# The Price They Paid: Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War - Hardcover

by **Jeff Forret** (Author)

**A prizewinning historian uncovers one of the earliest instances of reparations in America--ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly, paid to slaveholders, not former slaves**

  

**"A spectacular achievement of historical research. Forret shows for the first time just how far the American government went to secure reparations."**  
**\--Robert Elder' author of _Calhoun: American Heretic_**

  

In 1831, the American ship _Comet_, carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau, over the outraged objections of the ship's owners, set the rescued captives free. American slave owners and the companies who insured the liberated human cargo would spend years lobbying for reparations from Great Britain, not for the emancipated slaves, of course, but for the masters deprived of their human property.

  

In a work of profoundly relevant research and storytelling, historian and Frederick Douglass Prize-winner Jeff Forret uncovers how the _Comet_ incident--as well as similar episodes that unfolded over the next decade--resulted in the British Crown making reparations payments to a U.S. government that strenuously represented slaveholder interests. Through a story that has never been fully explored, _The Price They Paid_ shows how, unlike their former owners and insurers, neither the survivors of the C_omet_ and other vessels, nor their descendants, have ever received reparations for the price they paid in their lives, labor, and suffering during slavery.

  

Any accounting of reparations today requires a fuller understanding of how the debts of slavery have been paid, and to whom. _The Price They Paid_ represents a major step forward in that effort.

### Author Biography

**Jeff Forret** is University Professor of History at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He has authored or edited seven books, including the award-winning _Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South_ and _Williams' Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts_. He lives in Lumberton, Texas.

**Number of Pages:** 400

**Dimensions:** 1.3 x 9.1 x 6.2 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** November 19, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 29.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 29.99 USD | In stock |

## Images

- The Price They Paid: Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War - Hardcover

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