I was aware that the United States had paid reparations in the past to descendants of Japanese American internees and, in a few individual cases, to German Americans and German nationals for similar confinement. America paid reparations to slaveowners in Washington, D.C., who were compensated when slavery was abolished there in 1862.
In 1865, General Sherman confiscated about 400,000 acres of coastal land in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It was divided into 40‑acre plots for settlement by freed families — the origin of the phrase “40 acres and a mule.” Within a year, President Andrew Johnson issued pardons to ex‑Confederates and ordered that their lands be returned. I consider that reparations.
