 Returning to the question of reparations for slavery, U.S. citizens prior to the Civil War knew that their government permitted and supported slavery and also knew that slavery was a crime. The slave holding states certainly tried to conceal the full horrors of their “peculiar institution” but the evidence suggests that their efforts were not successful. Consequently, since few white U.S. citizens expressed dissent from their government’s complicity in the crime of slavery, although it did not punish such dissent, it seems fair to conclude that most white U.S. citizens voluntarily consented to their government’s complicity in the crime. In Locke’s language, they “assisted, concurred, or consented” to the government’s injustice against the slaves. Therefore, still following Locke, it follows that the slaves had rights to reparations against almost the entire white population of the United States for the damages that their enslavement caused them. This argument is perhaps open to the objection that there was in the period of slavery more than a little dissent to the government’s complicity in the crime of slavery; certainly the abolitionists strongly expressed their dissent. Or alternatively it could be objected that dissenting from the government’s complicity in slavery in the Deep South did carry considerable costs including costs not necessarily imposed by the government. Finally, the argument also requires a fuller account of what residents of a state must do in order to make appropriate signs of dissent from the injustice of their government, and consequently to avoid being rightly accused of consenting to that injustice. Presumably, confiding to a few friends that one was opposed to slavery would not be enough. But if these problems can be satisfactorily settled, then since the slaves had titles to reparations against the estates of those who assisted, concurred or consented to their enslavement, they would have titles to reparations against practically the entire white population, not just against the estates of the slave holders. These reparations were never paid. Instead each white generation specified that only whites of the succeeding generation were permitted to own, or compete for, or be educated by, the assets it was leaving behind. Since the slaves had titles to reparations against these assets, and the present generation of U.S. blacks is the slaves’ heir, the present generation of U.S. blacks has inherited titles to a portion of the assets held by the present white population. This includes the white immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after the abolition of slavery to take advantage of opportunities, funded by assets the slaves had titles to, or for the education the slaves and descendants were prevented from getting, or to take natural assets including land that the slaves also had titles to. The fact that they competed for these opportunities and worked hard misses the point since many of these “so called” opportunities had already been inherited by and were the property of, the slaves’ heirs (Corlett 2010: 161–186).