Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer William worked in a furniture shop. Camille was a seamstress. James was a "house servant," while Cecilia, a peg lower in the hierarchy of 1840s Augusta, was a mere "servant."
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| This advertisement for slave insurance appeared on the front page of the Oct. 9, 1849, edition of the Daily Chronicle & Sentinel of Augusta. The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. went out of business later in the 1800s. |
Each was a slave -- the property of Charles A. Platt, an Augusta furniture maker. Sometime between 1845 and 1848, Platt went to Joseph Milligan, the local agent for the Nautilus Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, to protect his investments. If any of his slaves died, or if they ran away, Platt would collect benefits as high as $500.
Call it life insurance, or call it property insurance. Either way, a new report indicates, insuring slaves was a common -- if, until recently, little- known -- practice in the Old South.
Eight insurance companies told the state of California last week they had found records of more than 600 policies they once carried on slaves belonging to more than 400 slaveholders throughout the South. Forty-three of the slaves lived in Georgia, most of them in Augusta or Savannah.
The revelations add fuel to the debate over reparations for descendants of slaves. And they prompted Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine on Friday to launch an investigation into whether insuring slaves was a widespread practice in the state.
Oxendine said he would order Georgia-based insurance companies, as well as out-of-state insurers doing business in Georgia, to research their archives for slave policies. He declined to predict the outcome of the review.
"We've got to get the information and find out the lay of the land," Oxendine said. "Then we will decide. . . . We want to make sure the honorable and moral thing is done."
The notion that one person could own another, then collect benefits if the latter died or disappeared -- and that a corporation could profit from premiums paid in the meantime -- is particularly repugnant to many who have studied slavery as an institution that tore the country apart. Through what was advertised as "slave insurance," the North and the South shared interests in keeping the institution intact.
"It confirms again that owning human beings was a business," said Leslie Harris, an associate professor of history at Emory University who teaches in the school's African-American studies program. "It was a business the whole country, not just the South, was implicated in.
"Without slave labor, this country's accumulation of wealth would have been very difficult or very different," Harris said. "The question is, were enslaved black people fully remunerated for that work -- did they receive any of the profits? The second question is, is there a fair way to do that a century and a half later?"
Revelations of insurance on slaves raise a question for business and government leaders today, she said: "In inheriting profit, do you also inherit some responsibility?"
California investigates
The California report was the result of state legislation in 2000, sponsored by former state Sen. Tom Hayden, requiring insurance companies doing business there to release to the public information about policies they or their predecessors wrote on slaves. No other state has required the release of such information.
Eight companies, all based in non-slave states in the Northeast, said they discovered records of slave policies, although some said their archives were incomplete. Most of the policies -- 484, written for 233 slaveholders -- were written by Nautilus, now known as New York Life. Of the first 1,000 policies Nautilus wrote, 339 covered slaves.
The company, which said this week it "profoundly regrets" the practice of its predecessor, reported Nautilus began issuing the policies in 1845 but discontinued that line of business in 1848.
An advertisement that appeared on the front page of the Daily Chronicle & Sentinel of Augusta on Oct. 21, 1846, offered life insurance "within the reach of all." But it noted that "slaves are insured by the year," not for life.
Neither ads from the period nor the California report indicate how much slaveholders paid in premiums. But the report says most slaves were insured for no more than $500. Records of payments are incomplete, insurers said. New York Life reported its predecessor's paying three death claims for a total of $1,050.
Although it is believed to cover only a fraction of insured slaves, the California report provides new insight into the economics of slavery in its final years before the Civil War. Slaveowners were much more likely to take out policies on slaves with particular talents, such as carpentry or masonry, than on field hands or other less skilled workers. Women, too, were often covered.
"Women tended to be valued higher than men," said Susan Dick of the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah, "because they could bear children, who could also be raised into slavery."
The report provides few details about the slaves who were insured. Most are listed only by first name, alongside a brief, and sometimes demeaning, description of their work duties.
A slave identified only as Robert, who belonged to Stephen Oliver of Augusta, was listed as a "stove boy." Oliver also insured Eliza, described simply as "slave."
The slaveowners tended to be among the most prominent citizens in their communities.
Joseph Thompson of Savannah, who insured a carpenter named Jim, was a master carpenter who in 1843 was elected superintendent of the city's water pumps, according to the Georgia Historical Society.
George Adams, who insured a house servant named Sarah, was a railroad superintendent and county official who lived on one of Savannah's famed squares. In 1861, according to the historical society, he was elected president of the city's Vigilance Committee, formed to "ensure the safety and uphold the laws . . . during the tumultuous times" leading to the Civil War.
'New and interesting'
Charles Platt, who insured his slaves William, Camille, James and Cecilia, was the owner of the Augusta Steam Cabinet Manufactory. In a newspaper ad that ran through the mid-1840s, Platt boasted of his "large and handsome assortment" of furniture, not mentioning the role slaves played in producing that furniture.
Such ads appeared in newspapers of the era alongside notices of "Negroes for Sale" and solicitations for "slave insurance."
In an 1849 ad on the Augusta newspaper's front page, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Raleigh offered the policies in terms of one or five years "at rates which will enable all slaveholders to secure this class of property against the uncertainty of life."
The ad continued: "Slave insurance presents a new and interesting feature . . . which will prove very important to the Southern states."
North Carolina Mutual went out of business later in the 1800s. Its name eventually was taken by an insurance company established in 1898.
What is now known as North Carolina Mutual says it is the nation's oldest and largest insurance company owned by African-Americans.