Though the company no
longer exists, these policies are drawing increasing attention nearly 150 years
later because of a lawsuit that was filed in United States District Court in
Brooklyn, in late March against Aetna Inc. and two other companies, claiming
that they profited from the slave trade. In Connecticut, where insurance has
long been a principal industry, the documents exhibit a painful reminder of the
past, especially in a Northern state that is proud of its abolitionist
ancestors like John Brown. ''It's not
pleasant to talk about it today, to put it mildly, but slaves were insured just
like any other thing that the farmers owned, that the slave owners owned,''
said Tom Baker, director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of
Connecticut School of Law.
New York Life, the
nation’s third-largest life insurance company, opened in Manhattan’s financial
district in the spring of 1845. The firm possessed a prime address — 58 Wall
Street — and a board of trustees populated by some of the city’s wealthiest
merchants, bankers and railroad magnates. Sales were sluggish that year. So the
company looked south. There, in Richmond, Va., an enterprising New York Life
agent sold more than 30 policies in a single day in February 1846. Soon,
advertisements began appearing in newspapers from Wilmington, N.C., to
Louisville as the New York-based company encouraged Southerners to buy
insurance to protect their most precious commodity: their slaves.
Alive,
slaves were among a white man’s most prized assets. Dead, they were considered
virtually worthless. Life insurance changed that calculus, allowing slave
owners to recoup three-quarters of a slave’s value in the event of an untimely
death.
James De Peyster Ogden,
New York Life’s first president, would later describe the American system of
human bondage as “evil.” But by 1847, insurance policies on slaves accounted
for a third of the policies in a firm that would become one of the nation’s
Fortune 100 companies. Georgetown, Harvard and other universities have drawn
national attention to the legacy of slavery this year as they have acknowledged
benefiting from the slave trade and grappled with how to make amends. But
slavery also generated business for some of the most prominent modern-day
corporations, underscoring the ties that many contemporary institutions have to
this painful period of history. Like New
York Life, Aetna and US Life also sold insurance policies to slave owners,
particularly those whose laborers engaged in hazardous work in mines, lumber
mills, turpentine factories and steamboats in the industrializing sectors of
the South. US Life, a subsidiary of AIG, declined to comment on its slave
policy sales. Wachovia, one of Wells Fargo’s predecessor companies, has
apologized for its historic ties to slavery as have JPMorgan Chase and Aetna.
More than 40 other firms,
mostly based in the South, sold such policies, too, though documentation is
scarce and most closed their doors generations ago. New York Life survived. Its
foray into the slave insurance business did not prove to be lucrative: The
company ended up paying out nearly as much in death claims — about $232,000 in
today’s dollars — as it received in annual payments. But in the span of about
three years, it sold 508 policies, more than Aetna and US Life combined,
according to available records. Now, the descendants of one of those slaves —
who were recently identified by The New York Times — are coming to terms with
the realization that one of the nation’s biggest insurance companies sold
policies on their ancestors and hundreds of other enslaved laborers.
Policy No. 447 covered
Nathan York, a slave who toiled in the Virginia coal mines where the earth
often collapsed on its subterranean work force. Policy No. 1141 insured a slave
known as Warwick, who fed the fiery furnaces on a Kentucky steamboat. Policy
No. 1150 covered Anthony, who labored amid the whirling blades of a sawmill in
North Carolina. The handwritten record of sales, insurance premiums and
expenditures, many described here for the first time, illuminate the inner
workings of a company born before the Civil War. That history has stirred
anxiety among some New York Life executives, who take pride in their
multiracial work force and customer base. They worry that news coverage about
the company’s ties to slavery may overshadow their efforts to provide
philanthropic support to the black community.
Insurance
companies have gone on record putting their profound regret of their erstwhile
act of such insurances. The recent
newsitem of NY Times put that - Officials typically insured the lives of white
customers for $1,000 to $5,000 in the early years. Slaves, on the other hand,
were considered property under the law and were typically insured for about
$400, the records show, and some for as little as $200. Payouts from death
claims usually went to the grieving relatives of white customers. In the case of
slaves, however, it was the slave owners — who insured their laborers and paid
the annual premiums — who collected.
The facts and figures and more importantly the cause of action [the
nature of death of such insured slaves] makes a sad and disturbing reading ..
.. ..
With sadness – S.
Sampathkumar
19th Dec 2016.
PS : excerpted from various articles predominantly of NYtimes.com
