2 Part Essay On Slavery In Nov & Dec 1788 Issues Of The American Museum Magazine

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Seller: funbooks ✉️ (946) 100%, Location: New York, New York, US, Ships to: US, Item: 294816776073 2 PART ESSAY ON SLAVERY IN NOV & DEC 1788 ISSUES OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM MAGAZINE.

Two original & complete issues of the Federalist era magazine The American Museum (November & December 1788) containing a lengthy and historically significant two part ant-slavery essay written by an African American. Carter Woodson reprinted this essay in the first issue of The Journal of Negro History in a section titled “What the African Negro was thinking during the Eighteenth Century.”  The full text of both essays is reproduced below with footnotes by Carter Woodson.

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Essay on Negro Slavery1

No. 1

Amidst the infinite variety of moral and political subjects, proper for public commendation, it is truly surprising, that one of the most important and affecting should be so generally neglected. An encroachment on the smallest civil or political privilege, shall fan the enthusiastic flames of liberty, till it shall extend over vast and distant regions, and violently agitate a whole continent. But the cause of humanity shall be basely violated, justice shall be wounded to the heart, and national honor deeply and lastingly polluted, and not a breath or murmur shall arise to disturb the prevailing quiescence or to rouse the feelings of indignation against such general, extensive, and complicated iniquity.--To what cause are we to impute this frigid silence--this torpid indifference--this cold inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans? Why do they remain inactive, amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill and distressing complaints of expiring justice and the keen remorse of polluted integrity?--Why do they not rise up to assert the cause of God and the world, to drive the fiend injustice into remote and distant regions, and to exterminate oppression from the face of the fair fields of America?

When the united colonies revolted from Great Britain, they did it upon this principle, "that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free."--After a long, successful, and glorious struggle for liberty, during which they manifested the firmest attachment to the rights of mankind, can they so soon forget the principles that then governed their determinations? Can Americans, after the noble contempt they expressed for tyrants, meanly descend to take up the scourge? Blush, ye revolted colonies, for having apostatized from your own principles.

Slavery, in whatever point of light it is considered, is repugnant to the feelings of nature, and inconsistent with the original  rights of man. It ought therefore to be stigmatized for being unnatural; and detested for being unjust. Tis an outrage to providence and an affront offered to divine Majesty, who has given to man his own peculiar image.--That the Americans after considering the subject in this light--after making the most manly of all possible exertions in defence of liberty--after publishing to the world the principle upon which they contended, viz.: "that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free," should still retain in subjection a numerous tribe of the human race merely for their own private use and emolument, is, of all things the strongest inconsistency, the deepest reflexion on our conduct, and the most abandoned apostasy that ever took place, since the almighty fiat spoke into existence this habitable world. So flagitous a violation can never escape the notice of a just Creator whose vengeance may be now on the wing, to disseminate and hurl the arrows of destruction.

In what light can the people of Europe consider America after the strange inconsistency of her conduct? Will they not consider her as an abandoned and deceitful country? In the hour of calamity she petitioned heaven to be propitious to her cause. Her prayers were heard. Heaven pitied her distress, smiled on her virtuous exertions, and vanquished all her afflictions. The ungrateful creature forgets this timely assistance--no longer remembers her own sorrows--but basely commences oppression in her turn.--Beware America! pause--and consider the difference between the mild effulgence of approving providence and the angry countenance of incensed divinity!

The importation of slaves into America ought to be a subject of the deepest regret, to every benevolent and thinking mind.--And one of the greatest defects in the federal system, is the liberty it allows on this head. Venerable in every thing else, it is injudicious here; and it is to be much deplored, that a system of so much political perfection, should be stained with any thing that does an outrage to human nature. As a door, however, is open to amendment, for the sake of distressed humanity, of injured national reputation, and the glory of doing so benevolent a thing, I hope some wise and virtuous patriot will advocate the measure, and introduce an alteration in that pernicious part of the government.--So far from encouraging the importation of slaves, and countenancing that vile traffic in human flesh; the members of the late continental conven tion2  should have seized the happy opportunity of prohibiting for ever this cruel species of reprobated villainy.--That they did not do so, will for ever diminish the luster of their other proceedings, so highly extolled, and so justly distinguished for their intrinsic value. Let us for a moment contrast the sentiments and actions of the Europeans on this subject, with those of our own countrymen. In France the warmest and most animated exertions are making, in order to introduce the entire abolition of the slave trade; and in England many of the first characters of the country advocate the same measure, with an enthusiastic philanthropy. The prime minister himself is at the head of that society; and nothing can equal the ardour of their endeavours, but the glorious goodness of the cause.3 --Will the Americans allow the people of England to get the start of them in acts of humanity? Forbid it shame!

The practice of stealing, or bartering for human flesh is pregnant with the most glaring turpitude, and the blackest barbarity of disposition.--For can any one say, that this is doing as he would be done by? Will such a practice stand the scrutiny of this great rule of moral government? Who can without the complicated emotions of anger and impatience, suppose himself in the predicament of a slave? Who can bear the thoughts of his relatives being torn from him by a savage enemy; carried to distant regions of the habitable globe, never more to return; and treated there as the unhappy Africans are in this country? Who can support the reflexion of his father--his mother--his sister--or his wife--perhaps his children--being barbarously snatched away by a foreign invader, without the prospect of ever beholding them again? Who can reflect upon their being afterwards publicly exposed to sale--obliged to labor with unwearied assiduity--and because all things are not possible to be performed, by persons so unaccustomed to robust exercise, scourged with all the rage and anger of malignity, until their unhappy carcasses are covered with ghastly wounds and frightful contusions? Who can reflect on these things when applying the case to himself, without being chilled with horror, at  circumstances so extremely shocking?--Yet hideous as this concise and imperfect description is, of the sufferings sustained by many of our slaves, it is nevertheless true; and so far from being exaggerated, falls infinitely short of a thousand circumstances of distress, which have been recounted by different writers on the subject, and which contribute to make their situation in this life, the most absolutely wretched, and completely miserable, that can possibly be conceived.--In many places in America, the slaves are treated with every circumstance of rigorous inhumanity, accumulated hardship, and enormous cruelty.--Yet when we take them from Africa, we deprive them of a country which God hath given them for their own; as free as we are, and as capable of enjoying that blessing. Like pirates we go to commit devastation on the coast of an innocent country, and among a people who never did us wrong.

An insatiable, avaricious desire to accumulate riches, cooperating with a spirit of luxury and injustice, seems to be the leading cause of this peculiarly degrading and ignominious practice. Being once accustomed to subsist without labour, we become soft and voluptuous; and rather than afterwards forego the gratification of our habitual indolence and ease, we countenance the infamous violation, and sacrifice at the shrine of cruelty, all the finer feelings of elevated humanity.

Considering things in this view, there surely can be nothing more justly reprehensible or disgusting than the extravagant finery of many country people's daughters. It hath not been at all uncommon to observe as much gauze, lace and other trappings, on one of those country maidens as hath employed two or three of her father's slaves, for twelve months afterwards, to raise tobacco to pay for. Tis an ungrateful reflexion that all this frippery and effected finery, can only he supported by the sweat of another person's brow, and consequently only by lawful rapine and injustice. If these young females could devote as much time from their amusements, as would be necessary for reflexion; or was there any person of humanity at hand who could inculcate the indecency of this kind of extravagance, I am persuaded that they have hearts good enough to reject with disdain, the momentary pleasure of making a figure, in behalf of the rational and lasting delight of contributing by their forbearance to the happiness of many thousand individuals.

In Maryland where slaves are treated with as much lenity, as perhaps they are any where, their situation is to the last degree ineligible. They live in wretched cots, that scarcely secure them from the inclemency of the weather; sleep in the ashes or on straw, wear the coarsest clothing, and subsist on the most ordinary food that the country produces. In all things they are subject to their master's absolute command, and, of course, have no will of their own. Thus circumstanced, they are subject to great brutality, and are often treated with it. In particular instances, they may be better provided for in this state, but this suffices for a general description. But in the Carolinas and the island of Jamaica, the cruelties that have been wantonly exercised on those miserable creatures, are without a precedent in any other part of the world. If those who have written on the subject, may be believed, it is not uncommon there, to tie a slave up and whip him to death.

On all occasions impartiality in the distribution of justice should be observed. The little state of Rhode Island has been reprobated by other states, for refusing to enter into measures respecting a new general government; and so far it is admitted that she is culpable.4  But if she is worthy of blame in this respect, she is entitled to the highest admiration for the philanthropy, justice, and humanity she hath displayed, respecting the subject I am treating on. She hath passed an act prohibiting the importation of slaves into that state, and forbidding her citizens to engage in the iniquitous traffic. So striking a proof of her strong attachment to the rights of humanity, will rescue her name from oblivion, and bid her live in the good opinion of distant and unborn generations.

Slavery, unquestionably, should be abolished, particularly in this country; because it is inconsistent with the declared principles of the American Revolution. The sooner, therefore, we set about it, the better. Either we should set our slaves at liberty, immediately, and colonize them in the western territory;5  or we should immediately take measures for the gradual abolition of it, so that it may become a known, and fixed point, that ultimately, universal liberty, in these united states, shall triumph.--This is the least we can do in order to evince our sense of the irreparable outrages we have committed, to wipe off the odium we have incurred,  and to give mankind a confidence again in the justice, liberality, and honour of our national proceedings.

It would not be difficult to show, were it necessary, that America would soon become a richer and more happy country, provided the step was adopted. That corrosive anguish of persevering in anything improper, which now embitters the enjoyments of life, would vanish as the mist of a foggy morn doth before the rising sun; and we should find as great a disparity between our present situation, and that which would succeed to it, as subsists between a cloudy winter, and a radiant spring.--Besides, our lands would not be then cut down for the support of a numerous train of useless inhabitants--useless, I mean, to themselves, and effectually to us, by encouraging sloth and voluptuousness among our young farmers and planters, who might otherwise know how to take care of their money, as well as how to dissipate it.--In all other respects, I conceive them to be as valuable as we are--as capable of worthy purposes, and to possess the same dignity that we do, in the estimation of providence; although the value of their work apart, for which we are dependent on them, we generally consider them as good for nothing, and accordingly, treat them with greatest neglect.

But be it remembered, that this cause is the cause of heaven; and that the father of them as well as of us, will not fail, at a future settlement, to adjust the account between us, with a dreadful attention to justice.

Othello Baltimore, May 10, 1788.

--American Museum, IV, 412-415.


Essay on Negro Slavery

No. II

Upon no better principle do we plunder the coasts of Africa, and bring away its wretched inhabitants as slaves than that, by which the greater fish swallows up the lesser. Superior power seems only to produce superior brutality; and that weakness and imbecility, which ought to engage our protection, and interest the feelings of social benevolence in behalf of the defenceless, seems only to provoke us to acts of illiberal outrage and unmanly violence.

The practice which has been followed by the English nation, since the establishment of the slave trade--I mean that of stirring up the natives of Africa, against each other, with a view of pur chasing the prisoners mutually taken in battle, must strike the humane mind with sentiments of the deepest abhorrence, and confer on that people a reproach, as lasting as time itself. It is surprising that the eastern world did not unite, to discourage a custom so diabolical in its tendency, and to exterminate a species of oppression which humbles the dignity of all mankind. But this torpid inattention can only be accounted for, by adverting to the savage disposition of the times, which countenanced cruelties unheard of at this enlightened period. What rudeness of demeanor and brutality of manner, which had been introduced into Europe, by those swarms of barbarians, that overwhelmed it from the north, had hardly begun to dissipate before the enlivening sun of civilization, when this infernal practice first sprang up into existence. Before this distinguished era of refined barbarity, the sons of Africa were in possession of all the mild enjoyments of peace--all the pleasing delights of uninterrupted harmony--and all the diffusive blessings of profound tranquility. Boundless must be the punishment, which irritated providence will inflict on those whose wanton cruelty has prompted them to destroy this fair arrangement of nature--this flowery prospect of human felicity. Engulphed in the dark abyss of never ending misery, they shall in bitterness atone for the stab thus given to human nature; and in anguish unutterable expiate crimes, for which nothing less than eternal sufferings can make adequate retribution!--Equally iniquitous is the practice of robbing that country of its inhabitants; and equally tremendous will be the punishment. The voice of injured thousands, who have been violently torn from their native country, and carried to distant and inhospitable climes--the bitter lamentations of the wretched, helpless female--the cruel agonizing sensations of the husband, the father and the friend--will ascend to the throne of Omnipotence, and, from the elevated heights of heaven, cause him, with the whole force of almighty vengeance, to hurl the guilty perpetrators of those inhuman beings, down the steep precipice of inevitable ruin, into the bottomless gulph of final, irretrievable, and endless destruction!

Ye sons of America, forbear!--Consider the dire consequences, that will attend the prosecution, against which the all-powerful God of nature holds up his hands, and loudly proclaims, desist!

In the insolence of self-consequence, we are accustomed to esteem ourselves and the Christian powers of Europe, the only  civilized people on the globe; the rest without distinction, we presumptuously denominate barbarians. But, when the practices above mentioned, come to be deliberately considered--when added to these, we take a view of the proceedings of the English in the East Indies, under the direction of the late Lord Clive, and remember what happened in the streets of Bengal and Calcutta--when we likewise reflect on our American mode of driving, butchering and exterminating the poor defenceless Indians, the native and lawful proprietors of the soil--we shall acknowledge, if we possess the smallest degree of candor, that the appellation of barbarian does not belong to them alone. While we continue those practices the term christian will only be a burlesque expression, signifying no more than that it ironically denominates the rudest sect of barbarians that ever disgraced the hand of their Creator. We have the precepts of the gospel for the government of our moral deportment, in violation of which, those outrageous wrongs are committed; but they have no such meliorating influence among them, and only adhere to the simple dictates of reason, and natural religion, which they never violate.

Might not the inhabitants of Africa, with still greater justice on their side, than we have on ours, cross the Atlantic, seize our citizens, carry them into Africa, and make slaves of them, provided they were able to do it? But should this be really the case, every corner of the globe would reverberate with the sound of African oppression; so loud would be our complaint, and so "feeling our appeal" to the inhabitants of the world at large. We should represent them as a lawless, piratical set of unprincipled robbers, plunderers and villains, who basely prostituted the superior power and information, which God had given them for worthy purposes to the vilest of all ends. We should not hesitate to say that they made use of those advantages only to infringe upon every dictate of justice; to trample under foot every suggestion of principle, and to spurn, with contempt, every right of humanity.

The Algerines are reprobated all the world over, for their unlawful depredations; and stigmatized as pirates, for their unreasonable exactions from foreign nations. But, the Algerines are no greater pirates than the Americans; nor are they a race more destructive to the happiness to mankind. The depredations of the latter on the coast of Africa, and upon the Indians' Territory make the truth of this assertion manifest. The piratical depredations of  the Algerines appear to be a judgment from heaven upon the nations, to punish their perfidy and atrocious violations of justice; and never did any people more justly merit the scourge than Americans, on whom it seems to fall with peculiar and reiterated violence. When they yoke our citizens to the plow, and compel them to labour in that degraded manner, they only retaliate on us for similar barbarities. For Algiers is a part of the same country, whose helpless inhabitants we are accustomed to carry away. But the English and Americans cautiously avoid engaging with a warlike people, whom they fear to attack in a manner so base and unworthy; whilst the Algerines, more generous and courageous plunderers, are not afraid to make war on brave and well-disciplined enemies, who are capable of making a gallant resistance.

Whoever examines into the conditions of the slaves in America will find them in a state of the most uncultivated rudeness. Not instructed in any kind of learning, they are grossly ignorant of all refinement, and have little else about them, belonging to the nature of civilized man, than mere form. They are strangers to almost every idea, that doth not relate to their labour or their food; and though naturally possessed of strong sagacity, and lively parts, are, in all respects, in a state of most deplorable brutality.--This is owing to the iron-hand of oppression, which ever crushes the bud of genius and binds up in chains every expansion of the human mind.--Such is their extreme ignorance that they are utterly unacquainted with the laws of the world--the injunctions of religion--their own natural rights, and the forms, ceremonies and privileges of marriage originally established by the Divinity. Accordingly they lived in open violation of the precepts of christianity and with as little formality or restrictions as the brutes of the field, unite for the purposes of procreation. Yet this is a civilized country and a most enlightened period of the world! The resplendent glory of the gospel is at hand, to conduct us in safety through the labyrinths of life. Science hath grown up to maturity, and is discovered to possess not only all the properties of solidity of strength, but likewise every ornament of elegance, and every embellishment of fancy. Philosophy hath here attained the most exalted height of elevation; and the art of government hath received such refinements among us, as hath equally astonished our friends, our enemies and ourselves. In fine, no annals are more brilliant than those of America; nor do any more luxuriantly  abound with examples of exalted heroism, refined policy, and sympathetic humanity. Yet now the prospect begins to change; and all the splendor of this august assemblage, will soon be overcast by sudden and impenetrable clouds; and American greatness be obliterated and swallowed up by one enormity. Slavery diffuses the gloom, and casts around us the deepest shade of approaching darkness. No longer shall the united states of America be famed for liberty. Oppression pervades their bowels; and while they exhibit a fair exterior to the other parts of the world, they are nothing more than "painted sepulchres," containing within them nought but rottenness and corruption.

Ye voluptuous, ye opulent and great, who hold in subjection such numbers of your fellow-creatures, and suffer these things to happen--beware! Reflect on this lamentable change, that may, at a future period, take place against you. Arraigned before the almighty Sovereign of the universe, how will you answer the charge of such complicated enormity? The presence of these slaves, who have been lost, for want of your instruction, and by means of your oppression, shall make you dart deeper into the flames, to avoid their just reproaches, and seek out for an asylum, in the hidden corners of perdition.

Many persons of opulence in Virginia, and the Carolinas, treat their unhappy slaves with every circumstance of coolest neglect, and the most deliberate indifference. Surrounded with a numerous train of servants, to contribute to their personal ease, and wallowing in all the luxurious plenitude of riches, they neglect the wretched source, whence they draw this profusion. Many of their negroes, on distant estates, are left to the entire management of inhuman overseers, where they suffer for the want of that sustenance, which, at the proprietors seat of residence, is wastefully given to the dogs. It frequently happens, on these large estates, that they are not clothed, 'till winter is nearly expired; and then, the most valuable only are attended to; the young, and the labour-worn, having no other allowance, in this respect, than the tattered garments, thrown off by the more fortunate. A single peck of corn a week, or the like measure of rice, is the ordinary quantity of provision for a hard working slave; to which a small quantity of meat is occasionally, tho' rarely, added. While those miserable degraded persons thus scantily subsist, all the produce of their unwearied toil, is taken away to satiate their rapacious master. He,  devoted wretch! thoughtless of the sweat and toil with which his wearied, exhausted dependents procure what he extravagantly dissipates, not contented with the ordinary luxuries of life, is, perhaps, planning, at the time, some improvement on the voluptuous art.--Thus he sets up two carriages instead of one; maintains twenty servants, when a fourth part of that number are more than sufficient to discharge the business of personal attendance; makes every animal, proper for the purpose, bleed around him, in order to supply the gluttonous profusion of his table; and generally gives away what his slaves are pining for;--those very slaves, whose labour enables him to display this liberality!--No comment is necessary, to expose the peculiar folly, ingratitude, and infamy of such execrable conduct.

But the custom of neglecting those slaves, who have been worn out in our service, is unhappily found to prevail, not only among the more opulent but thro' the more extensive round of the middle and inferior ranks of life. No better reason can be given for this base inattention, than that they are no longer able to contribute to our emoluments. With singular dishonor, we forget the faithful instrument of past enjoyment, and when, by length of time, it becomes debilitated, it is, like a withered stalk, ungratefully thrown away.

Our slaves unquestionably have the strongest of all claims upon us, for protection and support; we having compelled them to involuntary servitude, and deprived them of every means of protecting or supporting themselves. The injustice of our conduct, and barbarity of our neglect, when this reflexion is allowed to predominate, becomes so glaringly conspicuous, as even to excite, against ourselves, the strongest emotion of detestation and abhorrence.

To whom are the wretched sons of Africa to apply for redress, if their cruel master treats them with unkindness? To whom will they resort for protection, if he is base enough to refuse it to them? The law is not their friend;--alas! too many statutes are enacted against them. The world is not their friend;--the iniquity is too general and extensive. No one who hath slaves of his own, will protect those of another, less the practice should be retorted. Thus when their masters abandon them, their situation is destitute and forlorn, and God is their only friend!

Let us imitate the conduct of a neighboring state, and immedi ately take measures, at least, for the gradual abolition of slavery.6  Justice demands it of us, and we ought not to hesitate in obeying its inviolable mandates.--All the feelings of pity, compassion, affection, and benevolence--all the emotions of tenderness, humanity, philanthropy, and goodness--all the sentiments of mercy, probity, honour, and integrity, unite to solicit for their emancipation. Immortal will be the glory of accomplishing their liberation; and eternal the disgrace of keeping them in chains.

But, if the state of Pennsylvania is to be applauded for her conduct, that of South Carolina can never be too strongly execrated.7  The legislature of that state, at no very remote period, brought in a bill for prohibiting the use of letters to their slaves, and forbidding them the privilege of being taught to read!--This was a deliberate attempt to enslave the minds of those unfortunate objects, whose persons they already held in arbitrary subjection:--Detestable deviation from the becoming rectitude of man.

One more peculiarly distressing circumstance remains to be recounted, before I take my final leave of the subject.--In the ordinary course of the business of the country, the punishment of relatives frequently happens on the same farm, and in view of each other:--The father often sees his beloved son--the son his venerable sire--the mother her much-loved daughter--the daughter her affectionate parent--the husband the wife of his bosom, and she the husband of her affection, cruelly bound up without delicacy or mercy, and punished with all extremity of incensed rage, and all the rigour of unrelenting severity, whilst these unfortunate wretches dare not even interpose in each other's behalf. Let us reverse the case and suppose it ours:--all is silent horror!

Othello Maryland, May 23, 1788.

--American Museum, IV, 509-512.

Footnotes

[return ] 1. "Othello," the author of these two essays, was identified as a Negro by Abbé Gregoire in his "De la litterature des Nègres."

[return ] 2. The writer refers here to the Convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution of the United States.

[return ] 3. Here the writer has in mind the organization of the English Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the support given the cause by Wilberforce, Pitt, Fox and Burke in England and by Brissot, Clavière and Montmorin in France.

[return ] 4. Rhode Island had failed to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

[return ] 5. During the first forty years of the republic there was much talk about colonizing the Negroes in the West.

[return ] 6. The writer refers here to the acts of Pennsylvania, providing for the abolition of slavery.

[return ] 7. In 1740 South Carolina enacted a law prohibiting any one from teaching a slave to read or employing one in "any manner of writing." Georgia enacted the same law in 1770.

The American Museum  (magazine) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search

The American Museum  (also known as, The American Museum; or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces &c. Prose and Poetical  and The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine ) was a monthly American literary magazine  published by Mathew Carey  in the late-18th century. The American Museum  "shares with the Columbian Magazine  the honor of being the first successful American magazine."[1]

Carey established the magazine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , using $400 that was given to him by Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette . Carey published a total of 72 issues (twelve volumes) of the magazine—one each month from January 1787 to December 1792. The magazine reprinted significant historical documents of American history and also some original work.

In its first edition, The American Museum  republished Thomas Paine 's Common Sense .[1]  The proposed Constitution of the United States  was first published in the magazine. Contributors to the magazine included John Adams , Timothy Dwight IV , Benjamin Franklin , Philip Freneau , Alexander Hamilton , Francis Hopkinson , David Humphreys , Thomas Jefferson , James Madison , Benjamin Rush , John Trumbull , George Washington  and Noah Webster .

The American Museum  had approximately 1,250 subscribers, including many of the notable men of the United States.[1]  (In the July 1787 edition, Carey included a list of subscribers, which included Benjamin Franklin , John Jay , Thomas Jefferson , James Madison , and George Washington .) However, many of the subscriptions were credit accounts and the magazine was not profitable. As a result, Carey was forced to stop publication at the end of 1792.[2]

Slavery in the United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search This article is about slavery from the founding of the United States in 1776. For the colonial period, see Slavery in the colonial history of the United States . For modern illegal slavery, see Human trafficking in the United States . For modern legal slavery, see Penal labor in the United States . "Peculiar institution" redirects here. For the book, see The Peculiar Institution . An animation showing when United States territories and states forbade or allowed slavery, 1789–1861 Slave auction block, Green Hill Plantation, Campbell County, Virginia , Historic American Buildings Survey
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The legal institution of human chattel slavery , comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans  and African Americans , existed in the United States of America  from its founding in 1776 until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment  in 1865. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas . From 1526, during early colonial days , it was practiced in Britain's colonies , including the Thirteen Colonies  that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property and could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states  until its abolition in 1865. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction , many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation , sharecropping , and convict leasing .

By the time of the American Revolution  (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste  associated with African ancestry.[1]  During and immediately following the Revolution, abolitionist  laws were passed in most Northern states  and a movement developed to abolish slavery. The role of slavery under the United States Constitution  (1789) was the most contentious issue during its drafting. Although the creators of the Constitution never used the word "slavery", the final document, through the three-fifths clause , gave slave-owners disproportionate political power by augmenting the congressional representation of slaveholding states.[2]  All Northern states had abolished slavery in some way by 1805; sometimes, abolition was a gradual process, and hundreds of people were still enslaved in the Northern states as late as the 1840 Census . Some slaveowners, primarily in the Upper South , freed  their slaves, and philanthropists and charitable groups bought and freed others. The Atlantic slave trade  was outlawed by individual states beginning during the American Revolution. The import trade was banned  by Congress in 1808, although smuggling was common thereafter.[3] [4] : 7   It has been estimated that about 30% of congressmen who were born before 1840 were, at some time in their lives, owners of slaves. This is argued to have affected the progress of legislation against slavery.[5]

The rapid expansion of the cotton industry  in the Deep South  after the invention of the cotton gin  greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states  continued as slave societies. The United States became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states . 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. The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million.[6] [7]  As the United States expanded, the Southern states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to allow proslavery  forces to maintain their power in the country. The new territories  acquired by the Louisiana Purchase  and the Mexican Cession  were the subject of major political crises and compromises. By 1850, the newly rich, cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union , and tensions continued to rise. Slavery was defended in the South as a "positive good" , and the largest religious denominations split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.

When Abraham Lincoln  won the 1860 election  on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, seven slave states broke away to form the Confederacy . Shortly afterward, the Civil War  began when Confederate forces attacked the U.S. Army's Fort Sumter  in South Carolina. Four additional slave states then joined the confederacy after Lincoln requested arms from them to make a retaliatory strike. Due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts  and the Emancipation Proclamation  in 1863, the war effectively ended chattel slavery in most places. Following the Union victory in May 1865, and upon ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment  in December 1865, chattel slavery was effectively abolished in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

Contents
  • 1 Origins
    • 1.1 First enslavements
    • 1.2 First continental African enslaved people
    • 1.3 Indentured servants
    • 1.4 First slave laws
    • 1.5 First inherited status laws
    • 1.6 Increasing slave trade
    • 1.7 First religious status laws
    • 1.8 First anti-slavery causes
    • 1.9 Slavery in British colonies
    • 1.10 Slavery in French Louisiana
  • 2 Revolutionary era
    • 2.1 Freedom offered as incentive by British
    • 2.2 Slaves and free blacks who supported the rebellion
    • 2.3 The birth of abolitionism in the new United States
    • 2.4 Constitution of the United States
      • 2.4.1 Three-fifths Compromise
  • 3 1790 to 1860
    • 3.1 Slave trade
    • 3.2 "Fancy ladies"
    • 3.3 Justifications in the South
      • 3.3.1 "A necessary evil"
      • 3.3.2 "A positive good"
      • 3.3.3 Proposed expansion of slavery
    • 3.4 Abolitionism in the North
  • 4 Agitation against slavery
    • 4.1 Colonization movement
    • 4.2 Prohibiting the international trade
    • 4.3 Post-revolution Southern manumissions
    • 4.4 Domestic slave trade and forced migration
    • 4.5 Treatment
    • 4.6 Slave codes
    • 4.7 High demand and smuggling
    • 4.8 War of 1812
    • 4.9 Religion
    • 4.10 Slave rebellions
    • 4.11 Anti-literacy laws
  • 5 Economics
    • 5.1 Efficiency of slaves
    • 5.2 Prices of slaves
    • 5.3 Effects on Southern economic development
    • 5.4 Sexual economy of American slavery
  • 6 1850s
    • 6.1 Freedom suits and Dred Scott
  • 7 Civil War and emancipation
    • 7.1 1860 presidential election
    • 7.2 Civil War
    • 7.3 Emancipation Proclamation
    • 7.4 End of slavery
    • 7.5 Cost comparisons
  • 8 Reconstruction to the present
    • 8.1 Convict leasing
    • 8.2 Educational issues
    • 8.3 Apologies
    • 8.4 Political legacy
  • 9 Native Americans
    • 9.1 Native Americans as slaves
    • 9.2 Native Americans holding African-American slaves
    • 9.3 Inter-tribal slavery
  • 10 Black slave owners
  • 11 Distribution
    • 11.1 Distribution of slaves
    • 11.2 Distribution of slaveholders
  • 12 Historiography
  • 13 See also
    • 13.1 History of slavery in individual states and territories
  • 14 Notes
  • 15 References
  • 16 Bibliography
    • 16.1 National and comparative studies
    • 16.2 State and local studies
      • 16.2.1 Video
    • 16.3 Historiography
    • 16.4 Primary sources
  • 17 Further reading
    • 17.1 Scholarly books
    • 17.2 Scholarly articles
    • 17.3 Oral histories and autobiographies of ex-slaves
    • 17.4 Discussions by foreigners
    • 17.5 Literary and cultural criticism
    • 17.6 Documentary films
  • 18 External links

Origins Main article: Slavery in the colonial history of the United States Further information: Slavery in New France

First enslavements Main article: Slavery among Native Americans in the United States

In 1508, Ponce de León  established the Spanish settlement in Puerto Rico , which used the native Taínos  for labor. The Taínos were largely exterminated by war, overwork and diseases brought by the Spanish. In 1513, to supplement the dwindling Taíno population, the first enslaved African people were imported to Puerto Rico. The abolition of Indian slavery in 1542 with the New Laws  increased the demand for African slaves.[8]

A century and a half later, the British conducted enslaving raids in what is now Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and possibly Alabama.[9]  The Charles Town  slave trade, which included both trading and direct raids by colonists,[10]  was the largest among the British colonies in North America.[11]  Between 1670 and 1715, between 24,000 and 51,000 captive Native Americans  were exported from South Carolina—more than the number of Africans imported to the colonies of the future United States during the same period.[12] [13]  Additional enslaved Native Americans were exported from South Carolina to Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.[12]  The historian Alan Gallay says, "the trade in Indian slaves was at the center of the English empire's development in the American South. The trade in Indian slaves was the most important factor affecting the South in the period 1670 to 1715"; intertribal wars to capture slaves destabilized English colonies, Spanish Florida, and French Louisiana.[12]

First continental African enslaved people Main article: Slavery in the colonial history of the United States

The first Africans enslaved within continental North America arrived via Santo Domingo  to the San Miguel de Gualdape  colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay  area of present-day South Carolina ), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón  in 1526.[14]  The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the enslaved people revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans . De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterward of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the enslaved people who had not escaped returned to Santo Domingo.[14]

On August 28, 1565, St. Augustine, Florida was founded by the Spanish conquistador Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles , and he brought three enslaved Africans with him. During the 16th and 17th centuries, St. Augustine was the hub of the trade in enslaved people in Spanish colonial Florida and the first permanent settlement in what would become the continental United States to include enslaved Africans.[15]  The first birth of an enslaved African in what is now the United States was Agustín, who was born in St. Augustine in 1606.[16]

Indentured servants Further information: Indentured servitude in British America

Decades later, in the early years of the Chesapeake Bay  settlements, colonial officials found it difficult to attract and retain laborers under the harsh frontier conditions, and there was a high mortality rate.[17]  Most laborers came from Britain as indentured laborers , signing contracts of indenture to pay with work for their passage, their upkeep and their training, usually on a farm. The colonies had agricultural economies. These indentured laborers were often young people who intended to become permanent residents. In some cases, convicted criminals were transported to the colonies as indentured laborers, rather than being imprisoned. The indentured laborers were not slaves, but were required to work for four to seven years in Virginia to pay the cost of their passage and maintenance.[18]

Destination of enslaved Africans (1519–1867)[19]
DestinationPercent
British mainland North America 3.7%
British Leeward Islands 3.2%
British Windward Islands  and Trinidad (British 1797–1867) 3.8%
Jamaica (Spanish 1519–1655, British 1655–1867) 11.2%
Barbados (British) 5.1%
The Guianas  (British, Dutch, French) 4.2%
French Windward Islands 3.1%
Saint-Domingue  (French) 8.2%
Spanish mainland North and South America 4.4%
Spanish Caribbean islands 8.2%
Dutch Caribbean islands 1.3%
Northeastern Brazil (Portuguese) 9.3%
Bahia , Brazil (Portuguese) 10.7%
Southeastern Brazil (Portuguese) 21.1%
Elsewhere in the Americas 1.1%
Africa 1.4%

The first Africans to reach the colonies that England was struggling to establish were a group of some 20 enslaved people who arrived at Point Comfort, Virginia, near Jamestown , in August 1619, brought by British privateers who had seized them from a captured Portuguese slave ship .[20] [21] [22]  Colonists do not appear to have made indenture contracts for most Africans. Although it is possible that some of them were freed after a certain period, most of them remained enslaved for life.[23]  The historian Ira Berlin  noted that what he called the "charter generation" in the colonies was sometimes made up of mixed-race men (Atlantic Creoles) who were indentured servants and whose ancestry was African and Iberian. They were descendants of African women and Portuguese or Spanish men who worked in African ports as traders or facilitators in the trade of enslaved people. The transformation of the status of Africans, from indentured servitude to slaves in a racial caste that they could not leave or escape, happened over the next generation.

First slave laws

There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history, but in 1640, a Virginia court sentenced John Punch , an African, to life in servitude after he attempted to flee his service.[24]  The two whites with whom he fled were sentenced only to an additional year of their indenture, and three years' service to the colony.[25]  This marked the first de facto  legal sanctioning of slavery in the English colonies, and was one of the first legal distinctions made between Europeans and Africans.[24] [26]

Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia Slaves shipped to those regions that are part of the present-day United States[27]
DateSlaves
1626–1650 824
1651–1675 0
1676–1700 3,327
1701–1725 3,277
1726–1750 34,004
1751–1775 84,580
1776–1800 67,443
1801–1825 109,545
1826–1850 1,850
1851–1875 476
Total 305,326

In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to authorize slavery through enacted law.[28]  Massachusetts passed the Body of Liberties, which prohibited slavery in many instances but allowed people to be enslaved if they were captives of war, if they sold themselves into slavery or were purchased elsewhere, or if they were sentenced to slavery as punishment by the governing authority.[28]  The Body of Liberties used the word "strangers" to refer to people bought and sold as slaves; they were generally not English subjects. Colonists came to equate this term with Native Americans and Africans.[29]

In 1654, John Casor , a black indentured servant in colonial Virginia, was the first man to be declared a slave in a civil case. He had claimed to an officer that his master, Anthony Johnson , had held him past his indenture term. Johnson himself was a free black , who had arrived in Virginia in 1621 from Angola. A neighbor, Robert Parker, told Johnson that if he did not release Casor, he would testify in court to this fact. Under local laws, Johnson was at risk for losing some of his headright  lands for violating the terms of indenture. Under duress, Johnson freed Casor. Casor entered into a seven years' indenture with Parker. Feeling cheated, Johnson sued Parker to repossess Casor. A Northampton County, Virginia  court ruled for Johnson, declaring that Parker illegally was detaining Casor from his rightful master who legally held him "for the duration of his life".[30]

First inherited status laws

During the colonial period, the status of enslaved people was affected by interpretations related to the status of foreigners in England. England had no system of naturalizing immigrants to its island or its colonies. Since persons of African origins were not English subjects by birth, they were among those peoples considered foreigners and generally outside English common law . The colonies struggled with how to classify people born to foreigners and subjects. In 1656 Virginia, Elizabeth Key Grinstead , a mixed-race  woman, successfully gained her freedom and that of her son in a challenge to her status by making her case as the baptized Christian daughter of the free Englishman Thomas Key. Her attorney was an English subject, which may have helped her case. (He was also the father of her mixed-race son, and the couple married after Key was freed.)[31]

Slaves on a South Carolina plantation (The Old Plantation , c. 1790)

In 1662, shortly after the Elizabeth Key trial and similar challenges, the Virginia royal colony  approved a law adopting the principle of partus sequitur ventrem  (called partus , for short), stating that any children born in the colony would take the status of the mother. A child of an enslaved mother would be born into slavery, regardless if the father were a freeborn Englishman or Christian. This was a reversal of common law  practice in England, which ruled that children of English subjects took the status of the father. The change institutionalized the skewed power relationships between those who enslaved people and enslaved women, freed white men from the legal responsibility to acknowledge or financially support their mixed-race  children, and somewhat confined the open scandal of mixed-race children and miscegenation  to within the slave quarters.

Increasing slave trade

In 1672, King Charles II rechartered the Royal African Company  (it had initially been set up in 1660) as an English monopoly for the African slave and commodities trade. In 1698, by statute, the English parliament opened the trade to all English subjects.[32]  The trade of enslaved people to the mid-Atlantic colonies increased substantially in the 1680s, and, by 1710, the African population in Virginia had increased to 23,100 (42% of total); Maryland contained 8,000 Africans (14.5% of total).[33]  In the early 18th century, England passed Spain and Portugal to become the world's leading trader of enslaved people.[34] [35]  From the early 18th century British colonial merchants, especially in Charleston, South Carolina , challenged the monopoly of the Royal African Company, and Joseph Wragg  and Benjamin Savage became the first independent traders of enslaved people to break through the monopoly by the 1730s.[36]

First religious status laws

The Virginia slave codes  of 1705 further defined as slaves those people imported from nations that were not Christian . Native Americans  who were sold to colonists by other Native Americans (from rival tribes), or captured by Europeans during village raids, were also defined as slaves.[37]  This codified the earlier principle of non-Christian foreigner enslavement.

First anti-slavery causes Ledger  of sale of 118 slaves, Charleston, South Carolina , c. 1754

In 1735, the Georgia Trustees  enacted a law prohibiting slavery in the new colony, which had been established in 1733 to enable the "worthy poor" as well as persecuted European Protestants to have a new start. Slavery was then legal in the other 12 English colonies. Neighboring South Carolina had an economy based on the use of enslaved labor. The Georgia Trustees wanted to eliminate the risk of slave rebellions  and make Georgia better able to defend against attacks from the Spanish to the south, who offered freedom to escaped enslaved people. James Edward Oglethorpe  was the driving force behind the colony, and the only trustee to reside in Georgia. He opposed slavery on moral grounds as well as for pragmatic reasons, and vigorously defended the ban on slavery against fierce opposition from Carolina merchants of enslaved people and land speculators.[38] [39] [40]

The Protestant  Scottish  highlanders who settled what is now Darien, Georgia , added a moral anti-slavery argument, which became increasingly rare in the South, in their 1739 "Petition of the Inhabitants of New Inverness".[41]  By 1750 Georgia authorized slavery in the colony because it had been unable to secure enough indentured servants as laborers. As economic conditions in England began to improve in the first half of the 18th century, workers had no reason to leave, especially to face the risks in the colonies.

Slavery in British colonies

During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all the colonies. People enslaved in the North  typically worked as house servants, artisans, laborers and craftsmen, with the greater number in cities. Many men worked on the docks and in shipping. In 1703, more than 42% of New York City households enslaved people, the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, behind only Charleston, South Carolina .[42]  But enslaved people were also used as agricultural workers in farm communities, including in areas of upstate New York and Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. By 1770, there were 397,924 blacks in a population of 2.17 million. They were unevenly distributed: There were 14,867 in New England, where they were 2.7% of the population; 34,679 in the mid-Atlantic colonies, where they were 6% of the population (19,000 were in New York or 11%); and 347,378 in the five Southern Colonies, where they were 31% of the population[43]

The South developed an agricultural economy dependent on commodity crops. Its planters rapidly acquired a significantly higher number and proportion of enslaved people in the population overall, as its commodity crops were labor-intensive.[44]  Early on, enslaved people in the South  worked primarily on farms and plantations growing indigo , rice  and tobacco ; cotton  did not become a major crop until after the 1790s. Before then long-staple cotton was cultivated primarily on the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina.

The invention of the cotton gin  in 1793 enabled the cultivation of short-staple cotton in a wide variety of mainland areas, leading to the development of large areas of the Deep South as cotton country in the 19th century. Rice and tobacco cultivation were very labor-intensive.[45]  In 1720, about 65% of South Carolina's  population was enslaved.[46]  Planters (defined by historians in the Upper South as those who held 20 or more slaves) used enslaved workers to cultivate commodity crops. They also worked in the artisanal trades on large plantations and in many Southern port cities. The later wave of settlers in the 18th century who settled along the Appalachian Mountains and backcountry were backwoods subsistence farmers, and they seldom held enslaved people.

Some of the British colonies attempted to abolish the international slave trade , fearing that the importation of new Africans would be disruptive. Virginia bills to that effect were vetoed by the British Privy Council . Rhode Island  forbade the import of enslaved people in 1774. All of the colonies except Georgia  had banned or limited the African slave trade by 1786; Georgia did so in 1798. Some[which? ] of these laws were later repealed.[47]

About 600,000 slaves were transported to the United States, or 5% of the twelve million slaves taken from Africa. About 310,000 of these persons were imported into the Thirteen Colonies before 1776: 40% directly and the rest from the Caribbean.

Slaves transported to the United States:[48]

  • 1620–1700......21,000
  • 1701–1760....189,000
  • 1761–1770......63,000
  • 1771–1790......56,000
  • 1791–1800......79,000
  • 1801–1810....124,000[49]
  • 1810–1865......51,000
  • Total .............597,000

They constituted less than 5% of the 12 million enslaved people brought from Africa to the Americas. The great majority of enslaved Africans were transported to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil. As life expectancy was short, their numbers had to be continually replenished. Life expectancy was much higher in the United States, and the enslaved population was successful in reproduction. The number of enslaved people in the United States grew rapidly, reaching 4 million  by the 1860 Census. From 1770 to 1860, the rate of natural growth of North American enslaved people was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and it was nearly twice as rapid as that of England.[50]

The number of enslaved and free blacks rose from 759,000 (60,000 free) in the 1790 U.S. Census to 4,450,000 (480,000, or 11%, free) in the 1860 U.S. Census, a 580% increase. The white population grew from 3.2 million to 27 million, an increase of 1,180% due to high birth rates and 4.5 million immigrants, overwhelmingly from Europe, and 70% of whom arrived in the years 1840–1860. The percentage of the black population dropped from 19.3% to 14.1%,[51]  as follows: 1790: 757,208 .. 19.3% of population, of whom 697,681 (92%) were enslaved. 1860: 4,441,830 .. 14.1% of population, of whom 3,953,731 (89%) were enslaved.

Slavery in French Louisiana

Louisiana was founded as a French colony. Colonial officials in 1724 implemented Louis XIV of France 's Code Noir , which regulated the slave trade and the institution of slavery in New France  and French Caribbean colonies. This resulted in a different pattern of slavery in Louisiana, purchased in 1803, compared to the rest of the United States.[52]  As written, the Code Noir  gave some rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners from torturing them or separating married couples (or separating young children from their mothers). It also required the owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith.[53] [54] [55]

Together with a more permeable historic French system that allowed certain rights to gens de couleur libres  (free people of color ), who were often born to white fathers and their mixed-race concubines , a far higher percentage of African Americans in Louisiana were free as of the 1830 census (13.2% in Louisiana  compared to 0.8% in Mississippi , whose population was dominated by white  Anglo-Americans ). Most of Louisiana's "third class" of free people of color, situated between the native-born French and mass of African slaves, lived in New Orleans.[53]  The Louisiana free people of color were often literate and educated, with a significant number owning businesses, properties, and even slaves.[54] [55]  Although Code Noir  forbade interracial marriages, interracial unions were widespread. Whether there was a formalized system of concubinage known as plaçage , is subject to debate. The mixed-race  offspring (Creoles of color ) from these unions were among those in the intermediate social caste  of free people of color. The English colonies, in contrast, operated within a binary system that treated mulatto  and black slaves equally under the law, and discriminated against equally if free. But many free people of African descent were mixed race.[52] [55]

When the U.S. took over Louisiana, Americans from the Protestant South entered the territory and began to impose their norms. They officially discouraged interracial relationships (although white men continued to have unions with black women, both enslaved and free.) The Americanization  of Louisiana gradually resulted in a binary system of race, causing free people of color to lose status as they were grouped with the slaves. They lost certain rights as they became classified by American whites as officially "black".[52] [56]

Revolutionary era
Origins and percentages of Africans imported into British North America and Louisiana (1700–1820)[57] [58] Amount % (exceeds 100%)
West-central Africa  (Kongo , N. Mbundu , S. Mbundu ) 26.1
Bight of Biafra  (Igbo , Tikar , Ibibio , Bamileke , Bubi ) 24.4
Sierra Leone  (Mende , Temne ) 15.8
Senegambia  (Mandinka , Fula , Wolof ) 14.5
Gold Coast  (Akan , Fon ) 13.1
Windward Coast  (Mandé , Kru ) 5.2
Bight of Benin  (Yoruba , Ewe , Fon , Allada  and Mahi ) 4.3
Southeast Africa  (Macua , Malagasy ) 1.8
Prince Estabrook memorial in front of Buckman Tavern  on Lexington Green in Lexington, Massachusetts. Prince Estabrook, who was wounded in the Battle of Lexington and Concord , was the first black casualty of the Revolutionary War.

As historian Christopher L. Brown put it, slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before," but the American Revolution  "forced it to be a public question from there forward."[59] [60]

Freedom offered as incentive by British Continental soldiers at Yorktown. On the left, an African American soldier of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment.

While a small number of African slaves were kept and sold in England and Scotland,[61]  slavery in England had not been authorized by statute there, though it had in Scotland . In 1772, in the case of Somerset v Stewart , it was found that slavery was no part of the common law  in England and Wales. The British role in the international slave trade  continued until it abolished its slave trade in 1807. Slavery flourished in most of Britain's North American and Caribbean colonies, with many wealthy slave owners living in England and wielding considerable power.[62]

In early 1775 Lord Dunmore , royal governor  of Virginia and a slave-owner, wrote to Lord Dartmouth  of his intent to free slaves owned by patriots  in case of rebellion.[63]  On November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore issued Lord Dunmore's Proclamation  which declared martial law  in Virginia[64]  and promised freedom for any slaves of American patriots who would leave their masters and join the royal forces . Slaves owned by Loyalist masters, however, were unaffected by Dunmore's Proclamation. About 1500 slaves owned by patriots escaped and joined Dunmore's forces. Most died of disease before they could do any fighting. Three hundred of these freed slaves made it to freedom in Britain.[65]

Many slaves used the very disruption of war to escape their plantations and fade into cities or woods, or to the British lines. Upon their first sight of British vessels, thousands of slaves in Maryland and Virginia ran away from their owners.[66] : 21   Throughout the South, losses of slaves were high, with many due to escapes.[67]  Slaves also escaped throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic, with many joining the British who had occupied New York. In the closing months of the war the British evacuated freedmen  and also removed slaves owned by loyalists. Around 15,000 Black Loyalists  left with the British, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies.[68]  More than 3,000 were resettled in Nova Scotia , where they were eventually granted land and formed the community of the Black Nova Scotians .

Slaves and free blacks who supported the rebellion This postage stamp, which was created at the time of the Bicentennial, honors Salem Poor , who was an enslaved African-American man who purchased his freedom, became a soldier, and rose to fame as a war hero during the Battle of Bunker Hill .[69]

The rebels began to offer freedom as an incentive to motivate slaves to fight on their side. Washington authorized slaves to be freed who fought with the American Continental Army. Rhode Island started enlisting slaves in 1778, and promised compensation to owners whose slaves enlisted and survived to gain freedom.[70] [71]  During the course of the war, about one-fifth of the Northern army was black.[72]  In 1781, Baron Closen, a German officer  in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment  at the Battle of Yorktown , estimated the American army to be about one-quarter black.[73]  These men included both former slaves and free-born blacks. Thousands of free blacks in the Northern states fought in the state militias and Continental Army. In the South, both sides offered freedom to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in the American Revolution.[74] [75] [76] [77] [78]

The birth of abolitionism in the new United States

In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery incrementally. By 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time. In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827 (celebrated with a big July  4 parade). Indentured servitude (temporary slavery), which had been widespread in the colonies (half the population of Philadelphia had once been indentured servants), dropped dramatically, and disappeared by 1800. However, there were still forcibly indentured servants in New Jersey in 1860. No Southern state abolished slavery, but some individual owners, more than a handful, freed their slaves by personal decision, often providing for manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a promised reward for service. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the Upper South increased from less than one percent to nearly ten percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions.[79] [80] [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87] [88]

Starting in 1777, the rebels outlawed the importation of slaves state by state. They all acted to end the international trade, but, after the war, it was reopened in South Carolina and Georgia.[citation needed ] In 1807, Congress acted on President Jefferson's advice and, without controversy, made importing slaves from abroad a federal crime, effective the first day that the Constitution permitted this prohibition: January 1, 1808.[89]

During the Revolution and in the following years, all states north of Maryland took steps towards abolishing slavery. In 1777, the Vermont Republic , which was still unrecognized by the United States, passed a state constitution prohibiting slavery . The Pennsylvania Abolition Society , led in part by Benjamin Franklin , was founded in 1775, and in 1780, Pennsylvania began gradual abolition . In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts  ruled in Commonwealth v. Jennison  that slavery was unconstitutional under the state's new 1780 constitution . New Hampshire began gradual emancipation  in 1783, while Connecticut and Rhode Island followed in 1784. The New York Manumission Society  was founded in 1785, and was led by John Jay , Alexander Hamilton  and Aaron Burr . New York state began gradual emancipation in 1799, and New Jersey followed in 1804.

Shortly after the Revolution, the Northwest Territory  was established, by Manasseh Cutler  and Rufus Putnam  (who had been George Washington's chief engineer). Both Cutler and Putnam came from Puritan  New England. The Puritans strongly believed that slavery was morally wrong. Their influence on the issue of slavery was long-lasting, and this was provided significantly greater impetus by the Revolution. The Northwest Territory (which became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota) doubled the size of the United States, and it was established at the insistence of Cutler and Putnam as "free soil" – no slavery. This was to prove crucial a few decades later. Had those states been slave states, and their electoral votes gone to Abraham Lincoln's main opponent, Lincoln would not have become President. The Civil War  would not have been fought. Even if it eventually had been, the North might well have lost.[90] [91] [92] [93]

Constitution of the United States Advertisement in The Pennsylvania Gazette , May 24, 1796, seeking the return of Oney Judge , a fugitive slave  who had escaped from the household of George Washington .

Slavery was a contentious issue in the writing and approval  of the Constitution of the United States .[94]  The words "slave" and "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution as originally adopted, although several provisions clearly referred to slaves and slavery. Until the adoption of the 13th Amendment  in 1865, the Constitution did not prohibit slavery.[95]

Section 9 of Article I forbade the Federal government from preventing the importation of slaves, described as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit", for twenty years after the Constitution's ratification (until January 1, 1808). The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 , adopted by Congress and signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson  (who had called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union address), went into effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date on which the importation of slaves could be prohibited under the Constitution.[96]

The delegates approved Section  2 of Article  IV , which prohibited states from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state, and required the return of chattel property to owners.[97]  The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793  gave effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution.[98]

Three-fifths Compromise Main article: Three-fifths Compromise

In a section negotiated by James Madison  of Virginia, Section  2 of Article  I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to the total of the state's free population, at the rate of three-fifths  of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of Congressional representation and federal taxation.[99]  The "Three-Fifths Compromise" was reached after a debate in which delegates from Southern (slaveholding) states argued that slaves should be counted in the census just as all other persons were while delegates from Northern (free) states countered that slaves should not be counted at all. The compromise strengthened the political power of Southern states, as three-fifths of the (non-voting) slave population was counted for congressional apportionment and in the Electoral College , although it did not strengthen Southern states as much as it would have had the Constitution provided for counting all persons, whether slave or free, equally.

In addition, many parts of the country were tied to the Southern economy. As the historian James Oliver Horton noted, prominent slaveholder politicians and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on United States politics and economy. Horton said,

in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a slaveholder as president of the United States, and, for that whole period of time, there was never a person elected to a second term who was not a slaveholder.[34]

The power of Southern states in Congress lasted until the Civil War , affecting national policies, legislation, and appointments.[34]  One result was that justices appointed to the Supreme Court  were also primarily slave owners. The planter elite dominated the Southern congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly fifty years.[34]

1790 to 1860 See also: Treatment of the enslaved in the United States Further information: Slave and free states

Slave trade Main article: Domestic slave trade

The U.S. Constitution  barred the federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves for twenty years. Various states passed bans on the international slave trade during that period; by 1808, the only state still allowing the importation of African slaves was South Carolina. After 1808, legal importation of slaves ceased, although there was smuggling via Spanish Florida  and the disputed Gulf Coast to the west.[100] : 48–49  [101] : 138   This route all but ended after Florida became a U.S. territory  in 1821 (but see Wanderer  and Clotilda ).

The replacement for the importation of slaves from abroad was increased domestic production. Virginia and Maryland had little new agricultural development, and their need for slaves was mostly for replacements for decedents. Normal reproduction more than supplied these: Virginia and Maryland had surpluses of slaves. Their tobacco farms were "worn out"[102]  and the climate was not suitable for cotton or sugar cane. The surplus was even greater because slaves were encouraged to reproduce  (though they could not marry). The white supremacist Virginian Thomas Roderick Dew  wrote in 1832 that Virginia was a "negro-raising state"; i.e. Virginia "produced" slaves.[103] : 2   According to him, in 1832 Virginia exported "upwards of 6,000 slaves" per year, "a source of wealth to Virginia".[104] : 198   Another writer gives the figure in 1836 as 40,000, earning for Virginia an estimated $24,000,000 per year.[104] : 201   Demand for slaves was the strongest in what was then the southwest of the country: Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and, later, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri. Here there was abundant land suitable for plantation agriculture, which young men with some capital  established. This was expansion of the white, monied population: younger men seeking their fortune.

The most valuable crop that could be grown on a plantation in that climate was cotton. That crop was labor-intensive, and the least-costly laborers were slaves. Demand for slaves exceeded the supply in the southwest; therefore slaves, never cheap if they were productive, went for a higher price. As portrayed in Uncle Tom's Cabin  (the "original" cabin was in Maryland),[105]  "selling South" was greatly feared. A recently (2018) publicized example of the practice of "selling South" is the 1838 sale  by Jesuits  of 272 slaves from Maryland, to plantations in Louisiana, to benefit Georgetown University , which has been described as "ow[ing] its existence" to this transaction.[106] [107] [108]

Traders responded to the demand, including John Armfield  and his uncle Isaac Franklin , who were "reputed to have made over half a million dollars (in 19th-century value)" in the slave trade.[102]

"Fancy ladies" See also: Children of the plantation  and Enslaved women's resistance in the United States and Caribbean

In the United States in the early 19th century, owners of female slaves could freely and legally use them as sexual objects . This follows free use of female slaves on slaving vessels by the crews.[109] : 83 

The slaveholder has it in his power, to violate the chastity of his slaves. And not a few are beastly enough to exercise such power. Hence it happens that, in some families, it is difficult to distinguish the free children from the slaves. It is sometimes the case, that the largest part of the master's own children are born, not of his wife, but of the wives and daughters of his slaves, whom he has basely prostituted as well as enslaved.[110] : 38 

"This vice, this bane of society, has already become so common, that it is scarcely esteemed a disgrace."[111]

"Fancy" was a code word which indicated that the girl or young woman was suitable for or trained for sexual use.[112] : 56   In some cases, children were also abused in this manner. The sale of a 13-year-old "nearly a fancy" is documented.[113]  Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. , bought his wife when she was 13.[114] : 191 

Furthermore, enslaved women who were old enough to bear children were encouraged to procreate, which raised their value as slaves, since their children would eventually provide labor or be sold, enriching the owners. Enslaved women were sometimes medically treated in order to enable or encourage their fertility.[115]  The variations in skin color found in the United States make it obvious how often black women were impregnated by whites.[116] : 78–79   For example, in the 1850 Census, 75.4% of "free negros" in Florida were described as mulattos , of mixed race.[117] : 2   Nevertheless, it is only very recently, with DNA  studies, that any sort of reliable number can be provided, and the research has only begun. Light-skinned girls, who contrasted with the darker field workers, were preferred.[113] [118]

As it was put by Caroline Randall Williams  in the New York Times : "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument." "I have rape-colored skin," she added.[119]

The sexual use of black slaves by either slave owners or by those who could purchase the temporary services of a slave took various forms. A slaveowner, or his teenage son, could go to the slave quarters area of the plantation and do what he wanted, with minimal privacy if any. It was common for a "house" female (housekeeper, maid, cook, laundress, or nanny ) to be raped by one or more members of the household. Houses of prostitution  throughout the slave states were largely staffed by female slaves providing sexual services, to their owners' profit. There were a small number of free black females engaged in prostitution, or concubinage, especially in New Orleans.[112] : 41 

Slave owners who engaged in sexual activity with female slaves "were often the elite of the community. They had little need to worry about public scorn." These relationships "appear to have been tolerated and in some cases even quietly accepted." "Southern women  ...do not trouble themselves about it".[120]  Franklin and Armfield, who were definitely the elite of the community, joked frequently in their letters about the black women and girls that they were raping. It never occurred to them that there was anything wrong in what they were doing.[121]

Light-skinned young girls were sold openly for sexual use; their price was much higher than that of a field hand.[112] : 38, 55  [122]  Special markets for the fancy girl trade existed in New Orleans[112] : 55   and Lexington, Kentucky .[123] [124]  Historian Philip Shaw describes an occasion when Abraham Lincoln  and Allen Gentry witnessed such sales in New Orleans in 1828:

Gentry vividly remembered a day in New Orleans when he and the nineteen-year-old Lincoln came upon a slave market. Pausing to watch, Gentry recalled looking down at Lincoln's hands and seeing that he "doubled his fists tightly; his knuckles went white." Men wearing black coats and white hats buy field hands, "black and ugly," for $500 to 800. And then the real horror begins: "When the sale of "fancy girls" began, Lincoln, "unable to stand it any longer," muttered to Gentry "Allen that's a disgrace. If I ever get a lick at that thing I'll hit it hard."[125]

Those girls who were "considered educated and refined, were purchased by the wealthiest clients, usually plantation owners, to become personal sexual companions." "There was a great demand in New Orleans for 'fancy girls'."[126]

The issue which did come up frequently was the threat of sexual intercourse between black males and white females. Just as the black women were perceived as having "a trace of Africa, that supposedly incited passion and sexual wantonness",[112] : 39   the men were perceived as savages, unable to control their lust, given an opportunity.[127] : 212–213 

Another approach to the question was offered by Quaker  and Florida planter Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr.  He advocated, and personally practiced, deliberate racial mixing through marriage, as part of his proposed solution to the slavery issue: racial integration , called "amalgamation " at the time. In an 1829 Treatise , he stated that mixed-race people were healthier and often more beautiful, that interracial sex was hygienic, and slavery made it convenient.[114] : 190   Because of these views, tolerated in Spanish Florida , he found it impossible to remain long in Territorial Florida , and moved with his slaves and multiple wives to a plantation, Mayorasgo de Koka , in Haiti  (now in the Dominican Republic ). There were many others who less flagrantly practiced interracial, common-law marriages with slaves (see Partus sequitur ventrem ).

Justifications in the South See also: Proslavery  and Fire-Eaters

"A necessary evil"

In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". At that time, it was feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. On April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson , one of the Founding Fathers of the United States , wrote in a letter to John Holmes , that with slavery,

We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.[128]

The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville , in his influential Democracy in America  (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against blacks increased as they were granted more rights (for example, in northern states). He believed that the attitudes of white Southerners, and the concentration of the black population in the South, were bringing the white and black populations to a state of equilibrium, and were a danger to both races. Because of the racial differences between master and slave, he believed that the latter could not be emancipated.[129]

In a letter to his wife dated December 27, 1856, in reaction to a message from President Franklin Pierce , Robert E. Lee  wrote,

There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.[130] [131]

"A positive good" Main article: Slavery as a positive good in the United States See also: Mudsill theory

However, as the abolitionist movement's agitation increased and the area developed for plantations expanded, apologies for slavery became more faint in the South. Leaders then described slavery as a beneficial scheme of labor management. John C. Calhoun , in a famous speech in the Senate  in 1837, declared that slavery was "instead of an evil, a good – a positive good". Calhoun supported his view with the following reasoning: in every civilized society one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age, is better off than the free laborers of Europe; and under the slave system conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantages of slavery in this respect, he concluded, "will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers".[132]

South Carolina army officer, planter  and railroad executive James Gadsden  called slavery "a social blessing" and abolitionists "the greatest curse of the nation".[133]  Gadsden was in favor of South Carolina's secession  in 1850, and was a leader in efforts to split California into two states, one slave and one free .

Other Southern writers who also began to portray slavery as a positive good were James Henry Hammond  and George Fitzhugh . They presented several arguments to defend the practice of slavery in the South.[134]  Hammond, like Calhoun, believed that slavery was needed to build the rest of society. In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed his "Mudsill Theory," defending his view on slavery by stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill." Hammond believed that in every class one group must accomplish all the menial duties, because without them the leaders in society could not progress.[134]  He argued that the hired laborers of the North were slaves too: "The difference  ... is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment," while those in the North had to search for employment.[134]

George Fitzhugh used assumptions about white superiority to justify slavery, writing that, "the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child." In The Universal Law of Slavery , Fitzhugh argues that slavery provides everything necessary for life and that the slave is unable to survive in a free world because he is lazy, and cannot compete with the intelligent European white race. He states that "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world."[135]  Without the South, "He (slave) would become an insufferable burden to society" and "Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery."[135]

On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens , Vice President of the Confederacy, delivered his Cornerstone Speech . He explained the differences between the Constitution of the Confederate States  and the United States Constitution , laid out the cause for the American Civil War, as he saw it, and defended slavery:[136]

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions – African slavery as it exists among us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away  ... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it – when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell." Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.[136]

This view of the Negro "race" was backed by pseudoscience .[137]  The leading researcher was Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright , inventor of the mental illnesses of drapetomania  (the desire of a slave to run away) and dysaesthesia aethiopica  ("rascality"), both cured by whipping. The Medical Association of Louisiana set up a committee, of which he was chair, to investigate "the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". Their report, first delivered to the Medical Association in an address, was published in their journal,[138]  and then reprinted in part in the widely circulated DeBow's Review .[139]

Proposed expansion of slavery

Whether or not slavery was to be limited to the Southern states that already had it, or whether it was to be permitted in new states made from the lands of the Louisiana Purchase  and Mexican Cession , was a major issue in the 1840s and 1850s. Results included the Compromise of 1850  and the Bleeding Kansas  period.

Also relatively well known are the proposals, including the Ostend Manifesto , to annex Cuba as a slave state . There was also talk of making slave states of Mexico, Nicaragua (see Walker affair ) and other lands around the so-called Golden Circle . Less well known today (2019), though well known at the time, is that pro-slavery Southerners:

  • Spoke openly of their desire to reopen the Atlantic slave trade (see Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves#Antebellum proposals by Fire-Eaters to reopen ).[140]
  • Wanted to reintroduce slavery in the Northern states, through federal action or Constitutional amendment making slavery legal nationwide, thus overriding state anti-slavery laws.[141] [142]  (See Crittenden Compromise .) This was described as "well underway" by 1858.[143]
  • Said openly that slavery should by no means be limited to Negros, since in their view it was beneficial. Northern white workers, who were allegedly "wage slaves " already, would allegedly have better lives if they were enslaved.[144]

None of these ideas got very far, but they alarmed Northerners and contributed to the growing polarization of the country.

Abolitionism in the North Main article: Abolitionism in the United States § Abolition in the North

Slavery is a volcano, the fires of which cannot be quenched, nor its ravishes controlled. We already feel its convulsions, and if we sit idly gazing upon its flames, as they rise higher and higher, our happy republic will be buried in ruin, beneath its overwhelming energies.

— William Ellsworth , attorney for Prudence Crandall , 1834[145] : 193–194 

Beginning during the Revolution and in the first two decades of the postwar era, every state in the North abolished slavery. These were the first abolitionist laws in the Atlantic World .[146] [147]  However, the abolition of slavery did not necessarily mean that existing slaves became free. In some states they were forced to remain with their former owners as indentured servants : free in name only, although they could not be sold and thus families could not be split, and their children were born free. The end of slavery did not come in New York until July 4, 1827, when it was celebrated with a big parade.[148]  However, in the 1830 census , the only state with no slaves was Vermont. In the 1840 census , there were still slaves in New Hampshire (1), Rhode Island (5), Connecticut (17), New York (4), Pennsylvania (64), Ohio (3), Indiana (3), Illinois (331), Iowa (16), and Wisconsin (11). There were none in these states in the 1850 census .[149]

In Massachusetts, slavery was successfully challenged in court in 1783 in a freedom suit  by Quock Walker ; he said that slavery was in contradiction to the state's new constitution of 1780 providing for equality of men. Freed slaves were subject to racial segregation  and discrimination in the North, and in many cases they did not have the right to vote until ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment  in 1870.[150]

This portrait of Judge Samuel Sewall  by John Smibert  is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  Massachusetts.

Most Northern states passed legislation for gradual abolition, first freeing children born to slave mothers (and requiring them to serve lengthy indentures to their mother's owners, often into their 20s as young adults). In 1845, the Supreme Court of New Jersey received lengthy arguments towards "the deliverance of four thousand persons from bondage".[151]  Pennsylvania's last ex-slaves were freed in 1847, Connecticut's in 1848, and while neither New Hampshire nor New Jersey had any slaves in the 1850 Census , and New Jersey only one and New Hampshire none in the 1860 Census , slavery was never prohibited in either state until ratification of the 13th Amendment  in 1865[152]  (and New Jersey was one of the last states to ratify it).

Establishing the Northwest Territory as free soil – no slavery – by Manasseh Cutler  and Rufus Putnam  proved to be crucial to the outcome of the Civil War.[90] [91]

None of the Southern states abolished slavery before 1865, but it was not unusual for individual slaveholders in the South to free numerous slaves, often citing revolutionary ideals, in their wills. Methodist, Quaker, and Baptist preachers traveled in the South, appealing to slaveholders to manumit  their slaves, and there were "manumission societies" in some Southern states. By 1810, the number and proportion of free blacks in the population of the United States had risen dramatically. Most free blacks lived in the North, but even in the Upper South, the proportion of free blacks went from less than one percent of all blacks to more than ten percent, even as the total number of slaves was increasing through imports.[153]

One of the early Puritan writings on this subject was "The Selling of Joseph," by Samuel Sewall  in 1700. In it, Sewall condemned slavery and the slave trade and refuted many of the era's typical justifications for slavery.[154] [155]  The Puritan influence on slavery was still strong at the time of the American Revolution  and up until the Civil War. Of America's first seven presidents, the two who did not own slaves, John Adams  and John Quincy Adams , came from Puritan New England. They were wealthy enough to own slaves, but they chose not to because they believed that it was morally wrong to do so. In 1765, colonial leader Samuel Adams  and his wife were given a slave girl as a gift. They immediately freed her. Just after the Revolution, in 1787, the Northwest Territory  (which became the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota) was opened up for settlement. The two men responsible for establishing this territory were Manasseh Cutler  and Rufus Putnam . They came from Puritan New England, and they insisted that this new territory, which doubled the size of the United States, was going to be "free soil" – no slavery. This was to prove crucial in the coming decades. If those states had become slave states, and their electoral votes had gone to Abraham Lincoln's  main opponent, Lincoln would not have been elected president. The Civil War would not have been fought. Even if it eventually had been, the North would likely have lost.[90] [91] [92]

Statue of abolitionist and crusading minister Theodore Parker  in front of the Theodore Parker Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the abolitionists, such as Theodore Parker , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Henry David Thoreau  and Frederick Douglass , repeatedly used the Puritan heritage of the country to bolster their cause. The most radical anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator,  invoked the Puritans and Puritan values over a thousand times. Parker, in urging New England Congressmen to support the abolition of slavery, wrote that "The son of the Puritan  ... is sent to Congress to stand up for Truth and Right  ..."[156] [157]

Statue of prominent abolitionist Frederick Douglass  in the Highland Park Bowl in Rochester, New York. Douglass was a great admirer of Theodore Parker .

Northerners predominated in the westward movement into the Midwestern  territory after the American Revolution; as the states were organized, they voted to prohibit slavery in their constitutions when they achieved statehood: Ohio in 1803, Indiana in 1816 and Illinois in 1818. What developed was a Northern block of free states united into one contiguous geographic area that generally shared an anti-slavery culture. The exceptions were the areas along the Ohio River settled by Southerners: the southern portions of Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. Residents of those areas generally shared in Southern culture and attitudes. In addition, these areas were devoted to agriculture longer than the industrializing northern parts of these states, and some farmers used slave labor. In Illinois, for example, while the trade in slaves was prohibited, it was legal to bring slaves from Kentucky  into Illinois and use them there, as long as the slaves left Illinois one day per year (they were "visiting"). The emancipation of slaves in the North led to the growth in the population of Northern free blacks, from several hundred in the 1770s to nearly 50,000 by 1810.[158]

Agitation against slavery Main article: Abolitionism in the United States Benjamin Kent , Old Burying Ground , Halifax, Nova Scotia

There was legal agitation against slavery in the Thirteen Colonies starting in 1752 by lawyer Benjamin Kent , whose cases were recorded by one of his understudies, the future president John Adams . Kent represented numerous slaves in their attempts to gain their freedom. He handled the case of a slave, Pompey, suing his master.[159]  In 1766, Kent was the first lawyer in the United States  to win a case to free a slave, Jenny Slew .[160]  He also won a trial in the Old County Courthouse  for a slave named Ceasar Watson (1771).[161]  Kent also handled Lucy Pernam's divorce and the freedom suits of Rose and Salem Orne.[162]

Simon Legree and Uncle Tom: a scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin  (1852), an influential abolitionist novel

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, abolitionism, a movement to end slavery, grew in strength; most abolitionist societies and supporters were in the North. They worked to raise awareness about the evils of slavery, and to build support for abolition.

This struggle took place amid strong support for slavery among white Southerners, who profited greatly from the system of enslaved labor. But slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking, shipping, and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port cities in the North. The Northern textile mills in New York and New England processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822, half of New York City's exports were related to cotton.[163]

Slaveholders began to refer to slavery as the "peculiar institution" to differentiate it from other examples of forced labor . They justified it as less cruel than the free labor of the North.

Henry Clay  (1777–1852), one of three founders of the American Colonization Society , which assisted free blacks in moving to Africa. Liberia  was a result.[164]

The principal organized bodies to advocate abolition and anti-slavery reforms in the north were the Pennsylvania Abolition Society  and the New York Manumission Society . Before the 1830s the antislavery groups called for gradual emancipation.[165]  By the late 1820s, under the impulse of religious evangelicals such as Beriah Green , the sense emerged that owning slaves was a sin and the owner had to immediately free himself from this grave sin by immediate emancipation.[166]

Colonization movement Main article: American Colonization Society

In the early part of the 19th century, other organizations were founded to take action on the future of black Americans. Some advocated removing free black people from the United States to places where they would enjoy greater freedom; some endorsed colonization  in Africa, while others advocated emigration , usually to Haiti. During the 1820s and 1830s, the American Colonization Society  (ACS) was the primary organization to implement the "return" of black Americans to Africa.[164]  The ACS was made up mostly of Quakers  and slaveholders, and they found uneasy common ground in support of what was incorrectly called "repatriation". By this time, however, most black Americans were native-born and did not want to emigrate, saying they were no more African than white Americans were British. Rather, they wanted full rights in the United States, where their families had lived and worked for generations.

In 1822, the ACS and affiliated state societies established what would become the colony of Liberia , in West Africa.[167]  The ACS assisted thousands of freedmen and free blacks (with legislated limits) to emigrate there from the United States. Many white people considered this preferable to emancipation  in the United States. Henry Clay , one of the founders and a prominent slaveholder politician from Kentucky, said that blacks faced

unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off.[168]

Deportation would also be a way to prevent reprisals against former slaveholders and white people in general, as had occurred in the 1804 Haiti massacre . After 1830, abolitionist and newspaper publisher William Lloyd Garrison  promoted emancipation, characterizing slaveholding as a personal sin. He demanded that slaveowners repent and start the process of emancipation. His position increased defensiveness on the part of some Southerners, who noted the long history of slavery among many cultures. A few abolitionists, such as John Brown , favored the use of armed force to foment uprisings among the slaves, as he attempted to do at Harper's Ferry . Most abolitionists tried to raise public support to change laws and to challenge slave laws. Abolitionists were active on the lecture circuit in the North, and often featured escaped slaves in their presentations. Writer and orator Frederick Douglass  became an important abolitionist leader after escaping from slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe 's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin  (1852) was an international bestseller and aroused popular sentiment against slavery. It also provoked the publication of numerous anti-Tom novels  by Southerners in the years before the American Civil War.

Prohibiting the international trade

Under the Constitution, Congress could not prohibit the import slave trade that was allowed in South Carolina until 1808. However, the third Congress regulated against it in the Slave Trade Act of 1794 , which prohibited American shipbuilding and outfitting for the trade. Subsequent acts in 1800  and 1803 sought to discourage the trade by banning American investment in the trade, and American employment on ships in the trade, as well as prohibiting importation into states that had abolished slavery, which most in the North had by that time.[169] [170]  The final Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves  was adopted in 1807, effective in 1808. However, illegal importation of African slaves (smuggling) was common.[3]  The Cuban slave trade between 1796 and 1807 was dominated by American slave ships. Despite the 1794 Act, Rhode Island slave ship owners found ways to continue supplying the slave-owning states. The overall U.S. slave-ship fleet in 1806 was estimated to be almost 75% the size of that of the British.[171] : 63, 65 

After Great Britain and the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, British slave trade suppression activities began in 1808 through diplomatic efforts and the formation of the Royal Navy 's West Africa Squadron  in 1809. The United States denied the Royal Navy the right to stop and search U.S. ships suspected as slave ships, so not only were American ships unhindered by British patrols, but slavers from other countries would fly the American flag to try to avoid being stopped. Co-operation between the United States and Britain was not possible during the War of 1812  or the period of poor relations in the following years. In 1820, the United States Navy sent USS Cyane , under the command of Captain Trenchard, to patrol the slave coasts of West Africa. Cyane  seized four American slave ships in her first year on station. Trenchard developed a good level of co-operation with the Royal Navy. Four additional U.S. warships were sent to the African coast in 1820 and 1821. A total of 11 American slave ships were taken by the U.S. Navy over this period. Then American enforcement activity reduced. There was still no agreement between the United States and Britain on a mutual right to board suspected slave traders sailing under each other's flag. Attempts to reach such an agreement stalled in 1821 and 1824 in the Senate. A U.S. Navy presence, however sporadic, did result in American slavers sailing under the Spanish flag, but still as an extensive trade. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty  of 1842 set a guaranteed minimum level of patrol activity by the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy, and formalized the level of co-operation that had existed in 1820. Its effects, however, were minimal[a]  while opportunities for greater co-operation were not taken. The U.S. transatlantic slave trade was not effectively suppressed until 1861, during Lincoln's presidency, when a treaty with Britain was signed whose provisions included allowing the Royal Navy to board, search and arrest slavers operating under the American flag.[171] : 399–400, 449, 1144, 1149  [172]

Post-revolution Southern manumissions

Although Virginia, Maryland and Delaware  were slave states, the latter two already had a high proportion of free blacks by the outbreak of war. Following the Revolution, the three legislatures made manumission  easier, allowed by deed or will. Quaker and Methodist ministers particularly urged slaveholders to free their slaves. The number and proportion of freed slaves in these states rose dramatically until 1810. More than half of the number of free blacks in the United States were concentrated in the Upper South. The proportion of free blacks among the black population in the Upper South rose from less than 1% in 1792 to more than 10% by 1810.[153]  In Delaware, nearly 75% of blacks were free by 1810.[173]

In the United States as a whole, the number of free blacks reached 186,446, or 13.5% of all blacks, by 1810.[174]  After that period, few slaves were freed, as the development of cotton plantations  featuring short-staple cotton in the Deep South drove up the internal demand for slaves in the domestic slave trade and high prices being paid for them.[175]

South Carolina made manumission more difficult, requiring legislative approval of every instance of manumission. Several Southern states[which? ] required manumitted slaves to leave the state within thirty days.[further explanation needed ]

Domestic slave trade and forced migration Main article: Domestic slave trade Movement of slaves between 1790 and 1860

The growing international demand for cotton led many plantation owners further west in search of suitable land. In addition, the invention of the cotton gin  in 1793 enabled profitable processing of short-staple cotton, which could readily be grown in the uplands. The invention revolutionized the cotton industry by increasing fifty-fold the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day. At the end of the War of 1812 , fewer than 300,000 bales of cotton were produced nationally. By 1820, the amount of cotton produced had increased to 600,000 bales, and by 1850 it had reached 4,000,000. There was an explosive growth of cotton cultivation throughout the Deep South and greatly increased demand for slave labor to support it.[176]  As a result, manumissions decreased dramatically in the South.[177]

Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia . Painting by Eyre Crowe

Most of the slaves sold from the Upper South were from Maryland , Virginia  and the Carolinas , where changes in agriculture decreased the need for their labor and the demand for slaves. Before 1810, primary destinations for the slaves who were sold were Kentucky  and Tennessee , but, after 1810, the Deep South states of Georgia , Alabama , Mississippi , Louisiana  and Texas  received the most slaves. This is where cotton became "king."[178]  Meanwhile, the Upper South states of Kentucky and Tennessee joined the slave-exporting states.

By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a major economic activity in the United States; it lasted until the 1860s.[179]  Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines.[179]  In the 1850s, more than 193,000 enslaved persons were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million in total took part in the forced migration of this new "Middle Passage." By 1860, the slave population in the United States had reached four million.[179]  Of the 1,515,605 free families in the fifteen slave states in 1860, nearly 400,000 held slaves (roughly one in four, or 25%),[180]  amounting to 8% of all American families.[181]

Ashley's Sack  is a cloth that recounts a slave sale separating a mother and her daughter. The sack belonged to a nine-year-old girl Ashley and was a parting gift from her mother, Rose, after Ashley had been sold. Rose filled the sack with a dress, braid of her hair, pecans, and "my love always"

The historian Ira Berlin  called this forced migration of slaves the "Second Middle Passage" because it reproduced many of the same horrors as the Middle Passage  (the name given to the transportation of slaves from Africa to North America). These sales of slaves broke up many families and caused much hardship. Characterizing it as the "central event" in the life of a slave between the American Revolution  and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that, whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free."[182]  Individuals lost their connection to families and clans. Added to the earlier colonists combining slaves from different tribes, many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. Most were descended from families that had been in the United States for many generations.[179]

The firm of Franklin and Armfield  was a leader in this trade. In the 1840s, almost 300,000 slaves were transported, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving 100,000 each. During each decade between 1810 and 1860, at least 100,000 slaves were moved from their state of origin. In the final decade before the Civil War, 250,000 were transporteded. Michael Tadman wrote in Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South  (1989) that 60–70% of inter-regional migrations were the result of the sale of slaves. In 1820, a slave child in the Upper South had a 30% chance of being sold South by 1860.[183]  The death rate for the slaves on their way to their new destination across the American South was less than that suffered by captives shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, but mortality nevertheless was higher than the normal death rate.

Slave trader's business in Atlanta , Georgia , 1864

Slave traders  transported two-thirds of the slaves who moved West.[184]  Only a minority moved with their families and existing master. Slave traders had little interest in purchasing or transporting intact slave families; in the early years, planters demanded only the young male slaves needed for heavy labor. Later, in the interest of creating a "self-reproducing labor force", planters purchased nearly equal numbers of men and women. Berlin wrote:

The internal slave trade became the largest enterprise in the South outside the plantation itself, and probably the most advanced in its employment of modern transportation, finance, and publicity. The slave trade industry developed its own unique language, with terms such as "prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and "fancy girls" coming into common use.[185]

The expansion of the interstate slave trade contributed to the "economic revival of once depressed seaboard states" as demand accelerated the value of slaves who were subject to sale.[186]

Some traders moved their "chattels" by sea, with Norfolk  to New Orleans  being the most common route, but most slaves were forced to walk overland. Others were shipped downriver from such markets as Louisville  on the Ohio River, and Natchez  on the Mississippi. Traders created regular migration routes served by a network of slave pens, yards and warehouses needed as temporary housing for the slaves. In addition, other vendors provided clothes, food and supplies for slaves. As the trek advanced, some slaves were sold and new ones purchased. Berlin concluded, "In all, the slave trade, with its hubs and regional centers, its spurs and circuits, reached into every cranny of southern society. Few southerners, black or white, were untouched."[187]

Once the trip ended, slaves faced a life on the frontier significantly different from most labor in the Upper South. Clearing trees and starting crops on virgin fields was harsh and backbreaking work. A combination of inadequate nutrition, bad water and exhaustion from both the journey and the work weakened the newly arrived slaves and produced casualties. New plantations were located at rivers' edges for ease of transportation and travel. Mosquitoes  and other environmental challenges spread disease, which took the lives of many slaves. They had acquired only limited immunities to lowland diseases in their previous homes. The death rate was so high that, in the first few years of hewing a plantation out of the wilderness, some planters preferred whenever possible to use rented slaves rather than their own.[188]

The harsh conditions on the frontier increased slave resistance and led owners and overseers to rely on violence for control. Many of the slaves were new to cotton fields and unaccustomed to the "sunrise-to-sunset gang labor" required by their new life. Slaves were driven much harder than when they had been in growing tobacco or wheat  back East. Slaves had less time and opportunity to improve the quality of their lives by raising their own livestock  or tending vegetable gardens, for either their own consumption or trade, as they could in the East.[189]

In Louisiana , French colonists had established sugar cane  plantations and exported sugar as the chief commodity crop. After the Louisiana Purchase  in 1803, Americans entered the state and joined the sugar cultivation. Between 1810 and 1830, planters bought slaves from the North and the number of slaves increased from fewer than 10,000 to more than 42,000. Planters preferred young males, who represented two-thirds of the slave purchases. Dealing with sugar cane was even more physically demanding than growing cotton. The largely young, unmarried male slave force made the reliance on violence by the owners "especially savage".[190]

New Orleans  became nationally important as a slave market and port, as slaves were shipped from there upriver by steamboat  to plantations on the Mississippi River; it also sold slaves who had been shipped downriver from markets such as Louisville. By 1840, it had the largest slave market in North America. It became the wealthiest and the fourth-largest city in the nation, based chiefly on the slave trade and associated businesses.[191]  The trading season was from September to May, after the harvest.[192]

Slave traders were men of low reputation, even in the South. In the 1828 presidential election, candidate Andrew Jackson  was strongly criticized by opponents as a slave trader who transacted in slaves in defiance of modern standards or morality.[193]

Treatment Main article: Treatment of the enslaved in the United States Peter or Gordon , a whipped slave, photo taken at Baton Rouge, Louisiana , 1863; the guilty overseer was fired.[194] Wilson Chinn , a branded slave from Louisiana--Also exhibiting instruments of torture used to punish slaves

The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, time, and place, but in general it was brutal, especially on plantations. Whippings and rape were routine. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[195]  Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders, conditions permitting abuses.

William Wells Brown , who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick eighty pounds per day of cotton, while women were required to pick seventy pounds; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[196]  A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[197]  By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[198]

Historian Lawrence M. Friedman  wrote: "Ten Southern codes made it a crime to mistreat a slave.  ... Under the Louisiana Civil Code  of 1825 (art. 192), if a master was "convicted of cruel treatment," the judge could order the sale of the mistreated slave, presumably to a better master."[199]  Masters and overseers were seldom prosecuted under these laws. No slave could give testimony in the courts.

According to Adalberto Aguirre's research, 1,161 slaves were executed in the United States between the 1790s and 1850s.[200]  Quick executions of innocent slaves as well as suspects typically followed any attempted slave rebellions, as white militias overreacted with widespread killings that expressed their fears of rebellions, or suspected rebellions.

Although most slaves had lives that were very restricted in terms of their movements and agency, exceptions existed to virtually every generalization; for instance, there were also slaves who had considerable freedom in their daily lives: slaves allowed to rent out their labor and who might live independently of their master in cities, slaves who employed white workers, and slave doctors who treated upper-class white patients.[201]  After 1820, in response to the inability to import new slaves from Africa and in part to abolitionist criticism, some slaveholders improved the living conditions of their slaves, to encourage them to be productive and to try to prevent escapes.[202]  It was part of a paternalistic approach in the antebellum era  that was encouraged by ministers trying to use Christianity to improve the treatment of slaves. Slaveholders published articles in Southern agricultural journals to share best practices in treatment and management of slaves; they intended to show that their system was better than the living conditions of northern industrial workers.

Medical care for slaves was limited in terms of the medical knowledge available to anyone. It was generally provided by other slaves or by slaveholders' family members, although sometimes "plantation physicians", like J. Marion Sims , were called by the owners to protect their investment by treating sick slaves. Many slaves possessed medical skills needed to tend to each other, and used folk remedies brought from Africa. They also developed new remedies based on American plants and herbs.[203]

An estimated nine percent of slaves were disabled  due to a physical, sensory, psychological, neurological, or developmental condition. However, slaves were often described as disabled if they were unable to work or bear a child, and were often subjected to harsh treatment as a result.[204]

According to Andrew Fede, an owner could be held criminally liable for killing a slave only if the slave he killed was "completely submissive and under the master's absolute control".[205]  For example, in 1791 the North Carolina  legislature defined the willful killing of a slave as criminal murder , unless done in resisting or under moderate correction (that is, corporal punishment).[206]

Because of the power relationships at work, slave women in the United States  were at high risk for rape and sexual abuse.[207] [208]  Their children were repeatedly taken away from them and sold as farm animals; usually they never saw each other again. Many slaves fought back against sexual attacks, and some died resisting. Others carried psychological and physical scars from the attacks.[209]  Sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in a patriarchal Southern culture that treated black women as property or chattel.[208]  Southern culture strongly policed against sexual relations between white women and black men on the purported grounds of racial purity but, by the late 18th century, the many mixed-race  slaves and slave children showed that white men had often taken advantage of slave women.[208]  Wealthy planter widowers, notably such as John Wayles  and his son-in-law Thomas Jefferson , took slave women as concubines ; each had six children with his partner: Elizabeth Hemings  and her daughter Sally Hemings  (the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife), respectively. Both Mary Chesnut  and Fanny Kemble , wives of planters, wrote about this issue in the antebellum South in the decades before the Civil War. Sometimes planters used mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their children or other relatives.[210]  As a result of centuries of slavery and such relationships, DNA studies have shown that the vast majority of African Americans also have historic European ancestry, generally through paternal lines.[211] [212]

Slave sale , Charleston , 1856

While slaves' living conditions were poor by modern standards, Robert Fogel  argued that all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the 19th century were subject to hardship.[213]  Unlike free individuals, however, enslaved people were far more likely to be underfed, physically punished, sexually abused, or killed, with no recourse, legal or otherwise, against those who perpetrated these crimes against them.

Slave codes Main article: Slave codes

To help regulate the relationship between slave and owner, including legal support for keeping the slave as property, states established slave codes , most based on laws existing since the colonial era. The code for the District of Columbia defined a slave as "a human being, who is by law deprived of his or her liberty for life, and is the property of another".[214]

While each state had its own slave code, many concepts were shared throughout the slave states.[215]  According to the slave codes, some of which were passed in reaction to slave rebellions, teaching a slave to read or write was illegal. This prohibition was unique to American slavery, believed to reduce slaves forming aspirations that could lead to escape or rebellion.[216]  Informal education occurred when white children taught slave companions what they were learning; in other cases, adult slaves learned from free artisan workers, especially if located in cities, where there was more freedom of movement.

In Alabama, slaves were not allowed to leave their master's premises without written consent or passes. This was a common requirement in other states as well, and locally run patrols (known to slaves as pater rollers ) often checked the passes of slaves who appeared to be away from their plantations. In Alabama slaves were prohibited from trading goods among themselves. In Virginia, a slave was not permitted to drink in public within one mile of his master or during public gatherings. Slaves were not permitted to carry firearms in any of the slave states.

Slaves were generally prohibited by law from associating in groups, with the exception of worship services (a reason why the Black Church  is such a notable institution in black communities today). Following Nat Turner 's rebellion in 1831, which raised white fears throughout the South, some states also prohibited or restricted religious gatherings of slaves, or required that they be officiated by white men. Planters feared that group meetings would facilitate communication among slaves that could lead to rebellion.[217]  Slaves held private, secret "brush meetings" in the woods.

In Ohio, an emancipated slave was prohibited from returning to the state in which he or she had been enslaved. Other Northern states discouraged the settling of free blacks within their boundaries. Fearing the influence of free blacks, Virginia and other Southern states passed laws to require blacks who had been freed to leave the state within a year (or sometimes less time) unless granted a stay by an act of the legislature.

Further information: Marriage of enslaved people (United States)

High demand and smuggling U.S. brig Perry  confronting the slave ship Martha  off Ambriz  on June 6, 1850

The United States Constitution , adopted in 1787, prevented Congress  from completely banning the importation  of slaves until 1808, although Congress regulated against the trade in the Slave Trade Act of 1794 , and in subsequent Acts in 1800  and 1803.[169] [218]  During and after the Revolution, the states  individually passed laws against importing slaves. By contrast, the states of Georgia and South Carolina reopened their trade due to demand by their upland planters, who were developing new cotton plantations: Georgia from 1800 until December 31, 1807, and South Carolina from 1804. In that period, Charleston traders imported about 75,000 slaves, more than were brought to South Carolina in the 75 years before the Revolution.[219]  Approximately 30,000 were imported to Georgia.

By January 1, 1808, when Congress banned further imports , South Carolina was the only state that still allowed importation of enslaved people. The domestic trade became extremely profitable as demand rose with the expansion of cultivation in the Deep South for cotton and sugar cane crops. Slavery in the United States became, more or less, self-sustaining by natural increase among the current slaves and their descendants. Maryland and Virginia viewed themselves as slave producers, seeing "producing slaves" as resembling animal husbandry. Workers, including many children, were relocated by force from the upper to the lower South.

Despite the ban, slave imports continued through smugglers bringing in slaves past the U.S. Navy's African Slave Trade Patrol  to South Carolina, and overland from Texas and Florida, both under Spanish control.[220]  Congress increased the punishment associated with importing slaves, classifying it in 1820 as an act of piracy, with smugglers subject to harsh penalties, including death if caught. After that, "it is unlikely that more than 10,000 [slaves] were successfully landed in the United States."[221]  But, some smuggling of slaves into the United States continued until just before the start of the Civil War; see slave ships Wanderer  and Clotilda .

War of 1812

During the War of 1812 , British Royal Navy  commanders of the blockading fleet were instructed to offer freedom to defecting American slaves, as the Crown had during the Revolutionary War. Thousands of escaped slaves  went over to the Crown with their families.[222]  Men were recruited into the Corps of Colonial Marines  on occupied Tangier Island , in the Chesapeake Bay. Many freed American slaves were recruited directly into existing West Indian regiments, or newly created British Army units. The British later resettled a few thousand freed slaves to Nova Scotia. Their descendants, together with descendants of the black people resettled there after the Revolution, have established the Black Loyalist Heritage Museum.[223]

Slaveholders, primarily in the South, had considerable "loss of property" as thousands of slaves escaped to the British lines or ships for freedom, despite the difficulties.[223]  The planters' complacency about slave "contentment" was shocked by seeing that slaves would risk so much to be free.[223]  Afterward, when some freed slaves had been settled at Bermuda, slaveholders such as Major Pierce Butler  of South Carolina  tried to persuade them to return to the United States, to no avail.

The Americans protested that Britain's failure to return all slaves violated the Treaty of Ghent . After arbitration by the Tsar of Russia , the British paid $1,204,960 in damages (about $27.6 million in today's money) to Washington, which reimbursed the slaveowners.[224]

Religion Eastman Johnson 's 1863 painting "The Lord is My Shepherd"

Prior to the American Revolution, masters and revivalists spread Christianity to slave communities, supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel . In the First Great Awakening  of the mid-18th century, Baptists  and Methodists  from New England preached a message against slavery, encouraged masters to free their slaves, converted both slaves and free blacks, and gave them active roles in new congregations.[225]  The first independent black congregations were started in the South before the Revolution, in South Carolina and Georgia. Believing that, "slavery was contrary to the ethics of Jesus", Christian congregations and church clergy, especially in the North, played a role in the Underground Railroad , especially Wesleyan Methodists , Quakers  and Congregationalists .[226] [227]

Over the decades and with the growth of slavery throughout the South, some Baptist and Methodist ministers gradually changed their messages to accommodate the institution. After 1830, white Southerners argued for the compatibility of Christianity and slavery, with a multitude of both Old and New Testament citations.[228]  They promoted Christianity as encouraging better treatment of slaves and argued for a paternalistic approach. In the 1840s and 1850s, the issue of accepting slavery split the nation's largest religious denominations (the Methodist , Baptist  and Presbyterian  churches) into separate Northern and Southern organizations; see Methodist Episcopal Church, South , Southern Baptist Convention , and Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America ).[229]  Schisms occurred, such as that between the Wesleyan Methodist Church  and the Methodist Episcopal Church.[230]

Southern slaves generally attended their masters' white churches, where they often outnumbered the white congregants. They were usually permitted to sit only in the back or in the balcony. They listened to white preachers, who emphasized the obligation of slaves to keep in their place, and acknowledged the slave's identity as both person and property.[228]  Preachers taught the master's responsibility and the concept of appropriate paternal treatment, using Christianity to improve conditions for slaves, and to treat them "justly and fairly" (Col. 4:1). This included masters having self-control, not disciplining under anger, not threatening, and ultimately fostering Christianity among their slaves by example.[228]

Slaves also created their own religious observances, meeting alone without the supervision of their white masters or ministers. The larger plantations with groups of slaves numbering 20, or more, tended to be centers of nighttime meetings of one or several plantation slave populations.[228]  These congregations revolved around a singular preacher, often illiterate with limited knowledge of theology, who was marked by his personal piety and ability to foster a spiritual environment. African Americans developed a theology related to Biblical stories having the most meaning for them, including the hope for deliverance from slavery by their own Exodus . One lasting influence of these secret congregations is the African American spiritual .[231]

Slave rebellions Illustration from History of American conspiracies – a record of treason, insurrection, rebellion and c., in the United States of America, from 1760 to 1860 (1863) James Hopkinson's Plantation.  Planting sweet potatoes. ca. 1862/63 Further information: Slavery in the colonial United States § Slave rebellions

According to Herbert Aptheker, "there were few phases of ante-bellum Southern life and history that were not in some way influenced by the fear of, or the actual outbreak of, militant concerted slave action."[232]

Historians in the 20th century identified 250 to 311 slave uprisings in U.S. and colonial history.[233]  Those after 1776, include:

  • Gabriel 's conspiracy (1800)
  • Igbo Landing  slave escape and mass suicide (1803)
  • Chatham Manor  Rebellion (1805)
  • 1811 German Coast Uprising , (1811)[234]
  • George Boxley  Rebellion (1815)
  • Denmark Vesey 's conspiracy (1822)
  • Nat Turner's slave rebellion  (1831)
  • Black Seminole Slave Rebellion  (1835–1838)[235]
  • Amistad  seizure  (1839)[236]
  • Creole  case  (1841)
  • 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation [237]

In 1831, Nat Turner , a literate slave who claimed to have spiritual visions , organized a slave rebellion  in Southampton County, Virginia ; it was sometimes called the Southampton Insurrection. Turner and his followers killed nearly sixty white inhabitants, mostly women and children. Many of the men in the area were attending a religious event in North Carolina.[238]  Eventually Turner was captured with 17 other rebels, who were subdued by the militia.[238]  Turner and his followers were hanged , and Turner's body was flayed . In a frenzy of fear and retaliation, the militia killed more than 100 slaves who had not been involved in the rebellion. Planters whipped hundreds of innocent slaves to ensure resistance was quelled.[238]

This rebellion prompted Virginia and other slave states to pass more restrictions on slaves and free people of color, controlling their movement and requiring more white supervision of gatherings. In 1835 North Carolina withdrew the franchise for free people of color, and they lost their vote.

Anti-literacy laws Main article: Anti-literacy laws in the United States

In a feature unique to American slavery, legislatures across the South enacted new laws to curtail the already limited rights of African Americans. For example, Virginia prohibited blacks, free or slave, from practicing preaching, prohibited them from owning firearms, and forbade anyone to teach slaves or free blacks how to read.[238]  It specified heavy penalties for both student and teacher if slaves were taught, including whippings or jail.[239]

[E]very assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly. Any justice may issue his warrant to any office or other person, requiring him to enter any place where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro therein; and he, or any other justice, may order such negro to be punished with stripes.[240]

Unlike in the South, slave owners in Utah were required to send their slaves to school.[241]  Black slaves did not have to spend as much time in school as Indian slaves.[242]

Economics See also: Slavery in Britain Slaves for sale, a scene in New Orleans , 1861

There were approximately 15,000 slaves in New England in 1770 of 650,000 inhabitants. 35,000 slaves lived in the Mid-Atlantic States of 600,000 inhabitants of whom 19,000 lived in New York where they made up 11% of the population. By 1790 Virginia held 44% (315,000 in a total population of 750,000 the State).[243]  It was common in agriculture, with a more massive presence in the South, where climate was more propitious for widescale agricultural activity. By 1790 slavery in the New England States was abolished in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont and phased out in Rhode Island and Connecticut. New York introduced gradual emancipation in 1799 (completed in 1827). Pennsylvania abolished slavery during the War for Independence.

Robert Fogel  and Stanley Engerman , in their 1974 book Time on the Cross , argued that the rate of return  of slavery at the market price was close to ten percent, a number close to investment in other assets. The transition from indentured servants to slaves is cited to show that slaves offered greater profits to their owners. A qualified consensus among economic historians and economists is that "Slave agriculture was efficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of scale, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture considerably more efficient than nonslave southern farming",[244]  and it is the near-universal consensus among economic historians and economists that slavery was not "a system irrationally kept in existence by plantation owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests".[245]

The relative price of slaves and indentured servants in the antebellum period did decrease. Indentured servants became more costly with the increase in the demand of skilled labor in England.[246]  At the same time, slaves were mostly supplied from within the United States and thus language was not a barrier, and the cost of transporting slaves from one state to another was relatively low. However, as in Brazil  and Europe , slavery at its end in the United States tended to be concentrated in the poorest regions of the United States,[247]  with a qualified consensus among economists and economic historians concluding that the "modern period of the South's economic convergence to the level of the North only began in earnest when the institutional foundations of the southern regional labor market were undermined, largely by federal farm and labor legislation dating from the 1930s ."[248]

In the decades preceding the Civil War, the black population of the United States experienced a rapid natural increase .[249]  Unlike the trans-Saharan slave trade  with Africa , the slave population transported by the Atlantic slave trade  to the United States was sex-balanced.[250]  The slave population multiplied nearly fourfold between 1810 and 1860, despite the passage of the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves  signed into law by President  Thomas Jefferson  in 1807 banning the international slave trade.[243]  Thus, it is also the universal consensus among modern economic historians and economists that slavery in the United States was not "economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War".[251]  In the 2010s, several historians, among them Edward E. Baptist , Sven Beckert , Walter Johnson  and Calvin Schermerhorn, have posited that slavery was integral in the development of American capitalism .[252] [253] [254] [255]  Other economic historians  have rejected that thesis.[256] [257] [258] [259]

Distribution

Distribution of slaves Percentage of slaves in each county of the slave states in 1860
Census Year# Slaves# Free AfricansTotal Africans% Free AfricansTotal US population% Africans of total
1790 697,681 59,527 757,208 8% 3,929,214 19%
1800 893,602 108,435 1,002,037 11% 5,308,483 19%
1810 1,191,362 186,446 1,377,808 14% 7,239,881 19%
1820 1,538,022 233,634 1,771,656 13% 9,638,453 18%
1830 2,009,043 319,599 2,328,642 14% 12,860,702 18%
1840 2,487,355 386,293 2,873,648 13% 17,063,353 17%
1850 3,204,313 434,495 3,638,808 12% 23,191,876 16%
1860 3,953,760 488,070 4,441,830 11% 31,443,321 14%
1870 0 4,880,009 4,880,009 100% 38,558,371 13%
Source:"Distribution of Slaves in U.S. History" . Retrieved May 13,  2010 .
Evolution of the enslaved population of the United States as a percentage of the population of each state, 1790–1860 Total Slave Population in U.S., 1790–1860, by State and Territory [368] [failed verification ]
Census Year17901800181018201830184018501860
All States694,207893,3081,191,3381,531,4902,009,0792,487,3923,204,2153,953,820
Alabama 494 2,565 41,879 117,549 253,532 342,844 435,080
Arkansas 136 1,617 4,576 19,935 47,100 111,115
California 0 0
Connecticut 2,648 951 310 97 25 54 0 0
Delaware 8,887 6,153 4,177 4,509 3,292 2,605 2,290 1,798
District of Columbia 2,072 3,554 4,520 4,505 3,320 3,687 3,185
Florida 15,501 25,717 39,310 61,745
Georgia 29,264 59,699 105,218 149,656 217,531 280,944 381,682 462,198
Illinois 107 168 917 747 331 0 0
Indiana 28 237 190 3 3 0 0
Iowa 16 0 0
Kansas 2
Kentucky 12,430 40,343 80,561 126,732 165,213 182,258 210,981 225,483
Louisiana 34,660 69,064 109,588 168,452 244,809 331,726
Maine 2 0 0 0
Maryland 103,036 105,635 111,502 107,398 102,994 89,737 90,368 87,189
Massachusetts 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Michigan 24 0 1 0 0 0
Minnesota 0 0
Mississippi 2,995 14,523 32,814 65,659 195,211 309,878 436,631
Missouri 10,222 25,096 58,240 87,422 114,931
Nebraska 15
Nevada 0
New Hampshire 157 8 0 0 3 1 0 0
New Jersey 11,423 12,422 10,851 7,557 2,254 674 236 18
New York 21,193 20,613 15,017 10,088 75 4 0 0
North Carolina 100,783 133,296 168,824 205,017 245,601 245,817 288,548 331,059
Ohio 0 0 0 6 3 0 0
Oregon 0 0
Pennsylvania 3,707 1,706 795 211 403 64 0 0
Rhode Island 958 380 108 48 17 5 0 0
South Carolina 107,094 146,151 196,365 251,783 315,401 327,038 384,984 402,406
Tennessee 3,417 13,584 44,535 80,107 141,603 183,059 239,459 275,719
Texas 58,161 182,566
Utah 26 29
Vermont 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Virginia 287,959 339,499 383,521 411,886 453,698 431,873 452,028 472,494
West Virginia 4,668 7,172 10,836 15,178 17,673 18,488 20,428 18,371
Wisconsin 11 4 0

For various reasons, the census did not always include all of the slaves, especially in the West. California was admitted as a free state and reported no slaves. However, there were many slaves that were brought to work in the mines during the California Gold Rush .[369]  Some Californian communities openly tolerated slavery, such as San Bernardino , which was mostly made up of transplants from the neighboring slave territory of Utah .[370]  New Mexico Territory  never reported any slaves on the census, yet sued the government for compensation for 600 slaves that were freed when Congress outlawed slavery in the territory.[371]  Utah was actively trying to hide its slave population from Congress[372] [373]  and did not report slaves in several communities.[374]  Additionally, the census did not traditionally include Native Americans, and hence did not include Native American slaves or Native African slaves owned by Native Americans. There were hundreds of Native American slaves in California,[375]  Utah[376]  and New Mexico[371]  that were never recorded in the census.

Distribution of slaveholders

As of the 1860 Census , one may compute the following statistics on slaveholding:[377]

  • Enumerating slave schedules by county, 393,975 named persons held 3,950,546 unnamed slaves, for an average of about ten slaves per holder. As some large holders held slaves in multiple counties and are thus multiply counted, this slightly overestimates the number of slaveholders.
  • Excluding slaves, the 1860 U.S. population was 27,167,529; therefore, approximately 1.45% of free persons (roughly one in 69) was a named slaveholder (393,975 named slaveholders among 27,167,529 free persons). By counting only named slaveholders, this approach does not acknowledge people who benefited from slavery by being in a slaveowning household, e.g., the wife and children of an owner; in 1850, there was an average of 5.55 people per household,[378]  so on average, around 8.05% of free persons lived in a slave-owning household. In the South, 33% of families owned at least one slave.[citation needed ] According to historian Joseph Glatthaar, the number of soldiers of the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia who either owned slaves or came from slave owning households is "almost one of every two 1861 recruits". In addition he notes that, "Untold numbers of enlistees rented land from, sold crops to, or worked for slaveholders. In the final tabulation, the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery."[379]
  • It is estimated by the transcriber Tom Blake, that holders of 200 or more slaves, constituting less than 1% of all U.S. slaveholders (fewer than 4,000 persons, one in 7,000 free persons, or 0.015% of the population) held an estimated 20–30% of all slaves (800,000 to 1,200,000 slaves). Nineteen holders of 500 or more slaves have been identified.[380]  The largest slaveholder was Joshua John Ward , of Georgetown, South Carolina , who in 1850 held 1,092 slaves,[381]  and whose heirs in 1860 held 1,130 or 1,131 slaves[380] [381]  – he was dubbed "the king of the rice planters",[381]  and one of his plantations is now part of Brookgreen Gardens .
  • The percentage of families that owned slaves in 1860 in various groupings of states was as follows:[382]
Group of StatesStates in GroupSlave-Owning Families
15 states where slavery was legal Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia 26%
11 states that seceded Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia 31%
7 states that seceded before Lincoln's inauguration Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas 37%
4 states that seceded later Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia 25%
4 slave states that did not secede Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri 16%

Historiography Main article: Historiography of the United States § Slavery and Black history

The historian Peter Kolchin , writing in 1993, noted that until the latter decades of the 20th century, historians of slavery had primarily concerned themselves with the culture, practices and economics of the slaveholders, not with the slaves. This was in part due to the circumstance that most slaveholders were literate and left behind written records, whereas slaves were largely illiterate and not in a position to leave written records. Scholars differed as to whether slavery should be considered a benign or a "harshly exploitive" institution.[383]

Much of the history written prior to the 1950s had a distinctive racist slant to it.[383]  By the 1970s and 1980s, historians were using archaeological  records, black folklore  and statistical data to develop a much more detailed and nuanced picture of slave life. Individuals were shown to have been resilient and somewhat autonomous in many of their activities, within the limits of their situation and despite its precariousness. Historians who wrote in this era include John Blassingame  (Slave Community ), Eugene Genovese  (Roll, Jordan, Roll ), Leslie Howard Owens (This Species of Property ), and Herbert Gutman  (The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom ).[384]

  • Condition: These original complete issues were carefully removed from a bound volume and are in very good condition with light uniform age-toning.
  • Binding: Disbound
  • Language: English
  • Special Attributes: 1st Edition
  • Publisher: MATHEW CAREY
  • Topic: Black History
  • Subject: Black Americana

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