Juneteenth, the most recently-declared official national holiday, is approaching. The commemoration of emancipation from slavery will likely draw renewed attention to the growing support for reparations for the descendants of the enslaved. New York State has recently joined California in becoming the second state to establish a group to formally consider the possibility. Its commission to Study Reparations and Racial Justice is charged to report on “the legacy of slavery, subsequent discrimination against people of African descent, and the impact these forces continue to have in the present day.”

That commission should be interested in the research I’ve been doing for a local historic committee. I live in a Westchester County, New York town where slavery was used to support large farms whose produce and cattle were shipped across the Long Island Sound to nearby Manhattan. Indeed, my own house stands on what was once such a farm. But unless my town is entirely unrepresentative, its history does not support the idea that reparations—which would presumably be paid by all taxpayers—are justified. Only a small minority of whites owned slaves—and these, including John Jay, who would go on to become Governor of New York and US Chief Justice actually sought, long before the 13th Amendment, to abolish the practice in New York and ultimately did. Others were likely harmed by having to compete with those who used slave labor to support larger landholdings. Crucially, large numbers of Town of Rye residents served as soldiers in the Civil War, their uniforms and supplies paid for by those whose fortunes were built in part on slave labor. 

The Town of Rye at the time of American independence was a prosperous place for some, as per the diary of George Washington himself, who visited in 1789 and described in his diary seeing droves of cattle and flocks of sheep.

No doubt slavery did support the prosperity of some. The largest farms almost invariably relied on enslaved labor, some using as many as a dozen enslaved persons. Later, the same families sold off land for railroad rights-of-way and housing development. An 1881 sale of just one lot netted the equivalent of $426,000.

Slavery, however, was far from universal. Of 130 slaves, 68 were owned by just six families, including the Jay family, which included the nation’s first Supreme Court Justice. The farm owned by John and Peter Jay had nine slaves and was highest-valued property in town. But households which did not own slaves at all (163) were far greater in number than those who did (42).

Most whites, in fact, were poor. Indeed, 77 were listed as owning only “house and lot”—tiny homesteads worth less than $500—in some cases as little as $60. There were also owners of large farms who did not engage in slavery at all. Even the historical record of the largest slaveholding households in the town, however, is mitigated by the fact that, once New York State passed its law phasing out slavery, slaveowners acted quickly to free their slaves well ahead of the deadline for doing so. That law, passed in 1797, was, in fact, signed, as New York Governor, by the slaveholder John Jay, also a founder of New York’s Manumission Society. By 1820, only 14 slaves remained in town, compared to 126 freed blacks. Notably, by 1850, the Town’s population began to swell with the arrival of white Irish and German servants and laborers—who arrived long after slavery had disappeared and had not been involved with it at all. There is no case to be made that their descendants should be made to pay reparations for it.

Finally, as the Governor’s commission goes about its research, another part of the historical record should be weighed: the town’s record in the Civil War. By 1862, Rye had provided 126 volunteers for the Union Army. So, too, did its wealthy citizens organize a Union Defense Committee to raise funds to outfit the soldiers. 

That African Americans today are not as well-off as whites is incontrovertible, as is the fact that slavery is part of the reason. But, if the state’s reparations Commission goes about its work honestly, not ideologically, the conclusion that New York’s taxpayers—or those of California, always a free state—should pay them can’t be made.

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