Well, of course it seems that way to you, Fred — because you are totally ignorant about this chapter of American history.

First of all, Union soldiers did not die to end slavery. They died to keep the United States from splitting apart, which was happening not because of slavery but because of economic tensions between the agrarian South and the urban North. Slavery was an aspect, or an example, of how that economic conflict manifested itself, but it was not in and of itself the reason for the war. And it ended because the victor dictates the terms of the peace, which does not necessarily mean that any particular provision is why the war was fought in the first place.

Second, slavery in point of fact ended only in the narrowest legal sense. Former slaves, apart from the very brief Reconstruction period, lived under white rule, with no rights and in complete and utter subjugation, for 100 years after the Civil War ended.

Third, even if the Civil War *had* ended slavery in the sense that former slaves after 1865 enjoyed the same rights of freedom and democracy that their erstwhile owners did, that has absolutely nothing to do with reparations. The subject of reparations isn’t even relevant to the resolution the House just passed, since it was an apology, not a call for reparations, but setting that aside, if reparations were to be made to modern-day descendants of slaves, it would not be for the loss of physical freedom, atrocious as that was. It would be for the loss of income — for the money, the wages, that were stolen from slaves for over two centuries. No former slave was ever compensated for that theft (theft hardly seems like a strong enough word), although the former slaves’ *owners* were compensated — with cold hard cash — for the loss of their “property.”

And why is that lost income relevant now, for the descendants of those former slaves? Well, one could say for reasons of simple justice, but there is a more substantive reason: The theft of enslaved Americans’ wages had an effect beyond the physical existences of the actual individuals who were freed from slavery. Their future earning power, and the future earning power of their children and grandchildren and great-children, etc., were negatively affected by the fact that for almost 250 years an entire people were forced to provide their labor gratis, and were deliberately denied the right to an education — even the most fundamental ability to read and write — as part of their enslaved condition. Even up to the present day — although obviously opportunities and social, political, and economic circumstances have vastly improved — the harms that were done to African-Americans by those centuries of forced unpaid labor and forced denial of access to the tools of learning, still linger. And they will continue to do so, until and unless this country gets serious about doing what’s required to mitigate those harms.

That’s payment enough, to those that were actually slaves. Those that want reparations now are merely freeloaders.