Draft:J.D. Beers

J.D. Beers, a Wall Street businessman, is credited with financing the building of the Southern New Jersey Railroad and running his firm J.D. Beers and Co. However, beyond his role in financing the railroad, J.D. Beers was one of the foremost players in financing the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands, benefiting greatly from his role.

Beers, running and operating his firm, began his career on Wall Street as a trader and a cotton broker, making money by "advancing funds to planters in exchange for the right to sell the incoming crop on commission." As opportunities came about to invest in dispossession of Indigenous lands, Beers, like several of his peers on Wall Street, took advantage of the opportunity. Beers began by purchasing several tracts of land he had purchased that originally belonged to Indigenous farmers. As dispossession grew, Beers invested in the two existing streams of dispossession. The first stream was investment in the banking sectors to "finance the purchase of land, slaves, mules, plows, and seed." The second stream was investment in and founding of joint-stock companies that were specifically focussed on Indigenous dispossession. In the 1830s Beers would proceed to charter banks that would use bonds as capital for dispossession, and buy the bonds these banks would use. J.D. Beers' role in dispossessing Indigenous farmers of their lands ran so wide that he even partnered with a British firm, Thomas Wilson and Co. to purchase bonds for Indigenous lands. J.D. Beers also became involved in a third track of dispossession through his involvement with land companies. "In March 1835 ...Beers joined with six other investors to form the New York and Mississippi Land Company." J.D. Beers used his land company as a "[vehicle] for pooling capital, the better to squeeze out competition and efficiently separate the dispossessed from their lands." Aided by elites, J.D. Beers was able to massively increase his wealth by selling the dispossessed Indigenous land to colonial American farmers. Southern politicians, like David Hubbard, actively directed farmers whose land had lost nutrients and fertility towards J.D. Beers' landholdings that he was selling, while land speculators actively encouraged farmers to do the same.

Through his firm J.D. Beers and Co., bond investments, bank financing, and land company, Beers became one of the most principal spearheads in dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their land. Beers made a significant amount of money through his actions, at times controlling millions of dollars of capital; "J.D. Beers and Co. and its London partner Thomas Wilson and Co. ... [closed] Alabama's first-ever multimillion-dollar bond sale and first-ever bond sale in Europe." Beers gained massively from his role in dispossession.