Freeing of Slaves and Indentured Servants
Slave owners suffered a loss whenever their slaves or indentured servants were granted their freedom. Slave owners might have been paid to cover their losses.
When the slaves of Zanzibar were freed in 1897, it was by compensation since the prevailing opinion was that the slave owners suffered the loss of an asset whenever a slave was freed.
In the 1860s in the United States, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had requested many millions of dollars from Congress with which to compensate slave owners for the loss of their slaves. On July 9, 1868, Section IV of the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment dismissed all of the claims that slave owners had been injured by the freeing of the slaves.
In 1807-08, in Prussia, statesman Baron Heinrich vom Stein introduced a series of reforms, the principal of which was the abolition of serfdom with indemnification to territorial lords.
Haiti was required to pay an indemnity of 150,000,000 francs to France in order to atone for the loss suffered by the French slave owners.
Read more about this topic: Indemnity
Famous quotes containing the words freeing, slaves and/or servants:
“The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“The laws of custom make our [returning a visit] necessary. O how I hate this vile custom which obliges us to make slaves of ourselves! to sell the most precious property we boast, our time;—and to sacrifice it to every prattling impertinent who chooses to demand it!”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“The prosecution of [Warren] Hastings, though he should escape at last, must have good effect. It will alarm the servants of the Company in India, that they may not always plunder with impunity, but that there may be a retrospect; and it will show them that even bribes of diamonds to the Crown may not secure them from prosecution.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)