JESUIT INCOME FROM SALE OF ENSLAVED PEOPLE IN 1838.

This source demonstrates the financial reason that made Georgetown University involved in slavery. In fact, this source provides us with the Jesuit Income from the Sale of the Enslaved people in 1838. It was extracted from financial records of the Maryland Province archives and was compiled by Joseph Zwinge in 1909. The main contributor of this source is Elsa Barraza Mendoza. This source was created to show a detailed financial report inorder to fully demonstrate the extent to which Georgetown was involved in slavery as well as how slavery contributed to Georgetown's life today. 

Throughout the source, we observe that the Jesuits keep financial records of their income obtained from the businesses. This particular source shows us the balance sheet that depicts the different sources of income of the Maryland Province 1838. The different sources in this balance sheet are the sale of slaves and farms. This proves that they saw slaves as commodities- interchangeable goods, hence keeping such financial records of the sale. Moreover, he biggest revenue is from the sale of enslaved people. Whereby the total got from the enslaved person is almost 10times what is got from the farms. and income they got from slavery.  For example, from the farms, they got an amount of 3085 while for the sale of slaves they got a total amount of 30464. This proves that they saw slaves as commodities- interchangeable goods, hence keeping such financial records of the sale.   

          Additionally, in the document 5, A Jesuit overseer calculates the cost of slave labor (1815), in the book “Facing Georgetown’s history proves how slaves were treated in Maryland. To them slaves were more like commodities that were used to gain a certain kind of profit. In fact, they measured the importance of the enslaved people in a financial way.  This source proves again that the Jesuits did not find it immoral to practice slavery. In fact, this source displays the hypocrisy that is demonstrated in the document 8 “The Society of Jesus Sets Conditions on the Sale of  the Maryland Maryland Slaves, 1836”. In this document we find the word slaves being deleted and replaced by ‘negroes’. In fact, if someone saw this they would immediately think that these priests considered is an immoral act to practice slavery, yet as document 5 and the source of this exhibit cleary prove that Jesuits explicitly participated in slavery. In fact, they even sold enslaved people in order to get income. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Maryland Province Archives, Society of Jesus , “Jesuit income from sale of enslaved people in 1838,” Georgetown Slavery Archive, accessed December 6, 2021, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/394.

Br. Joseph Mobberrly, "A Jesuit Overseer Calculates the Cost of Slave Lbor, 1815," In Facing Georgetown’s History: A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, ed. by Adam Rothman, Elsa Barraza Mendoza, and Laurent Savoy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021) 

Fr. General Jan Roothan, " The Society of Jesus Sets Conditions on the Sale of the Maryland Slaved, 1836" In Facing Georgetown’s History: A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, ed. by Adam Rothman, Elsa Barraza Mendoza, and Laurent Savoy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021)