful people who are on the fence, or close to it. (For instance, people who are starting to see the moral case, but are also pretty concerned about their 401k, or its 18thC equivalent.) Of course this bribe was tempting to those pushing for change, they could have victory now, instead of waiting another generation.

On the other hand, attaching to the bill to free the slaves a huge bill to pay them each compensation, this would clearly push the balance the other way, and thus delay the date until it could get a majority (of those with the relevant power).

This is on point. Perhaps (in a very morbid way) it would have been better if the end of slavery had happened slightly later such that there was enough of a "surplus" of support for abolition that slaves and their descendants were actually compensated to some degree.

Though I can't see that the compensation would ever have been significant enough to cover the costs of having been enslaved.

Most slaves were banned by law from learning to read or write, and that alone (I mean, even without being enslaved) would have been an _immense_ cost on any individual trying to make their way in the world at that time.

And that is why Adams, not Jefferson, should be on the $2 bill.

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