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THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA: AN INTERACTIVE MULTI-MEDIA TUTORIAL RBG Street Scholar/July 2012 Update
1. THE HISTORY OF
SLAVERY IN AMERICA
AN INTERACTIVE MULTI-MEDIA TUTORIAL
RBG Street Scholar
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The following text has modified from Wikipedia
(Image and video embellishment by this editor for enhanced educational purposes)
Peter, a man who was enslaved in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
1863, whose scars resulted from violent abuse by a plantation
overseer. Photo on file with U.S. National Archives and Records
Administration, online at archives.gov among others. [3].
Slavery in the United States lasted as a legal institution until
the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution in 1865. It had its origins with the first English
colonization of North America in Virginia in 1607, although
African slaves were brought to Spanish Florida as early as the
1560s.[1] Most slaves were black and were held by whites,
although some Native Americans and free blacks also held
slaves; there was a small number of white slaves as well.
Slaves were spread to the areas where there was good quality
soil for large plantations of high value cash crops, such as
cotton, sugar, and coffee. The majority of slaveholders were in
the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in
an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture, with farms of fifteen or more slaves
proving to be far more productive than farms without slaves. Also, these large groups of
slaves were thought to work more efficiently if guarded by a managerial class called
overseers to ensure that the slaves did not waste a second of movement.
From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of much of the
present United States.[2] Before the widespread establishment of chattel slavery
(outright ownership of the slave), much labor was organized under a system of bonded
labor known as indentured servitude. This typically lasted for several years for white and
black alike, and it was a means of using labor to pay the costs of transporting people to
the colonies.[3] By the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the
American incarnation of slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African
descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. In part because of the success of
tobacco as a cash crop in the Southern colonies, its labor-intensive character caused
planters to import more slaves for labor by the end of the 17th century than did the
northern colonies. The South had a significantly high number and proportion of slaves in
the population.[3]
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Twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th
centuries.[4][5] Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United
States. The largest number were shipped to Brazil (see slavery in Brazil).[6] The slave
population in the United States had grown to four million by the 1860 Census.[7]
Slavery was one of the principal issues leading to the American Civil War. After the
Union prevailed in the war, slavery was abolished throughout the United States with the
adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[8]
Colonial America
The first record of African slavery in Colonial America was made in 1619. A British
pirate ship under the Dutch flag, the White Lion, had captured 20 Angolan slaves in a
battle with a Portuguese ship, the São João Baptista, bound for Veracruz, Mexico[9]. The
Angolans were from the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, and spoke languages of the
Bantu group[9]. The White Lion had been damaged first by the battle and then more
severely in a great storm during the late summer when it came ashore at Old Point
Comfort, site of present day Fort Monroe in Virginia. Though the colony was in the
middle of a period later known as "The Great Migration" (1618–1623), during which its
population grew from 450 to 4,000 residents, extremely high mortality rates from
disease, malnutrition, and war with Native Americans kept the population of able-bodied
laborers low[10]. With the Dutch ship being in severe need of repairs and supplies and
the colonists being in need of able-bodied workers, the human cargo was traded for
food and services.
In addition to African slaves, Europeans, mostly Irish,[11] Scottish,[12] English, and
Germans,[13] were brought over in substantial numbers as indentured servants,[14]
particularly in the British Thirteen Colonies.[15] Over half of all white immigrants to the
English colonies of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries might have been
indentured servants.[16] In the 18th century numerous Europeans traveled to the
colonies as redemptioners.[17] The white citizens of Virginia, who had arrived from
Britain, decided to treat the first Africans in Virginia as indentured servants. As with
European indentured servants, the Africans were freed after a stated period and given
the use of land and supplies by their former owners. Anthony Johnson, a former
indentured servant from Africa, became a landowner on the Eastern Shore and a slave-
owner.[18] The major problem with indentured servants was that, in time, they would be
freed, but they were unlikely to become prosperous. The best lands in the tidewater
regions were already in the hands of wealthy plantation families by 1650, and the former
servants became an underclass. Bacon's Rebellion showed that the poor laborers and
farmers could prove a dangerous element to the wealthy landowners. By switching to
pure chattel slavery, new white laborers and small farmers were mostly limited to those
who could afford to immigrate and support themselves. In addition, improving economic
conditions in England meant that fewer laborers wanted to migrate to the colonies as
indentured servants, so the planters needed to find new sources of labor.
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Slaves on a Virginia plantation (The Old Plantation, c. 1790)
The transformation from indentured servitude to racial slavery happened gradually.
There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. However, by 1640, the
Virginia courts had sentenced at least one black servant to slavery.
In 1654, John Casor, a black man, became the first legally recognized slave in the
present United States. A court in Northampton County ruled against Casor, declaring
him property for life, "owned" by the black colonist Anthony Johnson. Since persons
with African origins were not English citizens by birth, they were not necessarily covered
by English Common Law. Elizabeth Key Grinstead successfully gained her freedom in
the Virginia courts in 1656 by making her case as the baptized Christian daughter of
free Englishman Thomas Key.[19]
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Shortly after the Elizabeth Key trial, in
1662 Virginia passed a law on partus,
stating that any children of an enslaved
mother would follow her status and
automatically be slaves, no matter if the
father was a freeborn Englishman. This
institutionalized the power relationships
and confined the possible scandal of
mixed-race children to within the slave
quarters. The Virginia Slave codes of
1705 further defined as slaves those
people imported from nations that were
not Christian, as well as Native Americans
who were sold to colonists by other Native
Americans.
See: Native Americans in the United States
In 1735, the trustees of the colony of
Georgia passed a law to prohibit slavery,
which was then legal in the 12 other
colonies. It was meant to eliminate the
risk of slave rebellions and make Georgia
better able to defend against attacks from the Spanish to the south. It also supported
the vision of Georgia's original charter - to turn some of England's poor into hardworking
small farmers. [20][21]
The protestant scottish highlanders who settled what is now Darien GA added a moral
anti-slavery argument, which was rare at the time, in their 1739 "Petition of the
Inhabitants of New Inverness":
It is shocking to human Nature, that any Race of Mankind and their Posterity should be
sentanc'd to perpetual
Slavery; nor in Justice can we think otherwise of it, that they are thrown amongst us to
be our Scourge one Day or other for our Sins: And as Freedom must be as dear to them
as it is to us, what a Scene of Horror must it bring about! And the longer it is
unexecuted, the bloody Scene must be the greater.
—Inhabitants of New Inverness , [20][22]
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But there was popular support for slavery and skillful lobbying by the colonists, and in
1750 slavery again became legal in Georgia.
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. Early on, slaves in the South worked
primarily in agriculture, on farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco;
cotton became a major crop after the 1790s. Tobacco was very labor intensive, as was
rice cultivation.[23] In South Carolina in 1720 about 65% of the population consisted of
slaves.[24] Slaves were used by rich farmers and plantation owners who cultivate crops
for commercial export operations. Backwoods subsistence farmers, a later wave of
settlers, seldom owned slaves.
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 slaves in 1774.
All of the colonies except Georgia had banned or limited the African slave trade by
1786; Georgia did so in 1798 - although some of these laws were later repealed.[25]
The British West Africa Squadron's slave trade suppression activities were assisted by
forces from the United States Navy, starting in 1820 with the USS Cyane. Initially, this
consisted of a few ships. With the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the relationship
was formalised and they jointly ran the Africa Squadron.[26]
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1776 to 1850
Second Middle Passage
The growing demand of cotton led many plantation owners west in search for more
suitable land. It was for this reason that slavery did not spread to the north, instead
spreading west.[27] Historian Peter Kolchin wrote, "By breaking up existing families and
forcing slaves to relocate far from everyone and everything they knew" this migration
"replicated (if on a reduced level) many of [the] horrors" of the Atlantic slave trade.[28]
Historian Ira Berlin called this forced migration the Second Middle Passage.
Characterizing it as the "central event” in the life of a slave between the American
Revolution and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that whether they were uprooted themselves
or simply lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the
massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free."[29]
Although complete statistics are lacking, it is estimated that 1,000,000 slaves moved
west from the Old South between 1790 and 1860. Most of the slaves were moved from
Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Originally the points of destination were Kentucky
and Tennessee, but after 1810 the states of the Deep South: Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas received the most. This corresponded to the massive
expansion of cotton cultivation in that region, which needed labor. In the 1830s, almost
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300,000 were transported, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving 100,000 each. Every
decade between 1810 and 1860 had at least 100,000 slaves moved from their state of
origin. In the final decade before the Civil War, 250,000 were moved. Michael Tadman,
in a 1989 book Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South,
indicates that 60-70% of interregional migrations were the result of the sale of slaves. In
1820 a child in the Upper South had a 30% chance of being sold south by 1860.[30]
Slave traders were responsible for the majority of the slaves that moved west. Only a
minority moved with their families and existing owner. Slave traders had little interest in
purchasing or transporting intact slave families, although in the interest of creating a
"self-reproducing labor force", equal numbers of men and women were transported.
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.[31] The expansion of the interstate slave trade
contributed to the "economic revival of once depressed seaboard states" as demand
accelerated the value of the slaves who were subject to sale.[32]
Some traders moved their "chattels" by sea, with Norfolk to New Orleans being the most
common route, but most slaves were forced to walk. Regular migration routes were
established and were served by a network of slave pens, yards, and warehouses
needed as temporary housing for the 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."[33]
The death rate for the slaves on their way to their new destination across the American
South was much less than that of the captives across the Atlantic Ocean. Mortality was
still higher than the normal death rate. Berlin summarizes the experience:
... the Second Middle Passage was extraordinarily lonely, debilitating, and dispiriting.
Capturing the mournful character of one southward marching coffle, an observer
characterized it as "a procession of men, women, and children resembling that of a
funeral." Indeed, with men and women dying on the march or being sold and resold,
slaves became not merely commodified but cut off from nearly every human
attachment....
Murder and mayhem made the Second Middle Passage almost as dangerous for
traders as it was for slaves, which was why the men were chained tightly and guarded
closely. ... The coffles that marched slaves southward – like the slave ships that carried
their ancestors westward – became mobile fortresses, and under such circumstances,
flight was more common than revolt. Slaves found it easier – and far less perilous – to
slip into the night and follow the North Star to the fabled land of freedom than to
confront their heavily armed overlords.[34]
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Once the trip was ended, slaves faced a life on the frontier significantly different from
their experiences back east. 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. The preferred locations of the new plantations at rivers' edges,
with mosquitoes and other environmental challenges, threatened the survival of slaves.
They had acquired only limited immunities in their previous homes. The death rate was
such 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.[35]
The harsh conditions on the frontier increased slave resistance and led to much more
reliance on violence by the owners and overseers. 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 were involved in growing
tobacco or wheat back east. Slaves also 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 eastern south.[36]
In Louisiana it was sugar, rather than cotton, that was the main crop. Between 1810 and
1830 the number of slaves increased from under 10,000 to over 42,000. New Orleans
became nationally important as a slave port and by the 1840s had the largest slave
market in the country. Dealing with sugar cane was even more physically demanding
than growing cotton. Planters preferred young males, who represented two-thirds of the
slave purchases. The largely young, unmarried male slave force made the reliance on
violence by the owners “especially savage.”[37]
Treatment of slaves
Historian Kenneth M. Stampp describes the role of coercion in
slavery, "Without the power to punish, which the state conferred
upon the master, bondage could not have existed. By
comparison, all other techniques of control were of secondary
importance."[38]
Stampp further notes that while rewards sometimes led slaves
to perform adequately, most agreed with an Arkansas
slaveholder, who wrote:
Now, I speak what I know, when I say it is like ‘casting pearls
before swine' to try to persuade a negro to work. He must be
made to work, and should always be given to understand that if
he fails to perform his duty he will be punished for it.[38]
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According to both the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis and historian
Eugene Genovese, treatment of slaves was both harsh and inhumane. Whether
laboring or walking about in public, people living as slaves were regulated by legally
authorized violence. Davis makes the point that, while some aspects of slavery took on
a "welfare capitalist" look,
Yet we must never forget that these same "welfare capitalist" plantations in the Deep
South were essentially ruled by terror. Even the most kindly and humane masters knew
that only the threat of violence could force gangs of field hands to work from dawn to
dusk "with the discipline," as one contemporary observer put it, "of a regular trained
army." Frequent public floggings reminded every slave of the penalty for inefficient
labor, disorderly conduct, or refusal to accept the authority of a superior.[39]
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Bill of sale for the auction of the "Negro Boy Jacob" for "Eighty Dollars and a half" to
satisfy a money judgement against the "property" of his owner, Prettyman Boyce.
October 10, 1807
Slaves that worked and lived on plantations were commonly punished. This punishment
could come from the plantation owner or master, his wife, children (white males), and
most often by the overseer. Slaves were punished with a variety of objects and
instruments. Some of these included: whips, placed in chains and shackles, various
contraptions such as metal collars, being hanged, and even forced to walk a
treadmill.[40] Those who inflicted pain upon the slaves also used weapons such as
knives, guns, field tools, and objects found nearby. The Whip was the most common
form of punishment performed on a slave. One slave said that, “The only punishment
that I ever heard or knew of being administered slaves was whipping,” although he
knew several that had been beaten to death for offenses such as sassing a white
person, hitting another negro, fussing, or fighting in their quarters.[41] Slave overseers
were authorized to whip and brutalize non-compliant slaves. According to an account by
a plantation overseer to a visitor, "Some Negroes are determined never to let a white
man whip them and will resist you, when you attempt it; of course you must kill them in
that case".[42] A former slave describes his witness to females being whipped. “They
usually screamed and prayed, though a few never made a sound.” [43] If the women
were pregnant they often dug a hole for them to place their bellies in while being
whipped. After many of the slaves were whipped they would further torment the slaves
by bursting the blisters and rubbing them with turpentine and red pepper. Other
incidents reported that after being beaten they would take a brick, grind it up into a
powder, mix it with lard and rub it all over them.[41]
Metal collars were also commonly used so that the slave would be reminded of his
wrongdoings. Many collars were thick and heavy; they would often have spikes
protruding, hassling the slave while doing fieldwork and preventing them from sleeping
lying down. Louis Cain, a former slave describes his witness to another slave being
punished, “One nigger run to the woods to be a jungle nigger, but massa cotched him
with the dog and took a hot iron and brands him. Then he put a bell on him, in a wooden
frame what slip over the shoulders and under the arms. He made that nigger wear the
bell a year and took it off on Christmas for a present to him. It sho’ did make a good
nigger out of him.” [41]
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Plantation owners would sometimes hang their slaves because the slave was causing
more trouble than he was worth or the owner didn’t deem them valuable any more]
Slaves were punished for a variety of reasons, most of the time it was for working too
slow, breaking a law such as running away, leaving the plantation without permission, or
not following orders given to them. Myers and Massy describe the extent of many
punishers, “The punishment of deviant slaves was decentralized, based on plantations,
and crafted so as not to impede their value as laborers.” [44] Laws made to punish the
whites for punishing their slaves were often weakly enforced or could be easily avoided.
An example being in the case Smith v. Hancock, here the defendant was justified in
punishing his slave with physical abuse because he showed the courts that the slave
was attending an unlawful meeting, discussing rebellion, that he refused to surrender,
and resisted the arresting officer by force.[45] Whites often punished slaves in front of
others to make an example out of them. A man named Harding describes an incident
where a woman assisted several men in a small rebellion, “The women he hoisted up
by the thumbs, whipp’d and slashed her with knives before the other slaves till she
died.” [46] Men and women were sometimes punished differently than the other sex,
according to the 1789 report of the Committee of the Privy Council, males were often
shackled and women and girls were left freely to go about.[46]
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By law, slave owners could be fined for not punishing recaptured runaway slaves. Slave
codes authorized, indemnified or even required the use of violence, and were
denounced by abolitionists for their brutality. Both slaves and free blacks were regulated
by the Black Codes and had their movements monitored by slave patrols conscripted
from the white population which were allowed to use summary punishment against
escapees, sometimes maiming or killing them. In addition to physical abuse and
murder, slaves were at constant risk of losing members of their families if their owners
decided to trade them for profit, punishment, or to pay debts. A few slaves retaliated by
murdering owners and overseers, burning barns, killing horses, or staging work
slowdowns.[47] Stampp, without contesting Genovese's assertions concerning the
violence and sexual exploitation faced by slaves, does question the appropriateness of
a Marxian approach in analyzing the owner-slave relationship.[48]
Genovese claims that because the slaves were the legal property of their owners, it was
not unusual for enslaved black women to be raped by their owners, members of their
owner's families, or their owner's friends. Children who resulted from such rapes were
slaves as well because they took the status of their mothers, unless freed by the
slaveholder. Nell Irwin Painter and other historians have also documented that Southern
history went "across the color line." Contemporary accounts by Mary Chesnut and
Fanny Kemble, both married in the planter class, as well as accounts by former slaves
gathered under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), all attested to the abuse of
women slaves by white men of the owning and overseer class.
However, the Nobel economist Robert Fogel controversially describes as a myth the
belief that slave-breeding and sexual exploitation destroyed black families. He argues
that the family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery, and to the
economic interest of slave owners to encourage the stability of slave families, and most
of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals at an age
when it would have been normal for them to leave the family.[49] However, eyewitness
testimony from former slaves does not support Fogel's view. Frederick Douglass, who
grew up as a slave in Maryland, reported the systematic separation of slave families
and widespread rape of slave women to boost slave numbers.[50]
In the early 1930s, members of the Federal Writers' Project interviewed former slaves,
and in doing so, produced the only known original recordings of former slaves. In 2007,
the interviews were remastered and reproduced on modern CDs and in book form in
conjunction with the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Productions and a national radio
project. In the book and CD oral history project called Remembering Slavery: African
Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation, the
editors wrote,
As masters applied their stamp to the domestic life of the slave quarter, slaves struggled
to maintain the integrity of their families. Slaveholders had no legal obligation to respect
the sanctity of the slave's marriage bed, and slave women—married or single — had no
formal protection against their owners' sexual advances. ...Without legal protection and
subject to the master's whim, the slave family was always at risk." [51]
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Some slave women were used for breeding more slaves. Plantation owners would have
intimate relations with a female slave in order to produce more slaves. Some slaves
were even forced to have sex with others to increase population and increase the
amount of slave product on the market.
RBG ON GREAT WHITE LIES AND SLAVE SHIPS
The book includes examples of enslaved families torn apart when family members were
sold out of state and it contains examples of sexual violations of the enslaved people by
individuals who held power over them.
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Receipt for $500.00 payment for slave, 1840. (US$10,300 adjusted for inflation as of 2007.)
"Recd of Judge S. Williams his notes for five hundred Dollars in full payment for a negro
man named Ned which negro I warrant to be sound and well and I do bind myself by
these presents to forever warrant and defend the right and Title of the said negro to the
said Williams his heirs or assigns against the legal claims of all persons whatsoever.
Witness my hand and seal this day and year above written. Eliza Wallace [seal]"
According to Genovese, slaves were fed, clothed, housed and provided medical care in
the most minimal manner. It was common to pay small bonuses during the Christmas
season, and some slave owners permitted their slaves to keep earnings and gambling
profits. (One slave, Denmark Vesey, is known to have won a lottery and bought his
freedom.) In many households, treatment of slaves varied with the slave's skin color.
Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields, while lighter-skinned house servants had
comparatively better clothing, food and housing.[47]
As in President Thomas Jefferson's household, the presence of lighter-skinned slaves
as household servants was not merely an issue of skin color. Sometimes planters used
mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their
children or other relatives. Several of Jefferson's household slaves were children of his
father-in-law John Wayles and the enslaved woman Betty Hemings, who were brought
to the marriage by Jefferson's wife. In turn the widower Jefferson had a long relationship
with Betty and John Wayle's daughter Sally Hemings, a much younger enslaved woman
who was mostly of white ancestry and half-sister to his late wife. The Hemings children
grew up to be closely involved in Jefferson's household staff activities; one became his
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chef. Two sons trained as carpenters. Three of his four surviving mixed-race children
with Sally Hemings passed into white society as adults.[52]
Planters who had mixed-race children sometimes arranged for their education, even in
schools in the North, or as apprentices in crafts. Others settled property on them. Some
freed the children and their mothers. While fewer than in the Upper South, free blacks in
the Deep South were more often mixed-race children of planters and were sometimes
the recipients of transfers of property and social capital. For instance, Wilberforce
University, founded by Methodist and African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
representatives in Ohio in 1856 for the education of African-American youth, was in its
first years largely supported by wealthy southern planters who paid for the education of
their mixed-race children. When the war broke out, the school lost most of its 200
students.[53] The college closed for a couple of years before the AME Church bought it
and began to operate it.
Fogel argues that the material conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with
those of free industrial workers. They were not good by modern standards, but this fact
emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the 19th
century. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90%
of the income he produced.[49] In a survey, 58% of historians and 42% of economists
disagreed with the proposition that the material condition of slaves compared favorably
with those of free industrial workers.[49]
Slaves were considered legal non-persons except if they committed crimes. An
Alabama court asserted that slaves "are rational beings, they are capable of committing
crimes; and in reference to acts which are crimes, are regarded as persons. Because
they are slaves, they are incapable of performing civil acts, and, in reference to all such,
they are things, not persons."[54]
In 1811, Arthur William Hodge was the first slave owner executed for the murder of a
slave in the British West Indies.[55] However, he was not, as some have claimed, the first
white person to have been lawfully executed for the killing of a slave.[56] Records
indicate at least two earlier incidents. On November 23, 1739, in Williamsburg, Virginia,
two white men, Charles Quin and David White, were hanged for the murder of another
white man's black slave; and on April 21, 1775, the Fredericksburg newspaper, the
Virginia Gazette reported that a white man, William Pitman, had been hanged for the
murder of his own black slave.[57]
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Slave Codes
To help regulate the relationship between
slave and owner, including legal support for
keeping the slave as property, slave codes
were established. While each state would
have its own, most of the ideas were shared
throughout the slave states. In the codes for
the District of Columbia, a slave is defined as
“a human being, who is by law deprived of his
or her liberty for life, and is the property of
another.”[58] A paragraph from the Black Code
of South Carolina, still valid in 1863, declared
death as the penalty for him who dared "to aid
any slave in running away or departing from
his master's or employer's service."[59] Codes
from other states placed limits on relations
allowed between black and white people.
Louisiana's Code Noir did not allow interracial
marriage, and if children were a result a fine
of three hundred livres would have to be paid.
This code also stated children of a slave
"shall share the condition of their mother”[60] if
the child’s parents had different masters they
would stay with the mother, and if the father was free and the mother a slave the
children would also be slaves.
Abolitionist movement
Beginning in the 1750s, there was widespread sentiment during the American
Revolution that slavery was a social evil (for the country as a whole and for the whites)
and should eventually be abolished. All the Northern states passed emancipation acts
between 1780 and 1804; most of these arranged for gradual emancipation and a
special status for freedmen, so there were still a dozen "permanent apprentices" in New
Jersey in 1860.[62]
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 declared all men "born free and equal"; the
slave Quock Walker sued for his freedom on this basis and won his freedom, thus
abolishing slavery in Massachusetts.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, a movement to end slavery grew in
strength throughout the United States. This struggle took place amid strong support for
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slavery among white Southerners, who profited greatly from the system of enslaved
labor. These slave owners began to refer to slavery as the "peculiar institution" in a
defensive attempt to differentiate it from other examples of forced labor.
Henry Clay (1777–1852), one of three founders of the American
Colonization Society, the vehicle for returning black Americans to
greater freedom in Africa, founding Liberia.[63]
In the early part of the 19th century, a variety of organizations
were established advocating the movement of black people from
the United States to locations where they would enjoy greater
freedom; some endorsed colonization, while others advocated
emigration. During the 1820s and 1830s the American
Colonization Society (A.C.S.) was the primary vehicle for proposals to return black
Americans to greater freedom and equality in Africa,[63] and in 1821 the A.C.S.
established colony of Liberia, assisting thousands of former African-American slaves
and free black people (with legislated limits) to move there from the United States. Many
white people saw this as preferable to emancipation in America, with A.C.S founder
Henry Clay believing; "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never
could amalgamate with the free whites of this country". Slaveholders opposed freedom
for blacks, but saw repatriation as a way of avoiding rebellions.
After 1830, a religious movement led by William Lloyd Garrison declared slavery to be a
personal sin and demanded the owners repent immediately and start the process of
emancipation. The movement was highly controversial and was a factor in causing the
American Civil War.
Very few abolitionists, such as John Brown, favored the use of armed force to foment
uprisings among the slaves; others tried to use the legal system.
Influential leaders of the abolition movement (1810–60) included:
William Lloyd Garrison - published The Liberator newspaper
Harriet Beecher Stowe - author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Frederick Douglass - nation's most powerful anti-slavery speaker, a former slave.
Most famous for his book Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Harriet Tubman - helped 350 slaves escape from the South, became known as a
"conductor" on the Underground Railroad.
Robert Purvis - mixed-race abolitionist who used wealth for the black race, active
in Philadelphia and Anti-Slavery Society, helped hundreds of slaves on
Underground Railroad
Charles Henry Langston - mixed-race abolitionist in Oberlin, Ohio; one of two
people tried for Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, which gained national attention
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Slave uprisings that used armed force (1700–1859) include:
Part of a series of articles on... New York Revolt of 1712
The Stono Rebellion (1739) in South Carolina
New York Slave Insurrection of 1741
Gabriel's Rebellion (1800) in Virginia
Louisiana Territory Slave Rebellion, led by
Charles Deslondes (1811)
George Boxley Rebellion (1815) in Virginia
Denmark Vesey Uprising in South Carolina
1712 New York Slave Revolt (1822)
(New York City, Suppressed) Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831) in Virginia
1733 St. John Slave Revolt
(Saint John, Suppressed)
1739 Stono Rebellion
(South Carolina, Suppressed)
1741 New York Conspiracy
(New York City, Suppressed)
1760 Tacky's War
(Jamaica, Suppressed)
1791–1804 Haitian Revolution
(Saint-Domingue, Victorious)
1800 Gabriel Prosser
(Virginia, Suppressed)
1805 Chatham Manor
(Virginia, Suppressed)
1811 German Coast Uprising
(Territory of Orleans,
Suppressed)
1815 George Boxley
(Virginia, Suppressed)
1822 Denmark Vesey
(South Carolina, Suppressed)
1831 Nat Turner's rebellion
(Virginia, Suppressed)
1831–1832 Baptist War
(Jamaica, Suppressed)
1839 Amistad, ship rebellion
(Off the Cuban coast,
Victorious)
1841 Creole, ship rebellion
(Off the Southern U.S. coast,
Victorious)
1859 John Brown's Raid
(Virginia, Suppressed)
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Rising tensions
The economic value of plantation slavery was magnified in 1793 with the invention of
the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, a device designed to separate cotton fibers from
seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. The invention revolutionized the cotton
industry by increasing fiftyfold the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day.
The result was the explosive growth of the cotton industry and greatly increased the
demand for slave labor in the South.[64]
At the same time, the northern states banned slavery, though, as Alexis de Toqueville
noted in Democracy in America (1835), the prohibition did not always mean that the
slaves were freed. Toqueville noted that as Northern states provided for gradual
emancipation, they generally outlawed the sale of slaves within the state. This meant
that the only way to sell slaves before they were freed was to move them South.
Toqueville does not document that such transfers actually occurred much.[65] In fact, the
emancipation of slaves in the North led to the growth in the population of northern free
blacks, from several hundreds in the 1770s to nearly 50,000 by 1810.[66]
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Just as demand for slaves was increasing, the supply was restricted. The United States
Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of
slaves until 1808. On January 1, 1808, Congress banned further imports. Any new
slaves would have to be descendants of ones currently in the United States. However,
the internal American slave trade and the involvement in the international slave trade or
the outfitting of ships for that trade by U.S. citizens were not banned. Though there were
certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became, more or less, self-sustaining.
The War of 1812 and slavery
During the War of 1812, British Royal Navy commanders of the blockading fleet, based
at the Bermuda dockyard, were given instructions to encourage the defection of
American slaves by offering freedom, as they did during the Revolutionary War.
Thousands of black slaves went over to the Crown with their families, and were
recruited into the (3rd Colonial Battalion) Royal Marines on occupied Tangier Island, in
the Chesapeake. A further company of colonial marines was raised at the Bermuda
dockyard, where many freed slaves, men women and children, had been given refuge
and employment. It was kept as a defensive force in case of an attack.
These former slaves fought for Britain throughout the Atlantic campaign, including the
attack on Washington D.C.and the Louisiana Campaign, and most were later re-enlisted
into British West India regiments, or settled in Trinidad in August, 1816, where seven
hundred of these ex-marines were granted land (they reportedly organised themselves
in villages along the lines of military companies). Many other freed American slaves
were recruited directly into existing West Indian regiments, or newly created British
Army units. A few thousand freed slaves were later settled at Nova Scotia by the British.
Slaveholders primarily in the South experienced considerable "loss of property" as tens
of thousands of slaves escaped to British lines or ships for freedom, despite the
difficulties. The planters' complacency about slave "contentment" was shocked by
seeing slaves would risk so much to be free.[67] 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.
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Internal Slave Trade
Slave trader's business in Atlanta, Georgia, 1864. (Note building with sign reading
"Auction & Negro Sales".)
With the movement in Virginia and the Carolinas away from tobacco cultivation and
toward mixed agriculture, which was less labor intensive, planters in those states had
excess slave labor. They hired out some slaves for occasional labor, but planters also
began to sell enslaved African Americans to traders who took them to markets in the
Deep South for their expanding plantations. The internal slave trade and forced
migration of enslaved African Americans continued for another half-century. Tens of
thousands of slaves were transported from the Upper South, including Kentucky and
Tennessee which became slave-selling states in these decades, to the Deep South.
Thousands of African American families were broken up in the sales, which first
concentrated on male laborers. The scale of the internal slave trade contributed
substantially to the wealth of the Deep South. In 1840, New Orleans—which had the
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largest slave market and important shipping—was the third largest city in the country
and the wealthiest.
Because of the three-fifths compromise in the U.S. Constitution, slaveholders exerted
their power through the Federal Government and passed Federal fugitive slave laws.
Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River and other parts of the
Mason-Dixon Line dividing North from South, to the North via the Underground
Railroad. The physical presence of African Americans in Cincinnati, Oberlin, and other
Northern towns agitated some white Northerners, though others helped hide former
slaves from their former owners, and others helped them reach freedom in Canada.
After 1854, Republicans fumed that the Slave Power, especially the pro-slavery
Democratic Party, controlled two of the three branches of the Federal government.
Most Northeastern states became free states through local emancipation. The
settlement of the Midwestern states after the Revolution led to their decisions in the
1820s not to allow slavery. A Northern block of free states united into one contiguous
geographic area which shared an anti-slavery culture. The boundary was the Mason-
Dixon Line (between slave-state Maryland and free-state Pennsylvania) and the Ohio
River.
The slave trade (though not the legality of slavery) was abolished by Congress in the
District of Columbia as part of the Compromise of 1850.
Religious institutions
Presumption created and legitimized American slavery. Religious leaders in the years
leading up to the Civil War were unable to provide a definitive answer on the most
difficult question of the period: "Does the Bible condemn or condone slavery." Historian
Mark Noll in The Civil War as a Theological Crisis writes that a “fundamental
disagreement existed over what the Bible had to say about slavery at the very moment
when disputes over slavery were creating the most serious crisis in the nation's history”
(p. 29). He attributes much of that to a certainty of black racial inferiority that was "so
seriously fixed in the minds of white Americans, including most abolitionists..., that it
overwhelmed biblical testimony about race, even though most Protestant Americans
claimed that Scripture was in fact their supreme authority in adjudicating such
matters.”[68]:p.73
North and South grew further apart in 1845 when the Baptist Church and other
denominations split into Northern and Southern organizations. The Southern Baptist
Convention formed on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was
acceptable for Christians to own slaves. (In the 20th century, the Southern Baptist
Convention renounced this interpretation.) Currently American Baptist numerical
strength is greatest in the former slave-holding states.[69] Northern Baptists opposed
slavery. In 1844, the Home Mission Society declared that a person could not be a
missionary and still keep slaves as property. The Methodist and Presbyterian churches
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likewise divided north and south. By the late 1850s only the Democratic Party was a
national institution, although it split in the 1860 election.
Distribution of slaves
Distribution of slaves in 1820
Census # Free Total % free Total US % black
# Slaves
Year blacks black blacks population of total
1790 697,681 59,527 757,208 7.9% 3,929,214 19%
1800 893,602 108,435 1,002,037 10.8% 5,308,483 19%
1810 1,191,362 186,446 1,377,808 13.5% 7,239,881 19%
1820 1,538,022 233,634 1,771,656 13.2% 9,638,453 18%
1830 2,009,043 319,599 2,328,642 13.7% 12,860,702 18%
1840 2,487,355 386,293 2,873,648 13.4% 17,063,353 17%
1850 3,204,313 434,495 3,638,808 11.9% 23,191,876 16%
1860 3,953,760 488,070 4,441,830 11.0% 31,443,321 14%
1870 0 4,880,009 4,880,009 100% 38,558,371 13%
Source: http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0056/tab01.xls
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Missouri - - - 10,222 25,096 58,240 87,422 114,931
Nebraska - - - - - - - 15
Nevada - - - - - - - -
New
157 8 - - 3 1 - -
Hampshire
11,42 12,42
New Jersey 10,851 7,557 2,254 674 236 18
3 2
21,19 20,61
New York 15,017 10,088 75 4 - -
3 3
North 100,7 133,2
168,824 205,017 245,601 245,817 288,548 331,059
Carolina 83 96
Ohio - - - - 6 3 - -
Oregon - - - - - - - -
Pennsylvani
3,707 1,706 795 211 403 64 - -
a
Rhode
958 380 108 48 17 5 - -
Island
South 107,0 146,1
196,365 251,783 315,401 327,038 384,984 402,406
Carolina 94 51
13,58
Tennessee - 44,535 80,107 141,603 183,059 239,459 275,719
4
Texas - - - - - - 58,161 182,566
Vermont - - - - - - - -
292,6 346,6
Virginia 392,518 425,153 469,757 449,087 472,528 490,865
27 71
Wisconsin - - - - - 11 4 -
Distribution of slaveholders
As of the 1860 census, one may compute the following statistics on slaveholding:[71]
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.
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Excluding slaves, the 1860 U.S. population was 27,167,529, yielding about 1 in
70 free persons (1.5%) being slaveholders.
The distribution of slaveholders was very unequal: holders of 200 or more slaves,
constituting less than 1% of all US slaveholders (fewer than 4,000 persons, 1 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).
19 holders of 500 or more slaves have been identified.[72] The largest slaveholder was
Joshua John Ward, of Georgetown, South Carolina, who in 1850 held 1,092 slaves,[73]
and whose heirs in 1860 held 1,130 or 1,131 slaves[72][73] – he was dubbed "the king of
the rice planters",[73] and one of his plantations is now part of Brookgreen Gardens.
Nat Turner, anti-literacy laws
In 1831, a bloody slave
rebellion took place in
Southampton County,
Virginia. A slave named Nat
Turner, who was able to
read and write and had
"visions," started what
became known as Nat
Turner's Rebellion or the
Southampton Insurrection.
With the goal of freeing
himself and others, Turner
and his followers killed
approximately fifty men,
women and children, but
they were eventually
subdued by the militia.
Nat Turner and his followers were hanged, and Turner's body was flayed. The militia
also killed more than a hundred slaves who had not been involved in the rebellion.
Across the South, harsh new laws were enacted in the aftermath of the 1831 Turner
Rebellion to curtail the already limited rights of African Americans. Typical was the
following Virginia law against educating slaves, free blacks and children of whites and
blacks:[74]
. . . [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.
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If a white person assemble with negroes for the purpose of instructing them to read or
write, or if he associate with them in an unlawful assembly, he shall be confined in jail
not exceeding six months and fined not exceeding one hundred dollars; and any justice
may require him to enter into a recognizance, with sufficient security, to appear before
the circuit, county or corporation court, of the county or corporation where the offence
was committed, at its next term, to answer therefore[sic], and in the mean time to keep
the peace and be of good behavior.[75]
These laws were often defied by individuals, among whom was noted future
Confederate General Stonewall Jackson[citation needed].
1850s
Bleeding Kansas
After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854, the border wars broke out in
Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a
slave or free state was left to the inhabitants. Abolitionist John Brown was active in the
rebellion and killing in "Bleeding Kansas" as were many white Southerners. At the same
time, fears that the Slave Power was seizing full control of the national government
swept anti-slavery Republicans into office.
Dred Scott
Dred Scott was a 46 or 47-year old slave
who sued for his freedom after the death of
his owner on the grounds that he had lived
in a territory where slavery was forbidden
(the northern part of the Louisiana
Purchase, from which slavery was
excluded under the terms of the Missouri
Compromise). Scott filed suit for freedom
in 1846 and went through two state trials,
the first denying and the second granting
freedom. Eleven years later the Supreme
Court denied Scott his freedom in a
sweeping decision that set the United
States on course for Civil War. The court
ruled that Dred Scott was not a citizen who
had a right to sue in the Federal courts,
and that Congress had no constitutional
power to pass the Missouri Compromise.
The 1857 Dred Scott decision, decided 7-
2, held that a slave did not become free when taken into a free state; Congress could
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not bar slavery from a territory; and people of African descent imported into the United
States and held as slaves, or their descendants could not be citizens. Furthermore, a
state could not bar slaveowners from bringing slaves into that state. This decision, seen
as unjust by many Republicans including Abraham Lincoln, was also seen as proof that
the Slave Power had seized control of the Supreme Court. The decision, written by
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, barred slaves and their descendants from citizenship.
The decision enraged abolitionists and encouraged slave owners, helping to push the
country towards civil war.[76]
Civil War and Emancipation
1860 presidential election
The divisions became fully exposed
with the 1860 presidential election. The
electorate split four ways. The
Southern Democrats endorsed slavery,
while the Republicans denounced it.
The Northern Democrats said
democracy required the people to
decide on slavery locally. The
Constitutional Union Party said the
survival of the Union was at stake and
everything else should be
compromised.
Lincoln, the Republican, won with a
plurality of popular votes and a majority
of electoral votes. Lincoln, however,
did not appear on the ballots of ten
southern states: thus his election
necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. Many slave owners in the South feared
that the real intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in states where it
already existed, and that the sudden emancipation of four million slaves would be
problematic for the slave owners and for the economy that drew its greatest profits from
the labor of people who were not paid.
They also argued that banning slavery in new states would upset what they saw as a
delicate balance of free states and slave states. They feared that ending this balance
could lead to the domination of the industrial North with its preference for high tariffs on
imported goods. The combination of these factors led the South to secede from the
Union, and thus began the American Civil War. Northern leaders had viewed the slavery
interests as a threat politically, and with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new
southern nation, the Confederate States of America, with control over the Mississippi
River and the West, as politically and militarily unacceptable.
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Civil War
The consequent American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of chattel slavery
in America. Not long after the war broke out, through a legal maneuver credited to
Union General Benjamin F. Butler, a lawyer by profession, slaves who came into Union
"possession" were considered "contraband of war". General Butler ruled that they were
not subject to return to Confederate owners as they had been before the war. Soon
word spread, and many slaves sought refuge in Union territory, desiring to be declared
"contraband." Many of the "contrabands" joined the Union Army as workers or troops,
forming entire regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops. Others went to refugee camps
such as the Grand Contraband Camp near Fort Monroe or fled to northern cities.
General Butler's interpretation was reinforced when Congress passed the Confiscation
Act of 1861, which declared that any property used by the Confederate military,
including slaves, could be confiscated by Union forces.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 was a powerful move that
promised freedom for slaves in the Confederacy as soon as the Union armies reached
them, and authorized the enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army. The
Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the Union-allied slave-holding states
that bordered the Confederacy. Since the Confederate States did not recognize the
authority of President Lincoln, and the proclamation did not apply in the border states, at
first the proclamation freed only slaves who had escaped behind Union lines. Still, the
proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal that was implemented as
the Union took territory from the Confederacy. According to the Census of 1860, this
policy would free nearly four million slaves, or over 12% of the total population of the
United States.
Simon Legree and Uncle Tom: A scene from
Uncle Tom's Cabin, history's most famous
abolitionist novel
The Arizona Organic Act abolished slavery on
February 24, 1863 in the newly formed Arizona
Territory. Tennessee and all of the border states
(except Kentucky) abolished slavery by early
1865. Thousands of slaves were freed by the
operation of the Emancipation Proclamation as
Union armies marched across the South.
Emancipation as a reality came to the remaining
southern slaves after the surrender of all
Confederate troops in spring 1865.
At the beginning of the war, some Union
commanders thought they were supposed to return escaped slaves to their masters. By
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1862, when it became clear that this would be a long war, the question of what to do
about slavery became more general. The Southern economy and military effort
depended on slave labor. It began to seem unreasonable to protect slavery while
blockading Southern commerce and destroying Southern production. As one
Congressman put it, the slaves "…cannot be neutral. As laborers, if not as soldiers, they
will be allies of the rebels, or of the Union."[77] The same Congressman—and his fellow
Radical Republicans—put pressure on Lincoln to rapidly emancipate the slaves,
whereas moderate Republicans came to accept gradual, compensated emancipation
and colonization.[78] Copperheads, the border states and War Democrats opposed
emancipation, although the border states and War Democrats eventually accepted it as
part of total war needed to save the Union.
In 1861, Lincoln expressed the fear that premature attempts at emancipation would
mean the loss of the border states. He believed that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the
same as to lose the whole game."[79] At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation
by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Fremont (in Missouri) and
David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) in order to keep the loyalty of the
border states and the War Democrats.
Lincoln mentioned his Emancipation Proclamation to members of his cabinet on July 21,
1862. Secretary of State William H. Seward told Lincoln to wait for a victory before
issuing the proclamation, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the
retreat".[80] In September 1862 the Battle of Antietam provided this opportunity, and the
subsequent War Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation.[81] Lincoln
had already published a letter[82] encouraging the border states especially to accept
emancipation as necessary to save the Union. Lincoln later said that slavery was
"somehow the cause of the war".[83] Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and said that a final proclamation would be
issued if his gradual plan based on compensated emancipation and voluntary
colonization was rejected. Only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan,
and Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In his letter
to Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong …
And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted
right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling ... I claim not to have controlled
events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."[84]
Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only
included territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became
a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's
definition of liberty.[85] Lincoln also played a leading role in getting Congress to vote for
the Thirteenth Amendment,[86] which made emancipation universal and permanent.
Enslaved African Americans did not wait for Lincoln's action before escaping and
seeking freedom behind Union lines. From early years of the war, hundreds of
thousands of African Americans escaped to Union lines, especially in Union-controlled
areas like Norfolk and the Hampton Roads region in 1862 Virginia, Tennessee from
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1862 on, the line of Sherman's march, etc. So many African Americans fled to Union
lines that commanders created camps and schools for them, where both adults and
children learned to read and write. The American Missionary Association entered the
war effort by sending teachers south to such contraband camps, for instance,
establishing schools in Norfolk and on nearby plantations. In addition, nearly 200,000
African-American men served with distinction as soldiers and sailors with Union troops.
Most of those were escaped slaves.
Confederates enslaved captured black Union soldiers, and black soldiers especially
were shot when trying to surrender at the Fort Pillow Massacre.[87] This led to a
breakdown of the prisoner exchange program, and the growth of prison camps such as
Andersonville prison in Georgia, where almost 13,000 Union prisoners of war died of
disease and starvation.[88]
In spite of the South's shortage of manpower, until 1865, most Southern leaders
opposed arming slaves as soldiers. However,a few Confederates discussed arming
slaves since the early stages of the war, and some free blacks had even offered to fight
for the South. In 1862 Georgian Congressman Warren Akin supported the enrolling of
slaves with the promise of emancipation, as did the Alabama legislature. Support for
doing so also grew in other Southern states. A few all black Confederate militia units,
most notably the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, were formed in Louisiana at the start of
the war, but were disbanded in 1862.[89] In early March, 1865, Virginia endorsed a bill to
enlist black soldiers, and on March 13 the Confederate Congress did the same.[90]
There still were over 250,000 slaves in Texas. Word did not reach Texas about the
collapse of the Confederacy until June 19, 1865. African Americans and others
celebrate that day as Juneteenth, the day of freedom, in Texas, Oklahoma and some
other states. It commemorates the date when the news finally reached slaves at
Galveston, Texas.
Legally, the last 40,000 or so slaves were freed in Kentucky[91] by the final ratification of
the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865. Slaves still held in
New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Maryland, Missouri and Washington, D.C. also
became legally free on this date.
Reconstruction to present
During Reconstruction, it was a serious question whether slavery had been permanently
abolished or whether some form of semi-slavery would appear after the Union armies
left. Over time a large civil rights movement arose to bring full civil rights and equality
under the law to all Americans.
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Sharecropping
An 1867 federal law prohibited a descendant form of slavery known as sharecropping or
debt bondage, which still existed in the New Mexico Territory as a legacy of Spanish
imperial rule. Between 1903 and 1944, the Supreme Court ruled on several cases
involving debt bondage of black Americans, declaring these arrangements
unconstitutional. In actual practice, however, sharecropping arrangements often
resulted in peonage for both black and white farmers in the South.
Convict leasing
With emancipation a legal reality, white Southerners were concerned with both
controlling the newly freed slaves and keeping them in the labor force at the lowest
level. The system of convict leasing began during Reconstruction and was fully
implemented in the 1880s. This system allowed private contractors to purchase the
services of convicts from the state or local governments for a specific time period.
African Americans, due to “vigorous and selective enforcement of laws and
discriminatory sentencing” made up the vast majority of the convicts leased.[92] Writer
Douglas A. Blackmon writes of the system:
It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for
most men, and the relatively few women drawn in, this slavery did not last a lifetime and
did not automatically extend from one generation to the next. But it was nonetheless
slavery -- a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law
to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and
sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application
of extraordinary physical coercion.[93]
Educational issues
The anti-literacy laws after 1832 contributed greatly to the problem of widespread
illiteracy facing the freedmen and other African Americans after Emancipation and the
Civil War 35 years later. The problem of illiteracy and need for education was seen as
one of the greatest challenges confronting these people as they sought to join the free
enterprise system and support themselves during Reconstruction and thereafter.
Consequently, many black and white religious organizations, former Union Army officers
and soldiers, and wealthy philanthropists were inspired to create and fund educational
efforts specifically for the betterment of African Americans in the South. Blacks started
their own schools even before the end of the war. Northerners helped create numerous
normal schools, such as those that became Hampton University and Tuskegee
University, to generate teachers. Blacks held teaching as a high calling, with education
the first priority for children and adults. Many of the most talented went into the field.
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Some of the schools took years to reach a high standard, but they managed to get
thousands of teachers started. As W. E. B. Du Bois noted, the black colleges were not
perfect, but "in a single generation they put thirty thousand black teachers in the South"
and "wiped out the illiteracy of the majority of black people in the land."[94]
Northern philanthropists continued to support black education in the 20th century, even
as tensions rose within the black community, exemplified by Dr. Booker T. Washington
and Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, as to the proper emphasis between industrial and classical
academic education at the college level. Collaborating with Dr. Booker T. Washington in
the early decades of the 20th century, philanthropist Julius Rosenwald provided
matching funds for community efforts to build rural schools for black children. He
insisted on white and black cooperation in the effort, wanting to ensure that white-
controlled school boards made a commitment to maintain the schools. By the 1930s
local parents had helped raise funds (sometimes donating labor and land) to create over
5,000 rural schools in the South. Other philanthropists such as Henry H. Rogers and
Andrew Carnegie, each of whom had arisen from modest roots to become wealthy,
used matching fund grants to stimulate local development of libraries and schools.
Apologies
On February 24, 2007, the Virginia General Assembly passed House Joint Resolution
Number 728 acknowledging "with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans
and the exploitation of Native Americans, and call for reconciliation among all
Virginians."[95] With the passing of this resolution, Virginia became the first state to
acknowledge through the state's governing body their state's negative involvement in
slavery. The passing of this resolution came on the heels of the 400th anniversary
celebration of the city of Jamestown, Virginia, which was one of the first slave ports of
the American colonies.
On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution
apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.[96] The U.S.
Senate unanimously passed a similar resolution on June 18, 2009; it also explicitly
states that it cannot be used for restitution claims.[97]
Arguments used to justify slavery
See also: Proslavery in the antebellum United States
"A necessary evil"
In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary
evil". It was feared that emancipation would have more harmful social and economic
consequences than the continuation of slavery. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a
letter that with slavery:
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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.[98]
Robert E. Lee wrote in 1856:
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.[99]
Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, also expressed an opposition to
slavery, but felt that the existence of a multiracial society without slavery untenable, and
observed prejudice against negroes increasing as they were granted more rights (for
example, in northern states). He considered the attitudes of white southerners, and the
concentration of the black population in the south–due to exportation resulting from
restrictions in the north, and climatic and economic reasons–that was bringing the white
and black population to a state of equilibrium, as a danger to both races. Thus, because
of the racial differences between master and slave, the latter could not be
emancipated.[100]
"A positive good"
However, as the abolition agitation increased and the planting system expanded,
apologies for slavery became more faint in the South. Then apologies were superseded
by claims that slavery was a beneficial scheme of labor control. 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."[101]
Others who also moved from the idea of necessary evil to positive good are James
Henry Hammond and George Fitzhugh. Hammond, like Calhoun, believed 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 stating, “Such a
class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress,
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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.” He argued that the hired laborers of the
North are 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.[102] George Fitzhugh wrote 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.[103]
Native Americans
For more details on this topic, see Slavery among Native Americans in the United
States.
Enslavement of Native
Americans
During the 17th and 18th century,
Indian slavery, the enslavement of
Native Americans by European
colonists, was common. Many of these
Native slaves were exported to off-
shore colonies, especially the "sugar
islands" of the Caribbean. Historian
Alan Gallay estimates that from 1670–
1715, British slave traders sold
between 24,000 and 51,000 Native
Americans from what is now the
southern part of the U.S.[104]
Slavery of Native Americans was
organized in colonial and Mexican
California through Franciscan
missions, theoretically entitled to ten
years of Native labor, but in practice
maintaining them in perpetual
servitude, until their charge was
revoked in the mid-1830s. Following
the 1847–1848 invasion by U.S.
troops, Native Californians were
enslaved in the new state from
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statehood in 1850 to 1867.[105] Slavery required the posting of a bond by the slave
holder and enslavement occurred through raids and a four-month servitude imposed as
a punishment for Indian "vagrancy".[106]
Slavery among Native Americans
The Haida and Tlingit Indians who lived along southeast Alaska's coast were
traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California.
Slavery was hereditary after slaves were taken as prisoners of war. Among some
Pacific Northwest tribes, about a quarter of the population were slaves.[107][108] Other
slave-owning tribes of North America were, for example, Comanche of Texas, Creek of
Georgia, the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the coast from what is
now Alaska to California, the Pawnee, and Klamath.[23]
After 1800, the Cherokees and some other tribes started buying and using black slaves,
a practice they continued after being relocated to Indian Territory in the 1830s.[109]
The nature of slavery in Cherokee society often mirrored that of white slave-owning
society. The law barred intermarriage of Cherokees and blacks, whether slave or free.
Cherokee who aided slaves were punished with one hundred lashes on the back. In
Cherokee society, blacks were barred from holding office, bearing arms, and owning
property, and they made it illegal to teach blacks to read and write.[110][111]
By contrast, the Seminoles welcomed into their nation African Americans who had
escaped slavery (Black Seminoles).
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Indian slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation
A few captives from other tribes who were used as slaves were not freed when African-
American slaves were emancipated. Ute Woman, a Ute captured by the Arapaho and
later sold to a Cheyenne, was one example. Used as a prostitute for sale to American
soldiers at Cantonment in the Indian Territory, she lived in slavery until about 1880
when she died of a hemorrhage resulting from "excessive sexual intercourse".[112]
Barbary states
According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured
by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the
16th and 19th centuries.[113][114] Because of the large numbers of Britons captured by the
Barbary States and in other venues, captivity was the other side of exploration and
empire. Captivity narratives originated as a literary form in the 17th century. They were
widely published and read, preceding those of colonists captured by American Indians
in North America.[115] Slave-taking persisted into the 19th century when Barbary pirates
would capture ships and enslave the crew. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had
466 merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates.[116]
United States commercial ships were not immune from pirate attacks. In 1783, the
United States made peace with, and gained recognition from, the British monarchy. In
1784 the first American ship was seized by pirates from Morocco. By late 1793, a dozen
American ships had been captured, goods stripped and everyone enslaved. After some
serious debate, the government created the United States Navy in March 1794. This
new military presence helped to stiffen American resolve to resist the continuation of
tribute payments, leading to the two Barbary Wars along the North African coast: the
First Barbary War from 1801 to 1805[117] and the Second Barbary War in 1815.
Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states had amounted to 20% of United
States government annual revenues in 1800.[118] It was not until 1815 that naval
victories ended tribute payments by the U.S. Some European nations continued annual
payments until the 1830s.[119]
Free black people and slavery
Some slaveholders were black or had some black ancestry. In 1830 there were 3,775
such slaveholders in the South, with 80% of them located in Louisiana, South Carolina,
Virginia, and Maryland. There were economic differences between free blacks of the
Upper South and Deep South, with the latter fewer in number, but wealthier and
typically of mixed race. Half of the black slaveholders lived in cities rather than the
countryside, with most in New Orleans and Charleston. Especially New Orleans had a
large, relatively wealthy free black population (gens de couleur) composed of people of
mixed race, who had become a third class between whites and enslaved blacks under
French and Spanish rule. Relatively few slaveholders were “substantial planters.” Of
those who were, most were of mixed race, often endowed by white fathers with some
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