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The United States, divided into slave and free states, became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery. Driven by labor demands from new cotton plantations in the Deep South, the Upper South sold more than a million slaves who were taken to the Deep South.
- When Did Slavery Start in America?
- Cotton Gin
- Living Conditions of Enslaved People
- Slave Rebellions
- Abolitionist Movement
- Missouri Compromise
- Kansas-Nebraska Act
- John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
- Civil War
- When Did Slavery End?
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia. After the American Revolution, many colonists—particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy—b...
In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt. Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was limited by the di...
Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many enslavers owned fewer than 50 enslaved people. Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to...
Rebellions among enslaved people did occur—notably, ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Veseyin Charleston in 1822—but few were successful. The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turnerin Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner’s group, which eventually numbered around 75 Black men, murd...
In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement. From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by free Black people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspape...
America’s explosive growth—and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century—would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion. In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government’s right to restrict slavery over Missouri’s application for statehood ended in a compro...
In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War. Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Actopened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out...
In 1859, two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia—in which the abolitionist and 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown’s sons raided and occupied a federal arsenal—resulted in the deaths of 10 people and Brow...
The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil Warbegan. Though Lincoln’s anti-slavery views were well established, the central Uni...
On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamationdeprived th...
Learn about the origins, evolution and legacy of slavery in the United States, from the 17th century to the Civil War and beyond. Explore the timeline, figures, documents and photos of enslaved people and their fight for freedom.
19. aug. 2019 · The 1619 Project examines the legacy of slavery in America. Read all the stories. Artwork by Deb Bishop. Four hundred years after enslaved Africans were first brought to Virginia, most...
Slavery in the United States. Black slaves played a major, though unwilling and generally unrewarded, role in laying the economic foundations of the United States—especially in the South.
18. des. 2008 · Learn how slavery evolved from indentured labor to a profitable institution in the South, and how it shaped the Civil War and the nation. Explore the sources, resistance, and abolition of slavery, and its legacy in American history.
19. jun. 2017 · A scholar of slavery at the University of Texas at Austin debunks four common myths about the history of enslaved people in the United States, such as the duration, the origin, the ownership and the legacy of slavery. Learn how to trace the history of slavery in all its forms and make sense of the origins of wealth inequality and discrimination today.
23. aug. 2019 · Explore 400 years of data and stories of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its impact on America. Learn about the first slave ship, the last slave ship, and the archaeology of slavery.
