1838 Jesuit slave sale
On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two Louisiana planters, Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000 (equivalent to approximately $3.25 million in 2023).
This sale was the culmination of a contentious and long-running debate among the Maryland Jesuits over whether to keep, sell, or free their slaves, and whether to focus on their rural estates or on their growing urban missions, including their schools.
Eventually, Roothaan removed Thomas Mulledy as provincial superior for disobeying orders and promoting scandal, exiling him to Nice for several years.
When the Society of Jesus was suppressed worldwide by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, ownership of the plantations was transferred from the Jesuits' Maryland Mission to the newly established Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen.
[10] Due to these extensive landholdings, the Propaganda Fide in Rome had come to view the American Jesuits negatively, believing they lived lavishly like manorial lords.
Kenney found the slaves facing arbitrary discipline, a meager diet, pastoral neglect, and engaging in vice.
[7] As early as 1814, the trustees of the Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen discussed manumitting all their slaves and abolishing slavery on the Jesuit plantations,[10] though in 1820, they decided against universal manumission.
[7] In 1830, the new Superior General, Jan Roothaan, returned Kenney to the United States, specifically to address the question of whether the Jesuits should divest themselves of their rural plantations altogether, which by this time had almost completely paid down their debts.
While they continued to support gradual emancipation, they believed that this option was becoming increasingly untenable, as the Maryland public's concern grew about the expanding number of free blacks.
The two feared that because the public would not accept additional manumitted blacks, the Jesuits would be forced to sell their slaves en masse.
[19] At the congregation, the senior Jesuits in Maryland voted six to four to proceed with a sale of the slaves,[20] and Dubuisson submitted to the Superior General a summary of the moral and financial arguments on either side of the debate.
[5] McSherry delayed selling the slaves because their market value had greatly diminished as a result of the Panic of 1837,[24] and because he was searching for a buyer who would agree to these conditions.
Johnson and Batey agreed to pay $115,000,[5] equivalent to $3.25 million in 2023,[25] over the course of ten years plus six percent annual interest.
[26] Johnson and Batey were to be held jointly and severally liable and each additionally identified a responsible party as a guarantor.
[29] The slaves Mulledy gathered were sent on the three-week voyage aboard the Katherine Jackson,[27] which departed Alexandria on November 13 and arrived in New Orleans on December 6.
Other slaves were sold locally in Maryland so that they would not be separated from their spouses who were either free or owned by non-Jesuits, in compliance with Roothaan's order.
[35][34] Benedict Fenwick, a Jesuit and the Bishop of Boston, privately lamented the fate of the slaves and considered the sale an extreme measure.
Of the sum, $8,000 was used to satisfy a financial obligation that,[23] following a long-running and contentious dispute, Pope Pius VII had previously determined the Maryland Jesuits owed to Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore and his successors.
[44][45] In 1856, Washington Barrow sold the slaves he purchased from Batey to William Patrick and Joseph B. Woolfolk of Iberville Parish.
[47] Due to financial difficulties, Johnson sold half his property, including some of the slaves he had purchased in 1838, to Philip Barton Key in 1844.
[48] While the 1838 slave sale gave rise to scandal at the time, the event eventually faded out of public awareness.
[56] Despite the decades of scholarship on the subject, this revelation came as a surprise to many Georgetown University members,[49][57] and some criticized the retention of Mulledy's name on the building.
[58] Between 2014 and 2015, several articles in the school newspaper, The Hoya, also brought the university's relationship with slavery and the slave sale to public attention.
[59] In September 2015, DeGioia convened a Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation to study the slave sale and recommend how to treat it in the present day.
On November 14, 2015, DeGioia announced that he and the university's board of directors accepted the working group's recommendation, and would rename the buildings accordingly.
[58][63] In 2016, The New York Times published an article that brought the history of the Jesuits' and university's relationship with slavery to national attention.
[66] On April 18, 2017, DeGioia, along with the provincial superior of the Maryland Province, and the president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, held a liturgy in which they formally apologized on behalf of their respective institutions for their participation in slavery.
This admissions preference has been described by historian Craig Steven Wilder as the most significant measure recently taken by a university to account for its historical relationship with slavery.
