Black Sailors and Navy Prize Money

Michael Weaver

June 18, 2022

Motivation

Counterfactual Reparations

Reparations or major land reforms never materialized:

  • For vast majority of freed people, no 40 acres and a mule

What might have been the effects of such policies during Reconstruction?

  • land reforms effective (Miller 2011, 2020), but hard politically

Cash transfers

  • “easier” politically, than land redistribution
  • subject of substantial research in economics in variety of contexts
  • parallels contemporary debates about what reparations might look like

What if Federal government provided cash to African Americans after Emancipation?

  • what kinds of effects would this have had for individuals and families?

Union Navy Prizes of War

Union Navy Prize Money

  • Union Navy was integrated, by law and by necessity
    • Black sailors on hundreds of ships
    • discrimination in ranks, hazing, postings
  • Prize money for captured blockade runners
    • “Prizes” condemned in court, then auctioned
    • Proceeds split between federal gov’t, officers and crew of ship
    • Prizes range between 200 and > 500K in 2020 dollars

Union Navy Prize Money

  • Transfers of cash from Federal Gov’t to Black sailors (after filing claim)
  • Given service on similar ships, in same areas, at same time, winning prize is “as-if” random

We can examine the effects of cash transfers to Black sailors and their families

Data

Sailors

  • African-American Sailors Project (Joseph Reidy) of Howard University
    • identified black sailors from ship muster rolls
    • first/last name, age, birth place, enlist place/date, ships served on, dates of service
  • Available from National Park Service

Prizes and Ships

Prizes

  • audit reports list prizes awarded to which ships and amount, and date of capture
  • can estimate prize allocations
  • National Archives holds actual records of prize eligibility

Ships

  • Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies
    • dates/locations of ship service
    • ship type, tonnage, crew, guns
  • Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
    • crew, ship dimensions, speed, armaments

Outcomes

Currently…

1870 and 1880 Censuses (From IPUMS)

  • automated linking to sailors (and also their families)
  • property (real and personal), literacy, children schooling, disability, sickness, residence in south, residence in urban areas, economic status

Preliminary Results

How common were large prizes?

Benchmark: 1000 in 1865 is ~223000 in relative wealth

Benchmark: expected price of 40 acres and mule in 1870 is $615

Higher literacy

Lower rates of disability

Less likely to live in former confederacy

More likely to live in urban areas

Higher Socio-Economic Status

Less likely to live on a farm

Higher Real Estate Values

Higher Personal Estate Values

Next Steps

Improving measurement with other records sources:

  • Actual prize eligibility: treasury records
  • more careful matching (Navy Service Records/Pensions)
  • more outcomes:
    • property/tax records; voter rolls; office-holding?
    • inter-generational effects