History of slavery in the United States
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The history of slavery in the United States began soon after Europeans first settled in the area (and so even before the founding of the United States), and officially ended with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
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Introduction
Slavery, the practice of keeping people in servitude against their will and owning them as property, had a previous history in the area that would become the United States. Slavery under European rule began with importation of European indentured labourers, was followed by the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, and eventually was primarily replaced with Africans imported through a large slave trade. Initially, slavery was a form of unfree labour that developed into an institution of chattel slavery.
The shift from indentured servants to chattel slavery of Africans was prompted by a growing lower class of former servants who had worked through the terms of their indentures and thus became competitors of their former masters and by the constant need for more laborers. These newly freed servants were rarely able to support themselves comfortably, and the tobacco industry was increasingly dominated by large planters. This caused domestic unrest culminating in Bacon's Rebellion.
After the 1860 presidential election, the South seceded from the Union and thus began the American Civil War. The United States Civil War led to the end of chattel slavery in America. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 made the abolition of slavery an official war goal and it was implemented throughout the war. Legally, slaves within the United States remained enslaved until the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December of 1865.
Background
Slavery in North America
It is unclear whether the first Africans in North America were chattel slaves or other kinds of unfree labourers, such as indentured servants. The first African slaves arrived in present day United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De'Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, and the colony was abandoned, leaving the escaped slaves behind on North American soil. In 1565 the colony of Saint Augustine in Florida became the first permanent European settlement in North America, and included an unknown number of African slaves.
Slavery in Colonial America
Twenty blacks are recorded as being brought by a Dutch man of war and 'sold' to the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 as indentured servants. Three are believed to have been named Isabella, Antoney and Pedro. There is evidence that Isabella and Antoney later gave birth to a son named William. This "William Tucker" is now considered the first African American born in the English colonies in North America.
The transformation from indentured servitude (servants contracted to work for a set amount of time) to racial slavery didn't happen overnight. There are no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. By 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least one black servant to slavery . . .
Three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn ran away to Maryland. Two were white; one was black. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes -- a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th-century Virginia. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude -- one more year for Gwyn followed by three more for the colony. But, in addition to the whipping, the black man, a man named John Punch, was ordered to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere." John Punch no longer had hope for freedom.
It wasn't until 1661 that a reference to slavery entered into Virginia law, and this law was directed at white servants -- at those who ran away with a black servant. The following year, the colony went one step further by stating that children born would be bonded or free according to the status of the mother.
The transformation had begun, but it wouldn't be until the Slave Codes of 1705 that the status of African Americans would be sealed.
Originally in the American colonies, 1600 to 1800, American Indians (Native Americans) and other groups, mostly white Europeans such as captured soldiers, minor criminals, etc., were used as slaves (indentured servants, see Bound Over by John Van Der Zee), but by the 19th century almost all slaves were blacks. During the British colonial period, slaves were used in mostly in the Southern colonies and to a lesser degree in the Northern colonies as well. (See also History of the United States and Slavery in Colonial America). Early on, slaves (indentured servants) were most useful in the growing of indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton was only a side crop. Nevertheless, it was clear that slaves were most economically viable in plantation-style agriculture. Many landowners began to grow increasingly dependent on slave labor for their livelihood, and legislatures responded accordingly by increasingly stricter regulations on forced labor practices, known as the Slave codes.
1750s to 1850s
Some of the British colonies placed restrictions on the practice of slavery, others banned it completely, such as Rhode Island in 1774. The economic value of plantation slavery was reinforced in 1793 with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, a device designed to separate cotton fibers from seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. The invention revolutionized the cotton-growing industry by increasing the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day by tenfold. The result was explosive growth in the cotton industry, and a proportionate increase in the demand for slave labor in the South.
Just as demand for slaves was increasing, however, supply was restricted. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. On January 1 that year, Congress acted to ban further imports. Any new slaves would have to be descendants of ones that were currently in the US. However, the internal U.S. slave trade, and the involvement in the international slave trade or the outfitting of ships for that trade by U.S. citizens were not banned. Though there were certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became more or less self-sustaining; the overland 'slave trade' from Tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas continued for another half-century.
Several slave rebellions took place during the 1700s and 1800s including the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831.
Historical records indicate that some slaveowners were more cruel to slaves than others. Some slaveowners raped and whipped slaves, and even cut off limbs of slaves who tried to escape, while other slaveowners provided materially for their slaves and were less physically abusive. In many households, treatment of slaves varied with the slave's skin color. Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields, while lighter-skinned slaves or "house negroes" were made to work in the house and had better provisions. The United States slave population was the only slave population in history that increased through birth rather than importation. The interpretation of this fact has been a topic of much debate.
Because the Midwestern states were "free states" by ordinance before even the Constitution had been ratified, and because Northeastern states became free states later through local abolition and emancipation, a Northern aggregation of free states solidified into one contiguous geographic area, and with the entry of additional free states in the Great Plains, a territory free of slavery was formed north of the Ohio River and the old Mason-Dixon line.
Abolitionism
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, a movement to end slavery, called abolitionism, grew in strength throughout the United States. This reform took place amidst strong support of slavery among white Southerners, who began to refer to it as the "peculiar institution" in a defensive attempt to differentiate it from other examples of forced labor. There were several strains of aformentioned reform movements. Some wanted to ship the slaves back to Africa, and settle them in a new homeland there (some also wanted to deport any free blacks in the country); a movement of this type led to the foundation of the modern-day nation of Liberia. Others wanted to simply end the practice of slavery, leaving free blacks in the United States. Another divide was over whether or not slave-owners would be compensated for the value of their lost "property". There was further disagreement over the degree of militancy to use. Some abolitionists, such as John Brown, favored the use of armed force to foment uprisings amongst the slaves, while others preferred to use the legal system.
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
- Harriet Tubman - Helped 350 slaves escape from the South, became known as a "conductor" on the "Underground Railroad".
Due to the three-fifths compromise in the United States Constitution, slaveholders exerted their power through the Federal Government and the Federal Fugitive slave laws. Anti-slavery Democratic-Republicans, Whigs, and Free Soilers achieved nominal successes in advocating an end to slavery's expansion in the West, especially during and after the Mexican War of 1846-1848. (Mexico had declared the abolition of slavery in 1814 during its War of Independence.)
Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River to the North via the Underground Railroad, and their physical presence in Cincinnati, Oberlin, and other Northern towns agitated Northerners. Prominent Midwestern Governors, like Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, asserted States Rights arguments to refuse Federal jurisidiction in their states over fugitives. Northerners fumed that the pro-slavery Democratic Party controlled two or three branches of the Federal government for most of the antebellum era.
Abolitionists clashed with slave-owners numerous times throughout the century. The first effort to mediate the two was known as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, an attempt to make sure that the two interests were balanced in the United States Senate.
A further split occurred in 1845 with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (presently one of the largest Christian congregations in the United States), founded on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves (the Southern Baptist Convention has long since renounced this interpretation). Dozens of Bible verses were used to back up this interpretation. This split was triggered by the opposition of northern Baptists to slavery, and in particular by the 1844 statement of the Home Mission Society declaring that a person could not be a missionary and still keep slaves as property..
1850s to the Civil War
After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, border wars broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state was left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist, John Brown, was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." At the same time, propaganda 'wars' in Northern newspapers swept anti-slavery legislators into office under the banner of the Republican Party. Image:SlaveSale.jpg The Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that slavery's presence in the Midwest was nominally lawful (when owners crossed into free states), turned Northern public opinion against slavery.
The tensions came to a head with the 1860 presidential election. Abraham Lincoln, who was opposed to the expansion of slavery was swept into office with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of electoral votes. Lincoln however, did not appear on the ballots of ten southern states: thus his election necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. Many in the South feared that the real intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in states where it already existed, and that the sudden emancipation of 4 million slaves would be problematic. They also 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. Ironically, Southern leaders clawed back the idea of "states' rights" from Midwestern and Northeastern abolitionist leaders, and each Southern state would assert their individual sovereign status and right to 'self determination'. Northern leaders like Lincoln and Chase had viewed the slavery interests as a threat politically, and with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new slave nation, the Confederate States of America, with control over the Mississippi River and the West, as politically and militarily unacceptable.
The consequent United States Civil War led to the end of chattel slavery in America. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 was a symbolic gesture that proclaimed freedom for slaves within the Confederacy, although not for those in the strategically important border states of Tennessee, Maryland and Delaware. However, the proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal and it was implemented as the Union retook territory from the Confederacy.
Legally, slaves within the United States remained enslaved until the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December of 1865, eight months after the cessation of hostilities in the Civil War. Practically, the slaves in many parts of the south were freed by Union armies or when they simply left their former owners. Many joined the Union Army as workers or troops, and many more fled to Northern cities. When General Sherman led his famous march through the South to Atlanta and Savannah, hundreds of thousands of new 'freedmen' followed him in his wake.
After the Civil War
During the period between the surrender of the last Confederate troops on May 26, 1865 and the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865 (with final recognition of the amendment on December 18), officially ending chattel slavery in the United States, slaveholding persisted in the slave states not in rebellion against the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri; Maryland established a new constitution, which abolished slavery, November 1, 1864) and also in the territories located south of 36° 30' North latitude as per the Missouri Compromise (most of the present-day states of Arizona, New Mexico, and some of Oklahoma, although very few slaves could actually be found in these territories), but history remains unclear on the precise date upon which the last chattel slave was freed in the United States. Juneteenth (June 19, 1865) is celebrated in Texas, Oklahoma, and some other areas, and commemorates the date when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the last slaves at Galveston, Texas.
An 1867 federal law prohibited debt bondage or peonage, 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.
See also
Further reading
Oral histories of ex-slaves
- Before Freedom When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves, Belinda Hurmence, John F. Blair, Publisher, 1989, trade paperback 125 pages, ISBN 089587069X
- Before Freedom: Forty-Eight Oral Histories of Former North & South Carolina Slaves, Belinda Hurmence, Mentor Books, 1990, mass market paperback, ISBN 0451627814
- God Struck Me Dead, Voices of Ex-Slaves, Clifton H. Johnson ISBN 0829809457
Historical studies
- Ira Berlin. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN 0674810929
- Stanley Elkins. Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. ISBN 0226204774
- A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0195027450
Historical fiction
- Edward P. Jones. The Known World New York: Amistad, 2003. ISBN 0060557559 2003 winner of the National Book Critic Circle for fiction and 2004 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
External links
- Antislavery Literature Project, a collection of literature on slavery
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
- Images of slavery drawn by Thomas Nast (has background music)
- History of Slavery in America a historical overview
- Pierce Butler, Fanny Kemble, et al by Gilbert Wesley Purdy. A review with considerable information relating to the great slave auction called "The Weeping Time".
- Slavery in the United States from EH.NET by Jenny B. Wahl of Carleton College
- Map of 1820 showing free and slave territories.
- Classics on American Slavery collection of old documents available on-line through Dinsmore Documentation
- Slavery: A Dehumanizing Institution by Nell Irvin Painter, historian and author of Creating Black Americans
- Lanier On The Runaway Slaves at Fort Gadsden. Sidney Lanier describes the history of a fascinating fort commandeered by runaway slaves.de:Atlantischer Sklavenhandel
he:עבדות בארצות הברית pl:Niewolnictwo w USA sk:História otroctva v Spojených štátoch amerických