History of slavery in the United States

Slavery, the practice of keeping people in servitude against their will and owning them as property, had a long history in the United States. The first African slaves arrived in present day United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De'Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, and the colony was abandoned, leaving the escaped slaves behind on North American soil. In 1565 the colony of Saint Augustine in Florida became the first permanent settlement in North America, and included an unknown number of African slaves.

Related Topics:
Slavery - People - Will - Property - United States - Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón

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Later, British colonization used similar practices, importing 21 slaves from a Dutch frigate to the colony in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, three of whom are known to have been named Isabella, Antoney and Pedro. Isabella and Antoney had later given birth to a slave boy named William. This "William Tucker" is now considered the first African American born in the English colonies in North America.

Related Topics:
British colonization - Jamestown, Virginia - 1619 - English - Colonies - North America

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Originally, keeping Native Americans and other groups as slaves was tried, but eventually almost all slaves were blacks. During the British colonial period slaves were used extensively in the Southern colonies, but to a lesser degree in the Northern colonies as well. (See also History of the United States and Slavery in Colonial America). Early on, the slaves were most useful in the growing of indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton was only a side crop. Nevertheless, it was clear that slaves were most economically viable in plantation-style agriculture. Many landowners began to grow increasingly dependent on slave labor for their livelihood, and legislature responded accordingly by increasingly stricter regulations on forced labor practices, known as the Slave codes. Also, to further coerce the slaves into a state of bondage, a method of divide and conquer (e.g. lighter skinned slaves versus those with darker skin) was imperatively used, as such had been redacted from the William Lynch Speech of 1712.

Related Topics:
Native American - Blacks - History of the United States - Slavery in Colonial America - Indigo - Rice - Tobacco - Cotton - Plantation - Agriculture - Slave codes - Slaves - Divide and conquer - William Lynch Speech - 1712

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Some of the British colonies placed restrictions on the practice of slavery, others banned it completely, such as Rhode Island in 1774.

Related Topics:
Rhode Island - 1774

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The economic value of plantation slavery was reinforced in 1793 with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, a device designed to separate cotton fibers from seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. The invention revolutionized the cotton-growing industry by increasing the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day by tenfold. The result was explosive growth in the cotton industry, and a proportionate increase in the demand for slave labor in the South.

Related Topics:
1793 - Cotton gin - Eli Whitney

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Just as demand for slaves was increasing, however, supply was restricted. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. On January 1 that year, Congress acted to ban further imports. Any new slaves would have to be descendants of ones that were currently in the US. However, the internal U.S. slave trade, and the involvement in the international slave trade or the outfitting of ships for that trade by U.S. citizens were not banned. Though there were certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became more or less self-sustaining; the overland 'slave trade' from Tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas continued for another half-century. Several slave rebellions took place during the 1700s and 1800s including the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831.

Related Topics:
United States Constitution - 1787 - Congress - Import - 1808 - January 1 - Slave rebellion - Nat Turner

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Historical records indicate that extremely cruel and negligent slaveowners (such as those described by Frederick Douglass) existed alongside kinder slaveowners. These kinder slaveowners provided materially for their slaves and were less inclined to punishment, but they nonetheless denied their slaves the basic rights enjoyed by free people. Not-so-kind slave owners practiced raping black women and children, chopping off the limbs of slaves who tried to run away, and whipping. In many households, treatment of slaves varied with the slave's skin color. Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields, while lighter-skinned slaves or "house negroes" were made to work in the house and had better provisions. While essentially all scholars agree that it was a harsh regimen for the slaves, some have noted that the United States slave population was the only slave population in history that actually grew through birth, rather than importation. The interpretation of this fact has been a topic of much debate.

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Because the Midwestern states were "free states" by ordinance before even the Constitution had been ratified, and because Northeastern states became free states later through local abolition and emancipation, a Northern aggregation of free states solidified into one contiguous geographic area, and with the entry of additional free states in the Great Plains, a territory free of slavery was formed north of the Ohio River and the old Mason-Dixon line.

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Throughout the first half of the 19th century, a movement to end slavery, called abolitionism, grew in strength throughout the United States. This reform took place amidst strong support of slavery on the behalf of the South, who began to refer to it as the "Peculiar Institution" in a defensive attempt to differentiate it from other examples of forced labor. There were several strains of aformentioned reform movements. Some wanted to ship the slaves back to Africa, and settle them in a new homeland there (some also wanted to deport any free blacks in the country); a movement of this type led to the foundation of the modern-day nation of Liberia. Others wanted to simply end the practice of slavery, leaving free blacks in the United States. Another divide was over whether or not slave-owners would be compensated for the value of their lost "property". Whatever the talk was about there was no talk about compensating slaves or considering where the slave would like to live once freed. There was further disagreement over the degree of militancy to use. Some abolitionists, such as John Brown, favored the use of armed force to foment uprisings amongst the slaves, while others preferred to use the legal system.

Related Topics:
19th century - Abolitionism - Nation - Liberia - John Brown

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Influential leaders of the abolition movement (1810-60) included:

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• William Lloyd Garrison - Published The Liberator newspaper
• Harriet Beecher Stowe - Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Frederick Douglass - Nation's most powerful anti-slavery speaker, a former slave
• Harriet Tubman - Helped 350 slaves escape from the South, became known as a "conductor" on the "Underground Railroad".

The divide between a free North and an enslaved South launched a geographic, cultural and economic struggle over the next two generations which would culminate in the American Civil War. The fiercest combatants were abolitionists and the slaves themselves against an array of planters in the South and pro-slavery shipping interests in the East, battling over control of the Federal Government, economic levers, cultural institutions, and the public opinion of freeholders and church congregants.

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Due to the three-fifths compromise, slaveholders exerted power through the Federal Government and the Federal Fugitive slave laws. Anti-slavery Democratic-Republicans, Whigs, and Free Soilers achieved nominal successes in advocating an end to slavery's expansion in the West, especially during and after the Mexican War of 1846-48. (Mexico had declared the abolition of slavery in 1814 during its War of Independence.)

Related Topics:
Mexican War - 1846 - 48 - Mexico - 1814

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Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River to the North via the Underground Railroad, and their physical presence in Cincinnati, Oberlin, and other Northern towns agitated Northerners. Prominent Midwestern Governors, like Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, asserted States Rights arguments to refuse Federal jurisidiction in their states over fugitives. Northerners fumed that the pro-slavery Democratic Party controlled two or three branches of the Federal government for most of the antebellum era.

Related Topics:
Underground Railroad - Cincinnati - Oberlin - Antebellum

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Abolitionists clashed with slave-owners numerous times throughout the century. The first effort to mediate the two was known as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, an attempt to make sure that the two interests were balanced in the United States Senate.

Related Topics:
Missouri Compromise - 1820 - United States Senate

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A further split occurred in 1845 with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (presently one of the largest Christian congregations in the United States), founded on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves (the Southern Baptist Convention has long since renounced this interpretation). Dozens of Bible verses were used to back up this interpretation. This split was triggered by the opposition of northern Baptists to slavery, and in particular by the 1844 statement of the Home Mission Society declaring that a person could not be a missionary and still keep his slaves as property.

Related Topics:
1845 - Southern Baptist Convention - Christian - Bible - 1844 - Home Mission Society

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After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, border wars broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state was left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist John Brown was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." At the same time, propaganda 'wars' in Northern newspapers swept anti-slavery legislators into office under the banner of the Republican Party.

Related Topics:
Kansas-Nebraska Act - 1854 - Kansas Territory - John Brown - Bleeding Kansas

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The Dred Scott decision of 1857 asserted that slavery's presence in the Midwest was nominally lawful (when owners crossed into free states) turned Northern public opinion against slavery.

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The tensions came to a head with the 1860 presidential election. Abraham Lincoln, who was opposed to the expansion of slavery was swept into office with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of electoral votes. Lincoln however, did not appear on the ballots of ten southern states: thus his election necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. Many in the South feared that the real intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in states where it already existed, and that the sudden emancipation of 4 million slaves would be problematic. They also feared that the delicate balance of free states and slave states would be no more and that they would then be under the domination of industrial North with its preference for high tariffs on imported goods. The combination of these factors led the South to secede from the Union and thus began the American Civil War. Ironically, Southern leaders clawed back the idea of 'states rights' from Midwestern and Northeastern leaders, and each Southern state would assert their individual sovereign status and right to 'self determination'. Northern leaders like Lincoln and Chase had viewed the slavery interests as a threat politically, and with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new slave nation, the Confederate States of America, with control over the Mississippi River and the West, as politically and militarily unacceptable.

Related Topics:
1860 presidential election - Abraham Lincoln - Free state - Slave state - Tariff - American Civil War - Secession - Confederate States of America

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The consequent United States Civil War led to the end of chattel slavery in America. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a symbolic gesture that proclaimed freedom for slaves within the Confederacy, although not those in the strategically important border states of Tennessee, Maryland or Delaware. However, the proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal and it was implemented as the Union retook territory from the Confederacy.

Related Topics:
United States Civil War - Lincoln's - Emancipation Proclamation - 1863 - Confederacy

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Legally, slaves within the United States remained enslaved until the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December of 1865, eight months after the cessation of hostilities in the Civil War. Practically, the slaves in many parts of the south were freed by Union armies or when they simply left their former owners. Many joined the Union Army as workers or troops, and many more fled to Northern cities. When General Sherman led his famous march through the South to Atlanta and Savannah, hundreds of thousands of new 'freedmen' followed him in his wake.

Related Topics:
Thirteenth Amendment - 1865 - Civil War - Union Army - General Sherman

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During the period between the surrender of the last Confederate troops on May 26, 1865 and the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865 (with final recognition of the amendment on December 18), officially ending chattel slavery in the United States, slaveholding persisted in the slave states not in rebellion against the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri; Maryland established a new constitution, which abolished slavery, November 1, 1864) and also in the territories located south of 36° 30' North latitude as per the Missouri Compromise (most of the present-day states of Arizona, New Mexico, and some of Oklahoma, although very few slaves could actually be found in these territories), but history remains unclear on the precise date upon which the last chattel slave was freed in the United States. Juneteenth (June 19, 1865) is celebrated in Texas, Oklahoma, and some other areas, and commemorates the date when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the last slaves at Galveston, Texas.

Related Topics:
May 26 - 1865 - Thirteenth Amendment - December 6 - December 18 - United States - Delaware - Kentucky - Missouri - Maryland - New constitution - November 1 - 1864 - Missouri Compromise - Arizona - New Mexico - Oklahoma - Juneteenth - June 19 - Texas - Emancipation Proclamation

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