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{{About|slavery from the founding of the United States in 1776|the colonial period|Slavery in the colonial history of the United States|modern illegal slavery|Human trafficking in the United States|modern legal forced labor|Penal labor in the United States}}
{{Redirect|Peculiar institution|the book|The Peculiar Institution{{!}}''The Peculiar Institution''}}
{{See also|Abolitionism in the United States}}
{{Pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
{{very long|date=May 2025|words=19,683}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2017}}
{{Use American English|date=June 2023}}
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| image1 = Torturing American citizens page 129.jpg
| image2 = Detail of Wilson Chinn photograph "VBM".jpg
| image3 = Adam Crosswhite.jpg
| image4 = Franklin and Armfield slave prison Alexandria Virginia 1836.png
| image5 = Detail of Contrabands Aboard U.S. Ship Vermont, Port Royal, South Carolina MET DP254888.jpg
| image6 = DeliaGarlic.jpg
| image8 = Ezra Greenleaf Weld (American - Fugitive Slave Law Convention, Cazenovia, New York - Google Art Project.jpg
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| image9 = MS-Indianola-Bettersworth0001 DESTROYED 1960s White Gold in the Delta.jpg
| footer = [[Torture of slaves in the United States|Whipping a slave]], wood-engraving made 1834; [[Wilson Chinn]], showing a [[slave collar]] and facial branding of the initials of his enslaver, Valsin B. Marmillion; slavery survivor [[Adam Crosswhite]] photographed 1878; [[Franklin & Armfield]]'s slave jail in [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]], [[District of Columbia|D.C.]], 1836; freedmen leaving South Carolina on the [[USS Vermont (1848)|USS ''Vermont'']] in 1862; [[Delia Garlic]] at age 100; 1818 Kentucky [[slave trade in the United States|slave trader]]'s ad; daguerreotype made at the 1850 [[Fugitive Slave Convention]]; ''White Gold in the Delta'', painted 1939 by Beulah Bettersworth for the [[Indianola, Mississippi]] post office, mural destroyed 1960s
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{{Slavery|sp=us}}
{{African American topics sidebar|collapsed}}
{{Native American topics sidebar}}
The legal institution of human [[chattel slavery]], comprising the enslavement primarily of [[List of ethnic groups of Africa|Africans]] and [[African Americans]], was prevalent in the [[United States]] from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in [[Southern United States|the South]]. Slavery was found throughout [[European colonization in the Americas]]. From 1526, during the early [[Slavery in the colonial history of the United States|colonial period]], it was practiced in what became [[British America|Britain's colonies]], including the [[Thirteen Colonies]] that formed the United States. Under the law, children were [[partus sequitur ventrem|born into slavery]], and an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery persisted in about half of the [[U.S. state]]s until its [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|abolition]] in 1865. Issues involving slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social customs.[{{cite book
|page=87
|title=Passionate Liberator. Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform
|first=Robert H.
|last=Abzug
|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]
|year=1980
|isbn=0-19-502771-X}}] In the decades after [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]] ended in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions continued through [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]], [[sharecropping]], and [[convict leasing]]. Involuntary servitude [[penal labor in the United States|as a punishment for crime]] remains legal.
By the time of the [[American Revolutionary War]] (1775–1783), enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial [[caste]] associated with African ancestry.[{{cite magazine |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html |title=The Birth of Race-Based Slavery |last=Wood |first=Peter |date=2003 |magazine=Slate |id=(May 19, 2015): Reprinted from ''Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America'' by Peter H. Wood with permission from Oxford University Press. 1996, 2003 |access-date=October 16, 2017 |archive-date=February 3, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200203043438/http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html |url-status=live }}] During and immediately after the Revolution, [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] laws passed in most [[Northern United States|Northern states]] and a movement developed to abolish slavery. The role of slavery under the [[United States Constitution]] (1789) was highly contentious during its drafting. The [[Three-fifths Compromise|Three-Fifths Clause]] of the Constitution inflated slave states' political power,[{{cite web|first=Frederick|last=Douglass|title=The Constitution and Slavery|url=https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-constitution-and-slavery/|year=1849|access-date=November 20, 2019|archive-date=December 3, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191203114039/https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-constitution-and-slavery/|url-status=live}}] while the [[Fugitive Slave Clause]] provided that, if a slave escaped to another state, the other state could not prevent the slave's return to the person claiming to be their owner. All Northern states had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805, sometimes with completion at a future date, and sometimes with an intermediary status of unpaid [[indentured servitude]].
Abolition was, in many cases, gradual. Some slave owners, primarily in the [[Upland South|Upper South]], [[Manumission|freed]] their slaves. Charitable groups bought and freed others. Individual states began to outlaw the [[Atlantic slave trade]] during the American Revolution, and [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|Congress banned it in 1808]]. Nevertheless, smuggling was common thereafter,[{{cite book |first=Julia Floyd |last=Smith |title= Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, 1821–1860 |location= Gainesville |publisher= University of Florida Press |year=1973 |isbn= 978-0-8130-0323-8 |pages=44–46 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=BKIDcAAACAAJ&pg=PA44 }}][{{cite book |title= The Florida Negro. A Federal Writers' Project Legacy |publisher= University Press of Mississippi |year=1993 |isbn= 978-0-87805-588-3 |first=Gary W. |last=McDonough|page=7}}] and the [[United States Coast Guard|U.S. Revenue Cutter Service]] (Coast Guard) began to enforce the ban on the high seas.[[https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/ Chronology of U.S. Coast Guard history] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201009033139/https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/ |date=October 9, 2020 }} on the USCG official history website.] Before 1820, most serving congressmen owned slaves, and about 30% of congressmen born before 1840 (the last of whom, [[Rebecca Latimer Felton]], served in the 1920s) owned slaves at some time in their lives.[{{cite news |last1= Weil |first1= Julie Zauzmer |last2= Blanco |first2= Adrian |last3= Dominguez |first3= Leo |title= More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation. |url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/ |date= January 10, 2022 |newspaper= [[The Washington Post]] |access-date= January 11, 2022 |archive-date= January 23, 2023 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20230123010807/https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/ |url-status= live }}]
The cotton industry's rapid expansion in the [[Deep South]] after the invention of the [[cotton gin]] greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states remained slave societies. The U.S., divided into [[slave and free states]], became ever more polarized over slavery. Driven by labor demands from new cotton [[plantations in the Deep South]], the Upper South sold more than a million slaves who were taken to the Deep South. The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million.[[[Stephen D. Behrendt]], David Richardson, and David Eltis, [[W. E. B. Du Bois Institute]], [[Harvard University]]. Based on "records for 27,233 voyages that set out to obtain slaves for the Americas". {{cite book |last1= Behrendt |first1= Stephen D. |title= Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience |year= 1999 |publisher= Basic Civitas Books|page= 1867 |location= New York |isbn= 978-0465000715 |chapter= Transatlantic Slave Trade |chapter-url= https://archive.org/details/africanaencyclop00appi }}][[https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm Introduction – Social Aspects of the Civil War] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161123201140/https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm |date=November 23, 2016 }}, National Park Service.] As the U.S. expanded, the Southern states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to allow pro-slavery forces to maintain power in Congress. The new [[Territories of the United States|territories]] acquired in the [[Louisiana Purchase]] and the [[Mexican Cession]] were the subject of major political crises and compromises.["In 1854, the passage of the [[Kansas-Nebraska Act]] ... overturned the policy of containment [of slavery] and effectively unlocked the gates of the Western territories (including both the old Louisiana Purchase lands and the Mexican Cession) to the legal expansion of slavery...." [[Allen C. Guelzo|Guelzo, Allen C.]], ''[[Abraham Lincoln]] as a Man of Ideas'', Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press (2009), p. 80.] [[Pro-slavery ideology in the United States|Slavery was defended]] in the South as a "positive good", and the largest religious denominations split over slavery into regional organizations of the North and South.
By 1850, the newly rich, cotton-growing South threatened to secede from the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]]. [[Bleeding Kansas|Bloody fighting]] broke out over slavery in the [[Kansas Territory]]. When [[Abraham Lincoln]] won the [[1860 United States presidential election|1860 election]] on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, slave states seceded to form the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]]. Shortly afterward, the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] began when Confederate forces attacked the U.S. Army's [[Fort Sumter]] in [[Charleston, South Carolina]]. During the war some [[End of slavery in the United States of America|jurisdictions abolished slavery]] and, due to Union measures such as the [[Confiscation Acts]] and the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], the war effectively ended slavery in most places. After the war, the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] was ratified on December 6, 1865, prohibiting "slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime."[{{Cite web |title=The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution |url=https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii |access-date=2022-03-01 |website=National Constitution Center – The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution |language=en |archive-date=January 1, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210101111825/https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii |url-status=live }}]
==Background==
{{Main|Slavery in the colonial history of the United States|Slavery among Native Americans in the United States|History of unfree labor in the United States}}
{{Further|Atlantic slave trade|Slavery in New France|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War#Colonial period, 1607–1775}}
{{For|the related topic of indentured servitude in the United States|Indentured servitude in British America|Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania|Indentured servitude in Virginia|Engagé system in Louisiana}}
[[File:The Virginia Planters Best Tobacco, 18th century tobacco production.jpg|thumb|Image marketing 18th-century tobacco produced by enslaved laborers in the [[Colony of Virginia]] (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)]]
During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all the colonies. People enslaved in [[Northern United States|the North]] typically worked as house servants, artisans, laborers, and craftsmen,[{{Cite web |title=People Not Property: Stories of Slaves in the Colonial North |url=https://peoplenotproperty.hudsonvalley.org/ |access-date=December 30, 2025 |website=People Not Property / Historic Hudson Valley |language=en |archive-date=December 30, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251230125221/https://peoplenotproperty.hudsonvalley.org/ |url-status=live }}] mostly in cities. Many men worked on the docks and in shipping. In 1703, more than 42% of New York City households held enslaved people in bondage, the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, behind only [[Charleston, South Carolina]].[[http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/slavery_in_new_york "Slavery in New York"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060530212901/http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/slavery_in_new_york |date=May 30, 2006 }}, ''The Nation'', November 7, 2005] Enslaved people were also used as agricultural workers in farm communities, especially in [[Southern United States|the South]], but also in [[upstate New York]] and [[Long Island]], [[Connecticut Colony|Connecticut]], and [[Province of New Jersey|New Jersey]]. By 1770, there were 397,924 black people out of a population of 2.17 million in what soon became the United States. The slaves of the colonial era were unevenly distributed from north to south: 14,867 lived in [[New England Colonies|New England]], where they were 3% of the population; 34,679 lived in the [[Middle Colonies]], where they were 6% of the population; and 347,378 in the five [[Southern Colonies]], where they were 31% of the population.[Ira Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves'', 2003. {{ISBN|0674010612}}{{page needed|date=April 2022}}]
The South developed an [[Agricultural economics|agricultural economy]] dependent on [[Cash crop|commodity crops]]. Its planters rapidly acquired a significantly higher number and proportion of enslaved people, as its commodity crops were labor-intensive.[[https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm "The First Black Americans"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110202205901/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29african.htm |date=February 2, 2011 }}, Hashaw, Tim; ''U.S. News & World Report'', 1/21/07] Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily on farms and plantations growing [[Indigofera|indigo]], [[rice]], and [[tobacco]] ([[cotton]] did not become a major crop until after the 1790s). In 1720, about 65% of [[Province of South Carolina|South Carolina's]] population was enslaved.[{{Cite web|title=South Carolina - African-Americans - Slave Population|url=https://www.sciway.net/afam/slavery/population.html|access-date=2022-12-29|website=www.sciway.net|archive-date=November 16, 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251116111600/https://www.sciway.net/afam/slavery/population.html|url-status=live}}] Planters (defined by historians in the Upper South as those who held 20 or more slaves) used enslaved workers to cultivate commodity crops. They also worked in the artisanal trades on large plantations and in many Southern port cities. The 18th-century wave of settlers who settled along the [[Appalachian Mountains]] and [[Backcountry (historical region)|backcountry]] were backwoods [[Subsistence agriculture|subsistence farmers]], and they seldom held enslaved people.
[[File:"Entered at the Custom-House Charleston for the week of the 28th instant" The Charleston Daily Courier, December 30, 1805.jpg|thumb|"Entered at the Custom-House Charleston for the week of the 28th instant...From ''Africa''{{mdash}}New Negroes, 371. Rum, 7 punch. Ivory, small quantity" (''Charleston Daily Courier'', December 30, 1805)]]
In the second half of the 18th century, a debate emerged over the continued importation of African slaves to the American colonies. Many in the colonies, including the Southern [[slavocracy]], opposed further importation of slaves due to fears that it would destabilize colonies and lead to further [[slave rebellion]]s. In 1772, prominent Virginians submitted a petition to [[the Crown]] requesting that the slave trade to Virginia be abolished; it was rejected.[{{cite book|last=Smith|first=Howard W.|title=Benjamin Harrison and the American Revolution|editor-first=Edward M.|editor-last=Riley|location=Williamsburg|publisher= Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission|year=1978|oclc=4781472}}] [[Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations|Rhode Island]] forbade the importation of slaves in 1774. The influential revolutionary [[Fairfax Resolves]] called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade.[{{Cite book |last1=Foner |first1=Eric |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tZeHAgAAQBAJ&q=the+influential+fairfax+resolves+called+for+the+end+of+the+slave+trade&pg=PT728 |title=The Reader's Companion to American History |last2=Garraty |first2=John A. |year=2014 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0-547-56134-9 |page=705 |language=en |access-date=4 July 2021 |archive-date=7 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210707115029/https://books.google.com/books?id=tZeHAgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PT728&dq=the+influential+fairfax+resolves+called+for+the+end+of+the+slave+trade&hl=en |url-status=live }}] All the colonies banned slave importations during the Revolutionary War.[Morison and Commager: ''Growth of the American Republic'', pp. 212–220.]
==Slavery in the American Revolution and early republic==
{{Main|African Americans in the Revolutionary War|Slavery and the United States Constitution}}
{{Further|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War#American Revolution and Confederation period, 1776–1787|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War#Early Constitutional period, 1787–1811}}
[[File:Slavery in the 13 colonies.jpg|thumb|A map of the [[Thirteen Colonies]] in 1770, showing number of slaves in each colony and percentage of colony's total population held as slaves[Ira Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves'' (2003) pp. 272–276.]]]
Slavery had existed for thousands of years, all around the world. In British colonies and many parts of the world it was legal, and in many societies it had become socially and economically entrenched. The ideals and principles promoted in the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] and the American Revolution helped put slavery and the desire for its [[Abolitionism|abolition]] on the political agenda. Historian Christopher L. Brown wrote that slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before" but the American Revolution "forced it to be a public question from there forward".[Brown, Christopher. PBS Video "Liberty! The American Revolution", Episode 6, "Are We to be a Nation?", Twin Cities Public Television, Inc., 1997.][Brown, Christopher Leslie (2006). ''Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism,'' pp. 105–106, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8078-3034-5}}.][[[Thomas Mackaman|Mackaman, Tom]]. "An Interview with Historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times "1619 Project," World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org, November 28, 2019.][Bailyn, Bernard. ''Faces of the Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence,'' pp. 221-4, Vintage Books, New York, New York, 1992. {{ISBN|0-679-73623-9}}.][Wood, Gordon S. ''The Radicalism of the American Revolution,'' pp. 3-8, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 1992. {{ISBN|0-679-40493-7}}.]
After the new country's independence was secure, slavery was a topic of contention at the 1787 [[Constitutional Convention (United States)|Constitutional Convention]]. Many of the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]] were plantation owners who owned large numbers of enslaved laborers; the original Constitution preserved their right to own slaves, and they gained a political advantage in owning slaves: although the enslaved of the early Republic were considered sentient property, were not permitted to vote, and had no rights to speak of, they were to be enumerated in population censuses and counted as [[Three-fifths Compromise|three-fifths]] of a person for the purposes of representation in the national legislature, the [[United States Congress|U.S. Congress]].
===Slaves and free blacks who supported the Continental Army===
{{Main|Black Patriot}}
[[File:Salem Poor stamp 1975.jpg|thumb|200px|This postage stamp, which was created at the time of the Bicentennial, honors [[Salem Poor]], who was an enslaved African-American man who purchased his freedom, became a soldier, and rose to fame as a war hero during the [[Battle of Bunker Hill]].[Hubbard, Robert Ernest (2017). ''Major General Israel Putnam: Hero of the American Revolution'', p. 98, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC. {{ISBN|978-1-4766-6453-8}}.]]]
The rebels began to offer freedom as an incentive to motivate slaves to fight on their side. Washington authorized slaves to be freed who fought with the American [[Continental Army]]. Rhode Island started enlisting slaves in 1778, and promised compensation to owners whose slaves enlisted and survived to gain freedom.[{{cite book|last=Nell|first=William C.|chapter=IV, Rhode Island|title=The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution|publisher=Robert F. Wallcut|year=1855 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Jy8OAAAAIAAJ}}{{pn|date=July 2026}}][{{cite book|title=The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company, Inc|author=Foner, Eric|year=2010|location=New York|page=205}}] During the course of the war, about one-fifth of the Northern army was black.[[[Liberty!|Liberty! The American Revolution]] (Documentary), Episode II:''Blows Must Decide: 1774–1776''. 1997 [[Twin Cities Public Television, Inc.]] {{ISBN|1-4157-0217-9}}] In 1781, Baron Closen, a [[Germans in the American Revolution|German officer]] in the French [[Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment]] at the [[Battle of Yorktown (1781)|Battle of Yorktown]], estimated the American army to be about one-quarter black.[{{Cite web|title=The Revolution's Black Soldiers|url=https://www.americanrevolution.org/blk.php|access-date=2022-12-29|first=Robert A.|last=Selig|website=www.americanrevolution.org}}] These men included both former slaves and free-born blacks. Thousands of free blacks in the Northern states fought in the state militias and Continental Army. In the South, both sides offered freedom to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in the American Revolution.[Hoock, Holger. ''Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth,'' pp. 95, 300–303, 305, 308–310, Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2017. {{ISBN|978-0-8041-3728-7}}.][O'Reilly, Bill and Dugard, Martin. ''Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence,'' pp. 96, 308, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2017. {{ISBN|978-1-62779-064-2}}.][Ayres, Edward. [https://www.historyisfun.org/learn/learning-center/african-americans-and-the-american-revolution-2/ "African Americans and the American Revolution"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201023085615/https://www.historyisfun.org/learn/learning-center/african-americans-and-the-american-revolution-2/ |date=October 23, 2020 }}, Jamestown Settlement and American Revolution Museum at Yorktown website. Retrieved October 21, 2020.][{{Cite web|title=Digital History: Slavery, the American Revolution, and the Constitution|url=https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/revolution/revolution_slavery.cfm#:~:text=Slavery,%2520the%2520American%2520Revolution,%2520and%2520the%2520Constitution%2520African,sensitivity%2520to%2520the%2520opinion%2520of%2520southern%2520slave%2520holders|access-date=2022-12-29|website=www.digitalhistory.uh.edu|archive-date=December 9, 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251209123028/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/revolution/revolution_slavery.cfm#:~:text=Slavery,%2520the%2520American%2520Revolution,%2520and%2520the%2520Constitution%2520African,sensitivity%2520to%2520the%2520opinion%2520of%2520southern%2520slave%2520holders|url-status=live}}]
===Black Loyalists===
{{Main|Black Loyalist|Dunmore's Proclamation}}
{{See also|Book of Negroes}}
After the Revolutionary War broke out, the British realized they lacked the manpower necessary to prosecute the war. In response, British commanders began issuing proclamations to Patriot-owned slaves, offering freedom if they fled to British lines and assisted the British war effort.[{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2020/10/tracing-the-lives-and-letters-of-the-black-loyalists-part-1-the-journey-to-sierra-leone-1.html|title=Tracing the lives and letters of the Black Loyalists – Part 1 The Journey to Sierra Leone - Untold lives blog|access-date=July 25, 2026|archive-date=August 23, 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250823201322/https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2020/10/tracing-the-lives-and-letters-of-the-black-loyalists-part-1-the-journey-to-sierra-leone-1.html|url-status=live}}] Such proclamations were repeatedly issued over the course of the conflict, which resulted in up to 100,000 American slaves fleeing to British lines.[{{cite web | url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-loyalists-in-british-north-america | title=Black Loyalists in British North America | access-date=July 25, 2026 | archive-date=March 28, 2025 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250328120143/https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-Loyalists-in-british-north-america | url-status=live }}] Self-emancipated slaves who reached British lines were organized into a variety of military units, which served in all theaters of the war. Formerly enslaved women and children, in lieu of military service, worked instead as laborers and domestic servants. At the end of the war, freed slaves in British lines either evacuated to other British colonies or to Britain itself, were re-enslaved by the victorious Americans, or fled into the countryside.[{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kZfOjZ65WecC&q=Black+Patriots+and+Loyalists:+Fighting+for+Emancipation+in+the+War+for+Independence+by+Alan+Gilbert | title=Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence | isbn=978-0-226-29309-7 | last1=Gilbert | first1=Alan | date=March 19, 2012 | publisher=University of Chicago Press }}]
[[File:Plaque for Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment 001.jpeg|thumb|Memorial to Lord Dunmore's [[Ethiopian Regiment]] of [[Black Loyalists]] who wore clothing inscribed with the words "Liberty to Slaves"]]
In early 1775, the [[List of colonial governors of Virginia|royal governor of Virginia]], [[John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore|Lord Dunmore]], wrote to the [[William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth|Earl of Dartmouth]] of his intention to free slaves owned by [[Patriot (American Revolution)|American Patriots]] in case they staged a rebellion.[{{cite web |url=http://www.americanrevolution.org/blk.html |title=The Revolution's Black Soldiers |access-date=October 18, 2007 |first=Robert A. |last=Selig |publisher=AmericanRevolution.org |archive-date=July 19, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130719085447/http://www.americanrevolution.org/blk.html |url-status=live }}][{{cite book|last=Frey|first=Sylvia R.|title=Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age|date=1991|publisher=Princeton University Press|location=Princeton, New Jersey|page=63}}] On November 7, 1775, Dunmore issued [[Dunmore's Proclamation]], which promised freedom to any slaves of American patriots who would leave their masters and join the British forces.[{{cite book |last=Scribner |first=Robert L. |title=Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence |publisher=University of Virginia Press |year=1983 |page=xxiv |isbn=978-0-8139-0748-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/revolutionaryvir0000unse }}] Historians agree that the proclamation was chiefly designed for practical rather than moral reasons, and slaves owned by [[Loyalist (American Revolution)|American Loyalists]] were unaffected by the proclamation. About 1,500 slaves owned by patriots escaped and joined Dunmore's forces. A total of 18 slaves fled [[George Washington]]'s plantation, one of whom, Harry, served in Dunmore's all-black loyalist regiment called "the Black Pioneers".[ Escapees who joined Dunmore had "Liberty to Slaves" stitched on to their clothes.][{{cite book |last1=Hartmann |first1=Thom |title=The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment |date=2019 |publisher=Berrett-Koehler Publishers |page=48}}] Most died of disease before they could do any fighting, but three hundred of these freed slaves made it to freedom in Britain.[{{cite book|first=James L.|last=Roark|title=The American Promise, Volume I: To 1877: A History of the United States|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F7bVy_eUYYwC&pg=PA206 |year=2008|publisher=Macmillan|page=206|isbn=978-0-312-58552-5|display-authors=etal}}] Historian Jill Lepore writes that "between eighty and a hundred thousand (nearly one in five black slaves) left their homes ... betting on British victory", but Cassandra Pybus states that between 20,000 and 30,000 is a more realistic number of slaves who defected to the British side during the war.[{{cite news |title=George Washington's Runaway Slave, Harry |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/george-washingtons-runaway-slave-harry/ |access-date=March 29, 2023 |work=PBS |archive-date=January 12, 2026 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260112023159/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/george-washingtons-runaway-slave-harry/ |url-status=live }}]
Many slaves took advantage of the disruption of war to escape from their plantations to British lines or to fade into the general population. Upon their first sight of British vessels, thousands of slaves in Maryland and Virginia fled from their owners.[{{cite book|title=The Battle of Negro Fort. The rise and fall of a fugitive slave community|isbn=978-1-4798-1110-6|first=Matthew J.|last=Clavin|year=2019|location=New York|publisher=New York University Press}}]{{rp|21}} Throughout the South, losses of slaves were high, with many due to escapes.[Peter Kolchin, ''American Slavery: 1619–1877'', New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, p. 73.] Slaves also escaped throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic, with many joining the British who had occupied New York.[ In the closing months of the war, the British evacuated [[freedmen]] and also removed slaves owned by loyalists. Around 15,000 [[black loyalists]] left with the British, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies.][{{cite book |last1=Finkelman |first1=Paul |title=Slavery in the United States |date=2012 |page=116 |url=https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5386&context=faculty_scholarship |publisher=Duke University School of Law |archive-date=November 1, 2025 |access-date=February 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251101211305/https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5386&context=faculty_scholarship |url-status=live }}] Washington hired a [[slave catcher]] during the war, and at its end he pressed the British to return the slaves to their masters.[ With the British certificates of freedom in their belongings, the black loyalists, including Washington's slave Harry, sailed with their white counterparts out of New York harbor to [[Nova Scotia]].][ More than 3,000 were resettled in Nova Scotia, where they were eventually granted land and formed the community of the [[black Nova Scotians]].
===Early abolitionism in the United States===
{{Main|Abolitionism in the United States}}
In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery incrementally. By 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time. In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827 (celebrated with a big July 5 parade).][Arthur Zilversmit, ''The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North'' (1967) pp 201-230.]
No Southern state abolished slavery, but some individual owners, more than a handful, freed their slaves by personal decision, often providing for [[manumission]] in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a promised reward for service. From 1790 to 1810, the proportion of [[Free Negro|blacks free in the United States]] increased from 8% to 13.5%, and in the [[Upland South|Upper South]] from less than 1% to nearly 10% as a result of these actions.[{{cite book|last=Painter|first=Nell Irvin|title=Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present|year=2007|page=72}}][{{Cite web|title=An interview with historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times' 1619 Project|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html|access-date=2022-12-29|website=World Socialist Web Site|date=November 28, 2019|language=en|archive-date=November 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191128144942/https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html|url-status=live}}][{{Cite web|title=Interview with Gordon Wood on the American Revolution|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/03/wood-m03.html|access-date=2022-12-29|website=World Socialist Web Site|date=March 3, 2015|language=en|archive-date=January 15, 2026|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260115162544/https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/03/wood-m03.html|url-status=live}}]
Starting in 1777, the states outlawed the importation of slaves one by one. They all acted to end the international trade, but, after the war, it was reopened in North Carolina (opened until 1794) and Georgia (opened until 1798) and South Carolina (opened until 1787, and then reopened again in 1803.)[{{Cite journal|last=O'Malley|first=Gregory E.|year=2009|title=Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Caribbean to North America, 1619–1807|journal=The William and Mary Quarterly|volume=66|issue=1|pages=145, 150}}] In 1807, the [[United States Congress]] acted on President [[Thomas Jefferson]]'s advice and, without controversy, made importing slaves from abroad a federal crime, effective the first day that the [[Constitution of the United States|United States Constitution]] permitted this prohibition: January 1, 1808.[{{cite journal |last1=Davis |first1=David Brion |title=The Significance of Excluding Slavery from the Old Northwest in 1787 |journal=Indiana Magazine of History |date=1988 |volume=84 |issue=1 |pages=75–89 |jstor=27791141 }}][{{cite journal |last1=Newborn |first1=Newton N. |title=Judicial Decision Making and the End of Slavery in Illinois |journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) |date=2005 |volume=98 |issue=1/2 |pages=7–33 |jstor=40193679 }}]
===Constitution of the United States===
{{Main|Slavery and the United States Constitution}}
{{Further|Fugitive Slave Clause}}
[[File:Oney Judge Runaway Ad (cropped).jpg|thumb|Advertisement in ''[[Pennsylvania Gazette]]'', May 24, 1796, seeking the return of [[Oney Judge]], a [[Fugitive slaves in the United States|fugitive slave]] who had escaped from the household of [[George Washington]]]]
Slavery was a contentious issue in the [[Constitutional Convention (United States)#Slavery|writing and approval]] of the [[Constitution of the United States]].[Keith L. Dougherty, and Jac C. Heckelman. "Voting on slavery at the Constitutional Convention." ''Public Choice'' 136.3–4 (2008): 293.] The words "slave" and "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution as originally adopted, although several provisions clearly referred to slaves and slavery. Until the adoption of the [[13th Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] in 1865, the Constitution did not prohibit slavery.[{{cite journal |last1=Mason |first1=Matthew |title=Slavery and the Founding |journal=History Compass |date=September 2006 |volume=4 |issue=5 |pages=943–955 |doi=10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00345.x }}]
Section 9 of [[Article One of the United States Constitution|Article I]] forbade the federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves, described as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit", for twenty years after the Constitution's ratification (until January 1, 1808). The [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807]], passed by Congress and signed into law by President [[Thomas Jefferson]] (who had called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union address), went into effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date on which the importation of slaves could be prohibited under the Constitution.[{{cite book |last1=Conlin |first1=Joseph R. |title=The American Past: A Survey of American History, Enhanced Edition |date=2008 |publisher=Cengage Learning |isbn=978-0-495-56609-0 }}{{pn|date=July 2026}}]
The delegates approved the [[Fugitive Slave Clause]] of the Constitution ([[Article Four of the United States Constitution#Clause 3: Fugitive Slave Clause|Article IV, section 2, clause 3]]), which prohibited states from freeing those "held to Service or Labour" (meaning slaves, indentures, and apprentices) who fled to them from another state and required that they be returned to their owners.[{{cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=H. Robert |title=The Fugitive Slave Clause and the Antebellum Constitution |journal=Law and History Review |date=November 2012 |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=1133–1174 |doi=10.1017/s0738248012000697 }}] The [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1793]] and the [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850]] gave effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause.[{{cite news |title=Fugitive Slave Laws |url=https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/fugitive-slave-laws/ |access-date=February 19, 2022 |work=Encyclopedia Virginia |archive-date=February 18, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220218075405/https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/fugitive-slave-laws/ |url-status=live }}] [[Salmon P. Chase]] considered the Fugitive Slave Acts unconstitutional because "The Fugitive Slave Clause was a compact among the states, not a grant of power to the federal government".[{{cite book |last1=Stahr |first1=Walter |title=Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival |date=2022 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-5011-9925-7 |page=67 }}]
====Three-fifths Compromise====
{{Main|Three-fifths Compromise}}
{{See also|Slave Trade Act of 1794|Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves}}
[[File:George Washington by John Trumbull (1780).jpg|thumb|right|[[John Trumbull]]'s 1780 portrait ''[[George Washington (Trumbull)|George Washington]]'' also depicts a man believed to be Washington's enslaved valet [[William Lee (valet)|William Lee]] ([[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] 24.109.88)]]
In a section negotiated by [[James Madison]] of Virginia, Section 2 of Article I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to the total of the state's free population, at the rate of [[Three-fifths Compromise|three-fifths]] of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of congressional representation and federal taxation.[Section 2 of Article I provides in part: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states{{spaces}}...by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons."] The "Three-Fifths Compromise" was reached after a debate in which delegates from Southern (slave-holding) states argued that slaves should be counted in the census just as all other persons were while delegates from Northern (free) states countered that slaves should not be counted at all. The compromise strengthened the political power of Southern states, as three-fifths of the (non-voting) slave population was counted for congressional apportionment and in the [[United States Electoral College|Electoral College]], although it did not strengthen Southern states as much as it would have had the Constitution provided for counting all persons, whether slave or free, equally.
In addition, many parts of the country were tied to the Southern economy. As the historian James Oliver Horton noted, prominent slaveholder politicians and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on United States politics and economy. Horton said,
in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a [[List of presidents of the United States who owned slaves|slaveholder as president of the United States]], and, for that whole period of time, there was never a person elected to a second term who was not a slaveholder.
The power of Southern states in Congress lasted until the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], affecting national policies, legislation, and appointments.[[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june07/divided_01-25.html "Interview: James Oliver Horton: Exhibit Reveals History of Slavery in New York City"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131223050216/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june07/divided_01-25.html |date=December 23, 2013 }}, PBS ''Newshour'', January 25, 2007. Retrieved February 11, 2012.] One result was that most of the justices appointed to the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] were slave owners. The planter elite dominated the Southern congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly fifty years.[{{cite journal |last1=Hacker |first1=J. David |title=From '20. and odd' to 10 million: the growth of the slave population in the United States |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=October 2020 |volume=41 |issue=4 |pages=840–855 |doi=10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502 |pmc=7716878 |pmid=33281246}}] Slaves were the labor force of the South, but slave ownership (and the dispossession and expulsion of Native Americans from their lands) was also the foundation upon which American [[white supremacy]] was constructed.[{{Cite book |last=Freehling |first=William W. |author-link=William W. Freehling |title=Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson |publisher=Ohio University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-8214-1783-6 |editor-last=Finkelman |editor-first=Paul |editor-link=Paul Finkelman |series=Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1801–1877 |location=Athens, Ohio |pages=138, 142, 151 |language=en-us |chapter=Andrew Jackson, Great President (?) |lccn=2007048418 |oclc=613401991 |editor-last2=Kennon |editor-first2=Donald R.}}] Historian [[Walter Johnson (historian)|Walter Johnson]] argues that "one of the many miraculous things a slave could do was make a household white...", meaning that the value of whiteness in America was in some ways measured by the ability to purchase and maintain black slaves.[{{cite journal |last1=Regan |first1=Joe |title=The large Irish enslavers of antebellum Louisiana |journal=American Nineteenth Century History |date=September 2020 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=211–235 |doi=10.1080/14664658.2020.1841939 }}] The enslaved labor force of the United States, while stereotypically drawn as field labor for the production of cash crops like sugar and cotton, performed nearly every type of skilled labor sought by the economy. An examination of 1200 runaway slave ads published in Tennessee found 25 blacksmiths, 18 carpenters, and 13 shoemakers, as well as barbers, boat builders, bricklayers, a "conjurer or fortune teller," cooks, coopers, cotton mill engineers, dressmakers (often called ''mantuamakers''), hack drivers, iron furnace engineers, milliners, millwrights, ministers, musicians (most commonly of the fiddle/violin), a racehorse trainer, ostlers, plasterers, painters, seamstresses, stonemasons, tanners, a "turner and tin-plate workman," wagoners, waiters, and weavers.[{{Cite book |last=Carey |first=Bill |title=Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls: A History of Slavery in Tennessee |publisher=Clearbrook Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-0-9725680-4-3 |location=Nashville, Tennessee |pages=45–49 |language=en-us |lccn=2018903570 |oclc=1045068878}}] Complex as it was, historians do know, however, that slavery in the United States was not a "deferred-compensation trade school opportunity."[{{Cite web |last=Cerabino |first=Frank |title=Cruelty of slavery shown in this 1853 Florida high court case, not in silly cartoon art |url=https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/columns/2023/08/11/prageru-florida-slave-named-luke-1853-shows-slavery-depravity/70557052007/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240628022321/https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/columns/2023/08/11/prageru-florida-slave-named-luke-1853-shows-slavery-depravity/70557052007/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 28, 2024 |access-date=2025-01-25 |website=The Palm Beach Post |language=en-US}}] [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]] summarized slavery in the United States in 1853:[{{cite book |last=Stowe |first=Harriet Beecher |title=[[A key to Uncle Tom's cabin: presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded]] |publisher=J. P. Jewett & Co. |year=1853 |location=Boston |pages=291–292 |language=en-us |lccn=02004230 |oclc=317690900 |ol=21879838M |author-link=Harriet Beecher Stowe}}]
{{blockquote|What, then, is American slavery, as we have seen it exhibited by law, and by the decision of Courts? Let us begin by stating what it is not:
1. It is not apprenticeship.
2. It is not guardianship.
3. It is in no sense a system for the education of a weaker race by a stronger.
4. The happiness of the governed is in no sense its object.
5. The temporal improvement or the eternal well-being of the governed is in no sense its object.
The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by [[Thomas Ruffin|Judge Ruffin]],— "The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety."
Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated form.}}
===Justifications in the South===
{{Further|American proslavery movement|Fire-Eaters}}
{{See also|Field slaves in the United States|Gang system|Task system|Plantation complexes in the Southern United States|American gentry|Planter class|List of plantations in the United States}}
[[File:Anti-slavery almanac 1840 detail.jpg|thumb|One of the many defenses of American slavery was that the imagined "[[Paternalism#Paternalism and slavery|benevolent paternalism]]" of planters was beneficial or necessary[{{Citation |last=Ford |first=Lacy K. Jr.|chapter=Paternalism Emerges |date=2009 |title=Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South |pages=143–172 |publisher=Oxford University PressNew York |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195118094.003.0006 |isbn=978-0-19-511809-4 }}][{{Cite web |last=Broussard |first=Joyce L. |date=2018 |title=Paternalism |url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/paternalism/ |access-date=2023-08-22 |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |language=en-US |archive-date=August 22, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230822211005/https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/paternalism/ |url-status=live }}][{{Cite web |last=Cole |first=Josh |title=THE EXCUSE OF PATERNALISM IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH: IDEOLOGY OR PRACTICE? |url=https://www.eiu.edu/historia/Cole.pdf |access-date=August 22, 2023 |archive-date=February 23, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250223184013/https://www.eiu.edu/historia/Cole.pdf |url-status=live }}] (Detail, ''[[American Anti-Slavery Almanac|Anti-Slavery Almanac]]'', 1840)]]
====American slavery as "a necessary evil"====
In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". At that time, it was feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. On April 22, 1820, [[Thomas Jefferson]], one of the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]], wrote in a letter to [[John Holmes (Maine politician)|John Holmes]], that with slavery,
{{blockquote|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.[{{cite web |last1=Jefferson |first1=Thomas |title=Like a fire bell in the night |url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html |website=Library of Congress |access-date=2007-10-24 |archive-date=December 26, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251226180930/https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html |url-status=live }}]}}
In his influential ''[[Democracy in America]]'' (1835), the French writer and traveler [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against blacks increased as they were granted more rights (for example, in Northern states). He believed that white Southerners' attitudes, and the concentration of the black population in the South, were bringing the white and black populations to a state of equilibrium and were a danger to both races. Because of the racial differences between master and slave, he believed the latter could not be emancipated.[{{cite book|title=Democracy in America (Volume 1)|last=de Tocqueville |first=Alexise|chapter=Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races In The United States|year=2007 |publisher=Digireads.com |isbn=978-1-4209-2910-2}}]
In a letter to his wife dated December 27, 1856, in reaction to a message from President [[Franklin Pierce]], [[Robert E. Lee]] wrote,
{{blockquote|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.[{{cite web |last1=Lee |first1=Robert E. |title=Robert E. Lee's opinion regarding slavery |url=https://www.civilwarhome.com/leepierce.htm |website=Shotgun's Home of the American Civil War |access-date=2007-10-24}}][{{cite book|first=Emory M.|last=Thomas|author-link=Emory M. Thomas|title=Robert E. Lee|page=173|publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Co.]]|year=1997|isbn=978-0-393-31631-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jJWR80JZ_hsC}}]}}
====American slavery as "a positive good"====
{{Main|Pro-slavery ideology in the United States}}
{{Further|Eugenics in the United States|Mudsill theory}}
[[File:CSA-T41-$100-1862–63.jpg|thumb|Confederate $100 bill, 1862–63, showing slaves farming; there were over 125 carefully wrought etchings of laboring slaves made for currency issued by 19th-century Southern banks and the Confederate States,[{{Cite web |last=McCauley |first=Byron |title=The Confederacy was about preserving slavery. The proof? It's on the money. |url=https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/04/05/confederacy-preserving-slavery-proof-its-money/489694002/ |access-date=2023-08-24 |website=The Enquirer |language=en-US |archive-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230810142216/https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/04/05/confederacy-preserving-slavery-proof-its-money/489694002/ |url-status=live }}] images that provided reassurance that slavery "was protected both by law and by tradition."[{{Cite news |last=Levin |first=Kevin M. |date=2016-04-21 |title=When Dixie Put Slaves on the Money |language=en |work=The Daily Beast |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/21/when-dixie-put-slaves-on-the-money |access-date=2023-08-24}}] In 1860, Southern slaveholders held slaves as personal property{{Efn|Slaves were considered personal property in all slave states except Louisiana, which deemed them real estate.[Johnson, Soul by Soul]}} collectively valued at more than $3 billion (about $97 billion in 2022)[{{cite book |last=Schermerhorn |first=Calvin |title=Remembering the Memphis Massacre: An American Story |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-8203-5649-5 |editor-last=Bond |editor-first=Beverly Greene |chapter=Chapter 2: 'Cash for Slaves' The African American Trail of Tears |editor-last2=O'Donovan |editor-first2=Susan Eva}}] ([[National Numismatic Collection]], [[National Museum of American History]])]]
[[File:Slave shackle - 1811 Kid Ory Historic House, LaPlace, Louisiana B.jpg|thumb|Slave shackle found while digging in a property on [[Baronne Street]] in New Orleans; donated to the [[Kid Ory Historic House]] museum]]
As the abolitionist movement's agitation increased and the area developed for plantations expanded, apologies for slavery became fainter in the South. Leaders then described slavery as a beneficial scheme of labor management. In a famous 1837 [[United States Senate|Senate]] speech, [[John C. Calhoun]] 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".[{{cite book |last1=Beard |first1=Charles A. |author-link1=Charles A. Beard |last2=Beard |first2=Mary R. |author-link2=Mary Ritter Beard |year=1921 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16960/16960-h/16960-h.htm#Page_316 |title=History of the United States |publisher=The Macmillan Company |location=New York |page=316 |archive-date=January 23, 2007 |access-date=August 22, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070123042410/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16960/16960-h/16960-h.htm#Page_316 |url-status=live }}]
[[File:Negroes for Sale - New Orleans Crescent - January 10 1861.jpg|thumb|Newspaper listings for [[New Orleans slave market|New Orleans slave depots]] at Barrone and [[Gravier Street]], and at 54, 58, 68, and 78 Barrone represented but a slim fraction of the trade in the city[
{{cite journal |last=McInnis |first=Maurie D. |author-link=Maurie D. McInnis |title=Mapping the slave trade in Richmond and New Orleans |url=https://www.academia.edu/17316662 |journal=Building & Landscapes |volume=20 |issue=2 |doi=10.5749/buildland.20.2.0102 |jstor=10.5749/buildland.20.2.0102 |date=Fall 2013 |pages=102–125 |url-access=registration}}] (''New Orleans Crescent'', January 10, 1861)]]
South Carolina army officer, [[Planter class|planter]], and railroad executive [[James Gadsden]] called slavery "a social blessing" and abolitionists "the greatest curse of the nation".[{{cite book |last=Richards |first=Leonard L. |title=The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War |page=[https://archive.org/details/californiagoldru00ric_923/page/125 125] |year=2007 |location=New York |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-307-26520-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/californiagoldru00ric_923/page/125 }}] Gadsden supported South Carolina's [[Secession in the United States#South Carolina|secession]] in 1850 and led efforts to split California into two states, [[slave states and free states|one slave and one free]].
Southern writers [[James Henry Hammond]] and [[George Fitzhugh]] also began to portray slavery as a positive good. They presented several arguments to defend the practice.[{{cite web|last=Hammond|first=James Henry|author-link=James Henry Hammond|title=The 'Mudsill' Theory|website=[[PBS]]|date=March 4, 1858|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3439t.html|access-date=December 10, 2017|archive-date=September 12, 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250912111806/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3439t.html|url-status=live}}] Like Calhoun, Hammond argued that slavery was needed to build the rest of society. In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed his "Mudsill Theory", saying: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill." Hammond said that, in every class, one group must accomplish all the menial duties, because without them society's leaders could not progress.[{{cite web|last=Fitzhugh|first=George|author-link=George Fitzhugh|title=The Universal Law of Slavery|website=[[PBS]]|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3141t.html|access-date=December 10, 2017|archive-date=March 30, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190330044220/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3141t.html|url-status=live}}] Without the South, "He [a slave] would become an insufferable burden to society" and "Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery."[Schott, Thomas E. ''Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography'', 1996, p. 334.]
{{Blockquote|The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away [...] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell".
Our new [Confederate] Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.[{{cite book|contribution=Men but Not Brothers|first=William C.|last=Davis|title=Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America|pages=130–162|date=2002|publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]]}}] The leading researcher was [[Samuel A. Cartwright]], a Southerner and the inventor of the mental illnesses of [[drapetomania]] (the desire of a slave to run away) and [[dysaesthesia aethiopica]] ("rascality"), both cured, according to him, by whipping. The Medical Association of Louisiana set up a committee, which he chaired, to investigate "the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". Their report, first delivered to the Medical Association in an address, was published in their journal in 1851,[{{cite journal|title=Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race|first=Samuel A.|last=Cartwright|author-link=Samuel A. Cartwright|journal=New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal|date=May 1851|pages=691–715|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mjkCAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA707|access-date=May 15, 2018}}] and then reprinted in part in the widely circulated ''[[DeBow's Review]]''.[{{cite journal|last=Cartwright|first=Samuel A.|author-link=Samuel A. Cartwright|title=Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race|journal=[[DeBow's Review]]|year=1851|volume=XI|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html|access-date=16 November 2011|archive-date=September 27, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190927035839/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html|url-status=live}}]
==== American slavery as a cornerstone of world economics ====
Many American Southerners justified slavery as a fundamental part of the world's economic system. Central to this belief was the [[King Cotton]] ideology—the idea that global industrial economies, particularly in Britain and France, heavily depended on the South's cotton exports, which were affordable only due to enslaved labor. Alabama Governor [[John A. Winston]] said, "the suspension of involuntary servitude for a single year only, would cause convulsions in all the governments of the civilised world, the disastrous results of which, it would be beyond human ken to foresee."[{{Cite book |last=Oakes |first=James |title=The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=1982 |isbn=0-393-31705-6 |location=New York |pages=149 |language=en}}]
Southerners often pointed to the economic disruptions faced by Britain, France, and Denmark following emancipation as proof of slavery's importance. Some even believed these nations might reverse abolition due to market pressures.[{{Cite book |last=Karp |first=Matthew |title=The Civil War As Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War |date=2014 |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-61117-325-3 |editor-last=Gleeson |editor-first=David T. |pages=39 |language=en |chapter=King Cotton, Emperor Slavery: Antebellum Slaveholders and the World Economy}}] Many Southerners interpreted the British repeal of protectionist tariffs against slave-grown sugar in 1846, alongside Europe's broader turn toward free trade in the 1850s, as tacit recognition that slave-based commodities remained essential to the global economy.[{{cite news|title=The Slave Trade Meeting|newspaper=[[Charleston Daily Courier]] ([[Charleston, South Carolina]])|date=October 22, 1859|via=[[newspapers.com]]|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/63220535/meeting-of-those-who-wanted-to-reopen/|page=1}}]
* Funded [[Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States|illegal slave shipments]] from the Caribbean and Africa, such as the ''[[Wanderer (slave ship)|Wanderer]]'' slave shipment to Georgia in 1858[{{Cite book|last=Wells|first=Tom Henderson |title=The Slave Ship Wanderer|publisher=University of Georgia Press|year=2009|isbn=9-780-8203-3457-8}}]
* Wanted to reintroduce slavery in the Northern states, through federal action or [[Constitutional amendment]] making slavery legal nationwide, thus overriding state anti-slavery laws.[{{cite journal|title=Review of ''The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style'', by David Brion Davis|first=James|last=Rabun|journal=[[Florida Historical Quarterly]]|volume=49|number=2|date=October 1970|pages=174–175|jstor=30140388}}][{{cite book|title=John Brown and His Friends|author-link=Franklin Benjamin Sanborn|first=Franklin Benjamin|last=Sanborn|page=2|date=c. 1900|url=https://archive.org/details/aberpa.sanbornfb.1900.johnbrown/page/n2/mode/1up}}] (See [[Crittenden Compromise]].) This was described as "well underway" by 1858.[{{cite journal|title=Abraham Lincoln and the Fruitage of his Proclamation|first=Archibald|last=Grimké|author-link=Archibald Grimké|journal=[[American Missionary Association|American Missionary]]|date=February 1909|volume=63|number=2|pages=51–53|url=https://archive.org/details/americanmissiona00bear/page/50/mode/2up?q=Archibald}}]
* Said openly that slavery should by no means be limited to black people, since in their view it was beneficial. Northern white workers, who were allegedly "[[Wage slavery|wage slaves]]" already, would allegedly have better lives if they were enslaved.[{{cite journal|title=The Slave Power Conspiracy: 1830–1860|first=Russel B.|last=Nye|journal=[[Science & Society]]|volume=10|number=3|date=Summer 1946|pages=262–274|doi=10.1177/003682374601000303 |jstor=40399768}}]
None of these ideas got very far, but they alarmed Northerners and contributed to the country's growing polarization.
===Abolitionism in the North===
{{Main|Abolitionism in the United States}}
{{Further|List of abolitionists|Underground Railroad|African American founding fathers of the United States|Radical Republicans}}
{{Blockquote|Slavery is a volcano, the fires of which cannot be quenched, nor its ravishes controlled. We already feel its convulsions, and if we sit idly gazing upon its flames, as they rise higher and higher, our happy republic will be buried in ruin, beneath its overwhelming energies.|author=[[William Ellsworth]], attorney for [[Prudence Crandall]], 1834[{{cite book|first=James|last=Williams|title=Narrative of James Williams, an American slave: who was for several years a driver on a cotton plantation in Alabama|year=1838|page=iv|location=Boston|publisher=Published by the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]]|others=[[Isaac Knapp]] coordinated the publication.|series=Authentic narrative of James Williams, an American slave|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002634169&view=1up&seq=1|archive-date=June 30, 2020|access-date=February 28, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200630060522/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002634169&view=1up&seq=1|url-status=live}}]{{rp|193–194}}}}
[[File:19th century American abolitionists.jpg|thumb|Some 19th-century American abolitionists: [[Wendell Phillips]] and [[William Lloyd Garrison]] (with British abolitionist [[George Thompson (abolitionist)|George Thompson]]), [[William Wells Brown]], [[Frederick Douglass]], 1851 meeting of the [[Pennsylvania Abolition Society]] (including [[Oliver Johnson (writer)|Oliver Johnson]], [[Mary Grew]], [[Robert Purvis]], and [[Lucretia Mott]]), [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]], and [[Harriet Tubman]]]]
Beginning during the Revolution and in the first two decades of the postwar era, every state in the North abolished slavery. These were the first abolitionist laws in the [[Atlantic World]].[Arthur Zilversmit, ''The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North'' (1967).][{{cite book|editor-first=Junius P.|editor-last=Rodriguez|title=Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DXysBwAAQBAJ&pg=PR34|year=2015|publisher=Routledge|pages=34–35|isbn=978-1-317-47180-6}}] However, the abolition of slavery did not necessarily mean that existing slaves became free. In some states they were forced to remain with their former owners as [[indentured servants]]: free in name only, although they could not be sold and thus families could not be split, and their children were born free. The end of slavery did not come in New York until July 4, 1827, when it was celebrated (on July 5) with a big parade.[David Nathaniel Gellman, ''Emancipating New York: The politics of slavery and freedom, 1777-1827'' (LSU Press, 2006) pp. 1–11.] However, in the [[1830 census]], the only state with no slaves was Vermont. In the [[1840 census]], there were still slaves in New Hampshire (1), Rhode Island (5), Connecticut (17), New York (4), Pennsylvania (64), Ohio (3), Indiana (3), Illinois (331), Iowa (16), and Wisconsin (11). There were none in these states in the [[1850 census]].[{{cite book|title=Statistical View of the United States|author=J. D. B. DeBow, Superintendent of the United States Census|chapter=Slave Population of the United States|page=82|publisher=United States Senate|chapter-url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1850/1850c/1850c-04.pdf|year=1854|archive-date=November 4, 2021|access-date=September 10, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211104125708/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1850/1850c/1850c-04.pdf|url-status=dead}}]
Most Northern states passed legislation for gradual abolition, first freeing children born to slave mothers (and requiring them to serve lengthy indentures to their mother's owners, often into their 20s as young adults). In 1845, the [[Supreme Court of New Jersey]] received lengthy arguments towards "the deliverance of four thousand persons from bondage".[{{cite book|title=A legal argument before the Supreme court of the state of New Jersey, at the May term, 1845, at Trenton, for the deliverance of four thousand persons from bondage|first=Alvan|last=Stewart|author-link=Alvan Stewart|location=New York|publisher=Finch & Weed|year=1845|url=https://archive.org/details/legalargumentbef00stew/page/n6/mode/1up}}] Pennsylvania's last slaves were freed in 1847, Connecticut's in 1848, and while neither New Hampshire nor New Jersey had any slaves in the [[1850 Census]], and New Jersey only one and New Hampshire none in the [[1860 Census]], slavery was never prohibited in either state until ratification of the [[13th Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] in 1865[{{cite book|first1=Randall M.|last1=Miller|first2=John David|last2=Smith|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=idktzKdgb7YC&pg=PA471|chapter=Gradual abolition|title=Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|year=1997|page=471|isbn=978-0-275-95799-5}}] (and New Jersey was one of the last states to ratify it).
None of the Southern states abolished slavery before 1865, but it was not unusual for individual slaveholders in the South to free numerous slaves, often citing revolutionary ideals, in their wills. [[Methodism|Methodist]], [[Quakers|Quaker]], and [[Baptists in the United States|Baptist]] preachers traveled in the South, appealing to slaveholders to [[Manumission|manumit]] their slaves, and there were "manumission societies" in some Southern states. By 1810, the number and proportion of free blacks in the population of the United States had risen dramatically. Most free blacks lived in the North, but even in the Upper South, the proportion of free blacks went from less than 1% of all blacks to more than 10%, even as the total number of slaves was increasing through imports.[Peter Kolchin (1993), ''American Slavery'', pp. 77–78, 81.]
[[File:John Smibert - Judge Samuel Sewall - 58.358 - Museum of Fine Arts.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Abolitionist [[Samuel Sewall]] was chief justice of the [[Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature]], the highest court in Massachusetts. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts)]]
African slaves arrived in the [[Massachusetts Bay Colony]] in the 1630s, and slavery was legally sanctioned by the Puritans in 1641.[{{cite news |title=Massachusetts Constitution and the Abolition of Slavery |url=https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery |access-date=February 8, 2024 |agency=Mass.gov |archive-date=February 4, 2026 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260204072200/https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery |url-status=live }}] In 1700, [[Samuel Sewall]], Puritan abolitionist and associate justice of the [[Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature]], wrote ''The Selling of Joseph'', within which he condemned slavery and the slave trade and refuted many of the era's typical justifications for slavery.[Sewall, Samuel. ''The Selling of Joseph,'' pp. 1–3, Bartholomew Green & John Allen, Boston, Massachusetts, 1700.][McCullough, David. ''John Adams'', pp. 132–133, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001. {{ISBN|0-684-81363-7}}.] The Puritan influence on slavery was still strong at the time of the [[American Revolution]] and up until the Civil War. Of America's first seven presidents, the two who did not own slaves, [[John Adams]] and his son [[John Quincy Adams]], came from Puritan New England. They were wealthy enough to own slaves, but they chose not to because they believed that it was morally wrong to do so. In 1765, colonial leader [[Samuel Adams]] and his wife were given a slave girl as a gift. They immediately freed her.
[[File:giddings brady 1955-65rr.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|left|Abolitionist and politician [[Joshua Reed Giddings]] was [[List of United States representatives expelled, censured, or reprimanded|censured]] in the [[U.S. House of Representatives]] in 1842 for introducing anti-slavery resolution deemed to be incendiary, and in violation of the House's [[Gag rule (United States)|gag rule]] prohibiting discussion of slavery.[{{cite news |title=The House Censured Rashida Tlaib for Political Speech Plain and Simple |url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a45781154/rashida-tlaib-house-censure/ |access-date=November 10, 2023 |work=Esquire}}]]]
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the abolitionists, such as [[Theodore Parker]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Henry David Thoreau]] and [[Frederick Douglass]], repeatedly used the Puritan heritage of the country to bolster their cause. The most radical anti-slavery newspaper, ''[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]],'' invoked the Puritans and Puritan values over a thousand times. Parker, in urging New England Congressmen to support the abolition of slavery, wrote that "The son of the Puritan{{spaces}}... is sent to Congress to stand up for Truth and Right{{spaces}}..."[Gradert, Kenyon. ''Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination,'' pp. 1–3, 14–15, 24, 29–30, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, and London, 2020. {{ISBN|978-0-226-69402-3}}.][Commager, Henry Steele. ''Theodore Parker,'' pp. 206, 208–209, 210, The Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1947.]
Northerners predominated in the westward movement into the [[Midwestern United States|Midwestern]] territory after the American Revolution; as the states were organized, they voted to prohibit slavery in their constitutions when they achieved statehood: Ohio in 1803, Indiana in 1816, and Illinois in 1818. What developed was a Northern block of free states united into one contiguous geographic area that generally shared an anti-slavery culture. The exceptions were the areas along the Ohio River settled by Southerners: the southern portions of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. Residents of those areas generally shared in Southern culture and attitudes. In addition, these areas were devoted to agriculture longer than the industrializing northern parts of these states, and some farmers used slave labor. In Illinois, for example, while the trade in slaves was prohibited, it was legal to bring slaves from [[Kentucky]] into Illinois and use them there, as long as the slaves left Illinois one day per year (they were "visiting"). The emancipation of slaves in the North led to the growth in the population of Northern free blacks, from several hundred in the 1770s to nearly 50,000 by 1810.[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', p. 104.]
[[File:Simon Legree and Uncle Tom - A scene from the abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.png|thumb|right|Simon Legree and Uncle Tom: a scene from ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (1852), an influential abolitionist novel]]
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, abolitionism, a movement to end slavery, grew in strength; most abolitionist societies and supporters were in the North. They worked to raise awareness about the evils of slavery, and to build support for abolition. After 1830, abolitionist and newspaper publisher [[William Lloyd Garrison]] promoted emancipation, characterizing slaveholding as a personal sin. He demanded that slaveowners repent and start the process of emancipation. His position increased defensiveness on the part of some Southerners, who noted the long history of slavery among many cultures. A few abolitionists, such as [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]], favored the use of armed force to foment uprisings among the slaves, as he attempted to do at [[Harper's Ferry]]. Most abolitionists tried to raise public support to change laws and to challenge slave laws. Abolitionists were active on the lecture circuit in the North, and often featured escaped slaves in their presentations. Writer and orator [[Frederick Douglass]] became an important abolitionist leader after escaping from slavery. [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s novel ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (1852) was an international bestseller, and along with the non-fiction companion ''[[A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin]],'' aroused popular sentiment against slavery.[[[David S. Reynolds|Reynolds, David S.]] ''Mightier Than the Sword:'' Uncle Tom's Cabin ''and the Battle for America''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.] It also provoked the publication of numerous [[anti-Tom novels]] by Southerners in the years before the American Civil War.
[[File:Undergroundrailroadsmall2.jpg|thumb|left|Map of known [[Underground Railroad]] routes, as mapped by a historian of 1898]]
This struggle took place amid strong support for slavery among white Southerners, who profited greatly from the system of enslaved labor. But slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking, shipping, insurance, and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port cities in the North. The Northern textile mills in New York and New England processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822, half of New York City's exports were related to cotton.[{{Cite web |title=New York Divided: King Cotton |url=http://nydivided.org/VirtualExhibit/T1/G1/G1ReadMore.php |access-date=2022-12-29 |website=nydivided.org |archive-date=March 30, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130330070752/http://nydivided.org/VirtualExhibit/T1/G1/G1ReadMore.php |url-status=live }}]
Slaveholders began to refer to slavery as the "peculiar institution" to differentiate it from other examples of [[forced labor]]. They justified it as less cruel than the free labor of the North.
[[File:Anti-slavery Alphabet 1846-9.jpg|thumb|Page from ''[[The Anti-Slavery Alphabet]]'' (1846–1849)]]
The principal organized bodies to advocate abolition and anti-slavery reforms in the north were the [[Pennsylvania Abolition Society]] and the [[New York Manumission Society]]. Before the 1830s the antislavery groups called for gradual emancipation.[Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, ''The antislavery impulse: 1830–1844'' (1933)] By the late 1820s, under the impulse of religious evangelicals such as [[Beriah Green]], the sense emerged that owning slaves was a sin and the owner had to immediately free himself from this grave sin by immediate emancipation.[{{Cite journal |jstor = 2204556|title = Evangelicalism and "Immediate Emancipation" in American Antislavery Thought|journal = The Journal of Southern History|volume = 32|issue = 2|pages = 172–188|last1 = Loveland|first1 = Anne C.|year = 1966|doi = 10.2307/2204556}}]
===Prohibiting the international trade===
{{Main|Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves}}
[[File:"Shipping news" The Charleston Daily Courier, December 24, 1805.jpg|thumb|The shipping news in Charleston in December 1805 included 900 newly imported enslaved Africans from the [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]], [[Windward Coast]], and [[Kingdom of Bonny|Bonny]], plus cotton shipping out for [[Liverpool]], and a delivery of [[salampore]] cloth, which was traded for "prime negroes" in regions of Africa where [[Islamic dietary laws]] made American [[rum]] undesirable[{{cite journal |last1=Kelley |first1=Sean M. |title=American Rum, African Consumers, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade |journal=African Economic History |date=2018 |volume=46 |issue=2 |pages=1–29 |doi=10.1353/aeh.2018.0004 }}]]]
Under the Constitution, Congress could not prohibit the import slave trade that was allowed in South Carolina until 1808. However, the third Congress regulated against it in the [[Slave Trade Act of 1794]], which prohibited American shipbuilding and outfitting for the trade. Subsequent acts [[Slave Trade Act of 1800|in 1800]] and 1803 sought to discourage the trade by banning American investment in the trade, and American employment on ships in the trade, as well as prohibiting importation into states that had abolished slavery, which all states except South Carolina had by 1807.[{{cite web | url=http://abolition.nypl.org/essays/us_constitution/4/ | title=Regulation of the Trade | publisher=[[New York Public Library]] | access-date=June 23, 2014 | archive-date=July 8, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180708232800/http://abolition.nypl.org/essays/us_constitution/4/ }}][{{Cite magazine |last=Finkelman |first=Paul |date=2004 |title=Suppressing American Slave Traders in the 1790s |magazine=OAH Magazine of History |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=51–55 |issn=0882-228X}}] The final [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]] was adopted in 1807 and went into effect in 1808. However, illegal importation of African slaves (smuggling) was common.[{{cite book |last1=Grindal |first1=Peter |title=Opposing the Slavers. The Royal Navy's Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade |date=2016 |publisher=I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd |location=London |isbn=978-0-85773-938-4 |edition=Kindle}}]{{rp|63, 65}}
After Great Britain and the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, British slave trade suppression activities began in 1808 through diplomatic efforts and the formation of the [[Royal Navy]]'s [[West Africa Squadron]] in 1809. The United States denied the Royal Navy the right to stop and search U.S. ships suspected as slave ships, so not only were American ships unhindered by British patrols, but slavers from other countries would fly the American flag to try to avoid being stopped. Co-operation between the United States and Britain was not possible during the [[War of 1812]] or the period of poor relations in the following years. In 1820, the [[United States Navy]] sent {{USS|Cyane|1815|6}} under the command of Captain [[Edward Trenchard]] to patrol the slave coasts of West Africa. ''Cyane'' seized four American slave ships in her first year on station. Trenchard developed a good level of co-operation with the Royal Navy. Four additional U.S. warships were sent to the African coast in 1820 and 1821. A total of 11 American slave ships were taken by the U.S. Navy over this period. Then American enforcement activity reduced. There was still no agreement between the United States and Britain on a mutual right to board suspected slave traders sailing under each other's flag. Attempts to reach such an agreement stalled in 1821 and 1824 in the [[United States Senate]]. A U.S. Navy presence, however sporadic, did result in American slavers sailing under the Spanish flag, but still as an extensive trade. The [[Webster-Ashburton Treaty]] of 1842 set a guaranteed minimum level of patrol activity by the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy, and formalized the level of co-operation that had existed in 1820. Its effects, however, were minimal{{efn|The United States continued to prohibit Royal Navy ships from investigating U.S.-flagged vessels{{snd}}even in instances when the U.S. flag was being used fraudulently. The British still insisted on the right to impress (i.e. force to serve in the Royal Navy) British citizens found on American ships{{snd}}something that was a continued cause of grievance. Despite the intent of the treaty, the opportunity for additional co-operation was missed.}} while opportunities for greater co-operation were not taken. The U.S. transatlantic slave trade was not effectively suppressed until 1861, during Lincoln's presidency, when a treaty with Britain was signed whose provisions included allowing the Royal Navy to board, search and arrest slavers operating under the American flag.{{r|Grindal 2016|pp=399–400, 449, 1144, 1149}}[{{cite web|url=http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=63330|title=Potomac Books – University of Nebraska Press – University of Nebraska Press|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071015130620/http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=63330|archive-date=October 15, 2007|df=mdy-all}}]
===War of 1812===
{{See also|Black refugee (War of 1812)}}
[[File:Andrew Jackson explains how much it should cost to take a shipment of slaves to Natchez for sale.jpg|thumb|[[Andrew Jackson and the slave trade in the United States]]: Jackson, soon to be the "Hero of New Orleans", explains how much it should cost to take a shipment of slaves to Natchez for sale ('' The Correspondence of Andrew Jackson'', 1926)]]
During the [[War of 1812]], British [[Royal Navy]] commanders of the blockading fleet were instructed to offer freedom to defecting American slaves, as the Crown had during the Revolutionary War. Thousands of [[Black Refugee (War of 1812)|escaped slaves]] went over to the Crown with their families.[Gene Allen Smith, ''The Slaves' Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812'' (St. Martin's Press, 2013) pp. 1–11.] Men were recruited into the [[Corps of Colonial Marines]] on occupied [[Tangier Island]], in the [[Chesapeake Bay]]. Many freed American slaves were recruited directly into existing West Indian regiments, or newly created [[British Army]] units. The British later resettled a few thousand freed slaves to Nova Scotia. Their descendants, together with descendants of the black people resettled there after the Revolution, have established the Black Loyalist Heritage Museum.[{{cite book |first=Simon |last=Schama |author-link=Simon Schama |chapter=Endings, Beginnings |title=Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution |location=New York |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-06-053916-0 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/roughcrossingsbr00scha/page/406 406–407] |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w6P8FSfh7GwC&pg=PA406 |title-link=Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution }}] Afterward, when some freed slaves had been settled at [[Bermuda]], slaveholders such as Major [[Pierce Butler (American politician)|Pierce Butler]] of [[South Carolina]] tried to persuade them to return to the United States, to no avail.
The Americans protested that Britain's failure to return all slaves violated the [[Treaty of Ghent]]. After arbitration by the [[Tsar Alexander I|Tsar of Russia]], the British paid $1,204,960 in damages (about ${{Inflation|US|1.204960|1826|r=1}} million in today's money) to Washington, which reimbursed the slaveowners.[{{cite journal |last=Lindsay |first=Arnett G. |title=Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Great Britain Bearing on the Return of Negro Slaves, 1783–1828 |journal=[[Journal of Negro History]] |volume=5 |issue=4 |year=1920 |pages=391–419 |jstor=2713676 |doi=10.2307/2713676 }}]
===Slave rebellions===
{{Main|Slave rebellion and resistance in the United States}}
{{See also|Slavery in the colonial United States#Slave rebellions}}
[[File:Nat Turner captured.jpg|thumb|''Discovery of Nat Turner'' [in 1831], an 1881 [[wood-engraving]] by {{ill|William Henry Shelton|qid=Q52155231|short=yes}}]]
According to [[Herbert Aptheker]], "there were few phases of ante-bellum Southern life and history that were not in some way influenced by the fear of, or the actual outbreak of, militant concerted slave action."[{{citation|isbn=978-0-7178-0605-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/americannegrosla00apth/page/368 368]|date=1993|edition=50th Anniversary|place=New York|title=American Negro Slave Revolts|author=Aptheker, Herbert|url=https://archive.org/details/americannegrosla00apth/page/368|author-link=Herbert Aptheker|publisher=International Publishers}}]
Historians in the 20th century identified 250 to 311 slave uprisings in U.S. and colonial history.[{{Cite news|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/did-african-american-slaves-rebel/|title=The Five Greatest Slave Rebellions in the United States {{!}} African American History Blog {{!}} The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross|date=January 12, 2013|newspaper=The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross|author=Gates, Henry Louis|publisher=[[WTTW]]|language=en-US|access-date=October 11, 2016|author-link=Henry Louis Gates|archive-date=October 12, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161012122025/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/did-african-american-slaves-rebel/|url-status=live}}] Those after 1776 include:
* [[Gabriel Prosser|Gabriel]]'s conspiracy (1800)
* [[Igbo Landing]] slave escape and mass suicide (1803)
* [[Chatham Manor]] Rebellion (1805)
* [[1811 German Coast uprising]] (1811)[{{cite book|last=Rasmussen|first=Daniel|title=American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt|url=https://archive.org/details/americanuprising00dani|url-access=registration|year=2011|publisher=HarperCollins|page=288|isbn=978-0-06-199521-7}}]
* [[George Boxley]] Rebellion (1815)
* [[Denmark Vesey]]'s conspiracy (1822)
* [[Ohio River slave rebellion]] (1826)
* [[Nat Turner's Rebellion]] (1831)
* [[Second Seminole War|Black Seminole Slave Rebellion]] (1835–1838)[{{cite web |author=J.B. Bird |url=http://www.johnhorse.com/black-seminoles/black-seminole-slave-rebellion.htm |title=The slave rebellion the country tried to forget |website=John Horse |access-date=October 4, 2013 |archive-date=August 28, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060828060934/http://www.johnhorse.com/black-seminoles/black-seminole-slave-rebellion.htm |url-status=live }}]
* [[Amistad (case)|''Amistad'' seizure]] (1839)[{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3080/ |title = Unidentified Young Man |website = [[World Digital Library]] |date = 1839–1840 |access-date = July 28, 2013 |archive-date = September 27, 2013 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130927124613/http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3080/ |url-status = live }}]
* [[1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation]][{{Cite web|url=https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SL002|title=Slave Revolt of 1842 {{pipe}} The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture|website=www.okhistory.org|access-date=April 3, 2022|archive-date=May 26, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240526053134/https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SL002|url-status=live}}]
* [[Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion]] (1849)
In 1831, [[Nat Turner]], a literate slave who claimed to have spiritual [[Vision (spirituality)|visions]], organized a [[Nat Turner's slave rebellion|slave rebellion]] in [[Southampton County, Virginia]]; it was sometimes called the Southampton Insurrection. Turner and his followers killed nearly sixty white inhabitants, mostly women and children. Many of the men in the area were attending a religious event in North Carolina.[{{cite book|last=Foner|first=Eric|title=Give Me Liberty|year=2009|publisher=Seagull Edition|location=London|pages=406–407}}] Eventually Turner was captured with 17 other rebels, who were subdued by the militia.[{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=Jennie K. |title=Trouble the water: The Baltimore to New Orleans coastwise slave trade, 1820–1860 |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=2 April 2020 |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=275–303 |doi=10.1080/0144039X.2019.1660509 }}]
===Post-revolution Southern manumissions===
[[File:Manumission papers of Phillis Murray, negro woman aged about 25 years, signed William Glasgow, December 31, 1833.jpg|left|thumb|Manumission papers of Phillis Murray, a black woman about 25 years old, signed by William Glasgow, December 31, 1833 ([[Missouri History Museum]])]]
Although Virginia, Maryland and [[Delaware]] were slave states, the latter two already had a high proportion of free blacks by the outbreak of war. Following the Revolution, the three legislatures made [[manumission]] easier, allowing it by deed or will. Quaker and Methodist ministers in particular urged slaveholders to free their slaves. The number and proportion of freed slaves in these states rose dramatically until 1810. More than half of the number of free blacks in the United States were concentrated in the Upper South. The proportion of free blacks among the black population in the Upper South rose from less than 1% in 1792 to more than 10% by 1810.[Kolchin (1993), ''American Slavery'', p. 78.]
In the United States as a whole, by 1810 the number of free blacks reached 186,446, or 13.5% of all black people.[Peter Kolchin (1993), ''American Slavery'', p. 81.] After that period, few slaves were freed, as the development of [[Plantations in the American South|cotton plantations]] featuring short-staple cotton in the Deep South drove up the internal demand for slaves in the domestic slave trade and high prices being paid for them.[Kolchin (1993), ''American Slavery'', p. 87.]
Alabama banned free black people from the state beginning in 1834; free people of color who crossed the state line were subject to enslavement.[{{cite web |title=Alabama Legislature Bans Free Black People From Living in the State |url=https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jan/17 |website=Equal Justice Initiative |access-date=August 22, 2023 |archive-date=November 16, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251116001557/https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jan/17 |url-status=live }}] Free black people in Arkansas after 1843 had to buy a $500 good-behavior bond, and no unenslaved black person was legally allowed to move into the state.[{{Cite journal |last=Cathey |first=Clyde W. |date=1944 |title=Slavery in Arkansas |journal=The Arkansas Historical Quarterly |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=66–90 |doi=10.2307/40027465 |jstor=40027465 }}]
===Female slave owners===
[[File:"Kidnapping 250 Dollars Reward " Constitutional Whig, April 27, 1827.jpg|thumb|The slave trade made [[kidnapping into slavery in the United States|kidnapping children of color]] a profitable criminal business{{mdash}}the [[Patty Cannon]] gang was at work in Northwest Fork Hundred, Delaware until 1829, when four bodies were found buried on property they had owned ("Kidnapping 250 Dollars Reward" ''Constitutional Whig'', April 27, 1827)]]
Despite [[coverture]] laws that gave the property of married women to their husbands, married women exercised their right to own and control human property without their husbands' interference or permission, and they were active participants in the slave trade.[{{cite book |last1=Jones-Rogers |first1=Stephanie E. |title=They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South |date=2019 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven London |isbn=978-0-300-25183-8|pages=37, 134|quote="Throughout the antebellum period, married women consistently asserted their rights to own and control human property without their husband's interference, and they exercised those rights as well." "White women were not anomalies at local slave auctions, either, and no group could testify more powerfully to white women's presence at and involvement in slave auctions than the enslaved people who were there.}}] For example, in South Carolina 40% of bills of sale for slaves from the 1700s to the present included a female buyer or seller.[{{Cite web|last=McDonald|first=Soraya Nadia|date=2019-03-15|title=In 'They Were Her Property,' a historian shows that white women were deeply involved in the slave economy|url=https://andscape.com/features/in-they-were-her-property-a-historian-shows-that-white-women-were-deeply-involved-in-the-slave-economy/|access-date=2020-07-14|website=Andscape|language=en-US|quote=South Carolina has bills of sale for property transactions from the 1700s to pretty recently. I looked at a sample of 3,000 bills of sale involving enslaved people being purchased or sold. Close to 40 percent of the bills of sale included either a female buyer or a female seller.|archive-date=January 2, 2026|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260102035325/https://andscape.com/features/in-they-were-her-property-a-historian-shows-that-white-women-were-deeply-involved-in-the-slave-economy/|url-status=live}}] Women also governed their slaves in a manner similar to men, engaging in the same levels of physical disciplining. Like men, they brought lawsuits against those who jeopardized their ownership to their slaves.[{{cite book |last1=Jones-Rogers |first1=Stephanie E. |title=They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South |date=2019 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven London |isbn=978-0-300-25183-8|pages=xv-xvi|quote=When we listen to what enslaved people had to say about white women and slave mastery, we find that articulated quite clearly their belief that slave-owning women governed their slaves in the same ways that white men did, sometimes they were more effective at slave management or they used more brutal methods of discipline than their husbands did...White southern women conducted transactions with slave traders...and they were not meek in their bargaining...slave-owning women brought legal suits against individuals, both male and female, who jeopardized their claims to human property, and others sued them in kind. They bought and sold slaves for profit, and, on rare occasions owned slave yards.}}]
===Black slave owners===
{{Main|African-American slave owners}}
Despite the longstanding color line in the United States, some African Americans were slave owners themselves, some in cities and others as plantation owners in the country.[{{cite book |editor1-last=Finkelman |editor1-first=Paul |title=Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass |date=2006 |doi=10.1093/acref/9780195167771.001.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-516777-1 }}{{pn|date=July 2026}}] Slave ownership signified both wealth and increased social status.[A history of the descendants of the slaves of Cherokee can be found at {{cite journal |last=Sturm |first=Circe |title=Blood Politics, Racial Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen |journal=[[American Indian Quarterly]] |volume=22 |issue=1/2 |year=1998 |pages=230–258 |jstor=1185118}} In 1835, 7.4% of Cherokee families held slaves. In comparison, nearly one-third of white families living in Confederate states owned slaves in 1860. Further analysis of the 1835 Federal Cherokee Census can be found in {{cite journal |last1=McLoughlin |first1=W. G. |first2=W. H. |last2=Conser |title=The Cherokees in Transition: a Statistical Analysis of the Federal Cherokee Census of 1835 |journal=[[The Journal of American History]] |volume=64 |issue=3 |pages=678–703 |year=1977 |jstor=1887236|doi=10.2307/1887236 }} A discussion on the total number of Slave holding families can be found in {{cite web |last=Olsen |first=Otto H. |title=Historians and the extent of slave ownership in the Southern United States |work=Civil War History |date=December 2004 |url=http://www.southernhistory.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=9406&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 |access-date=June 8, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070720231457/http://www.southernhistory.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=9406&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 |archive-date=July 20, 2007 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}]
The nature of [[Cherokee Freedmen Controversy|slavery in Cherokee society]] often mirrored that of white slave-owning society. The law barred intermarriage of Cherokees and enslaved African Americans, but Cherokee men had unions with enslaved women, resulting in mixed-race children.[{{cite book |last1=Perdue |first1=Theda |title=Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866 |date=1979 |publisher=University of Tennessee Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/slaveryevolution0000perd/page/207 207] |isbn=978-0-87049-530-4 }}][{{cite book |last1=Katz |first1=William Loren |title=Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage |date=3 January 2012 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |page=[https://archive.org/details/blackindianshidd0000katz/page/254 254] |url=https://archive.org/details/blackindianshidd0000katz |url-access=registration |quote=black indians. |access-date=1 March 2019|isbn=978-1-4424-4637-3 }}] Cherokee who aided slaves were punished with one hundred lashes on the back. In Cherokee society, persons of African descent were barred from holding office even if they were also racially and culturally Cherokee. They were also barred from bearing arms and owning property. The Cherokee prohibited the teaching of African Americans to read and write.[{{cite journal |last=Duncan |first=J. W. |year=1928 |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v006/v006p178.html |title=Interesting ante-bellum laws of the Cherokee, now Oklahoma history |journal=Chronicles of Oklahoma |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=178–180 |access-date=July 13, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071219043621/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v006/v006p178.html |archive-date=December 19, 2007 }}][{{cite journal |last=Davis |first=J. B. |year=1933 |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v011/v011p1056.html |title=Slavery in the Cherokee nation |journal=Chronicles of Oklahoma |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=1056–1072 |access-date=July 13, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150310044812/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v011/v011p1056.html |archive-date=March 10, 2015}}]
By contrast, the [[Seminole]] welcomed into their nation African Americans who had [[Fugitive slave|escaped]] slavery ([[Black Seminoles]]). Historically, the Black Seminoles lived mostly in distinct bands near the Native American Seminole. Some were held as slaves of particular Seminole leaders. Seminole practice in Florida had acknowledged slavery, though not the chattel slavery model common elsewhere. It was, in fact, more like feudal dependency and taxation.[{{cite book|first=Watson W.|last=Jennison|title=Cultivating Race: The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 1750–1860|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ImNeFi-wt6IC&pg=PA132|year=2012|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-4021-6|page=132}}][{{cite book |last1=McCall |first1=George Archibald |last2=McCall |first2=George |title=Letters from the Frontiers |date=2009 |publisher=Applewood Books |isbn=978-1-4290-2158-6 |page=160 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bA0EZPPKc_QC&q=%22melons+pumpkins%22+mccall&pg=PA160 }}][{{cite book|first=Kevin|last=Mulroy|title=The Seminole Freedmen: A History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b--eCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA25|year= 2016|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-5588-3|page=25}}] The relationship between Seminole blacks and natives changed following their relocation in the 1830s to territory controlled by the [[Creek people|Creek]] who had a system of chattel slavery. Pro slavery pressure from Creek and pro-Creek Seminole and slave raiding led to many Black Seminoles escaping to Mexico.[{{cite book|first1=Philip|last1=Deloria|first2=Neal|last2=Salisbury|title=A Companion to American Indian History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BMenL80QO0kC&pg=PA348|year= 2008|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-4051-4378-3|pages=348–349}}][{{cite book|first1=Bruce G.|last1=Trigger|first2=Wilcomb E.|last2=Washburn|title=The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DRGVjLiyXEwC&pg=PA525|year=1996|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-57392-4|page=525}}][{{cite book|first=Wolfgang|last=Binder|title=Westward Expansion in America (1803–1860)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k7F1AAAAMAAJ&q=%22Marcellus%20Duval%22|year=1987|publisher=Palm & Enke|isbn=978-3-7896-0171-2|page=147}}][{{cite book|author=James Shannon Buchanan|title=Chronicles of Oklahoma|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6i8UAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Siah%20Hardridge%22|year=1955|publisher=Oklahoma Historical Society.|page=522}}][{{cite book|first=Kevin|last=Mulroy|title=The Seminole Freedmen: A History|url=https://archive.org/details/seminolefreedmen0000mulr|url-access=registration|year=2007|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-3865-7|page=[https://archive.org/details/seminolefreedmen0000mulr/page/79 79]}}]
===High demand and smuggling===
{{Further|Post-1808 importation of slaves to the United States|Movement to reopen the transatlantic slave trade}}
[[File:Africa and the American Flag.jpg|thumb|U.S. brig ''[[USS Perry (1843)|Perry]]'' confronting the [[slave ship]] ''Martha'' off [[Ambriz]] on June 6, 1850 ([[Napoleon Sarony|Sarony & Co.]] lithograph, [[Andrew Hull Foote|Andrew H. Foote]]'s ''Africa and the American Flag'', 1854)]]
The [[United States Constitution]], adopted in 1787, prevented [[United States Congress|Congress]] from completely banning the [[import]]ation of slaves until 1808, although Congress regulated against the trade in the [[Slave Trade Act of 1794]], and in subsequent Acts [[Slave Trade Act of 1800|in 1800]] and 1803.[{{Cite magazine|last=Finkelman|first=Paul|date=2004|title=Suppressing American Slave Traders in the 1790s|magazine=OAH Magazine of History|volume=18|issue=3|pages=51–55|issn=0882-228X}}] During and after the Revolution, the [[U.S. states|states]] individually passed laws against importing slaves. By contrast, the states of Georgia and South Carolina reopened their trade due to demand by their upland planters, who were developing new cotton plantations: Georgia from 1800 until December 31, 1807, and South Carolina from 1804. In that period, Charleston traders imported about 75,000 slaves, more than were brought to South Carolina in the 75 years before the Revolution.[James A. McMillin, ''The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783–1810, Volume 2'', Univ of South Carolina Press, 2004, p. 86] Approximately 30,000 were imported to Georgia.
By January 1, 1808, when Congress [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves|banned further imports]], South Carolina was the only state that still allowed importation of enslaved people. The domestic trade became extremely profitable as demand rose with the expansion of cultivation in the Deep South for cotton and sugar cane crops. Slavery in the United States became, more or less, self-sustaining by natural increase among the current slaves and their descendants. Maryland and Virginia viewed themselves as slave producers, seeing "producing slaves" as resembling animal husbandry. Workers, including many children, were relocated by force from the upper to the lower South.
Despite the ban, slave imports continued through smugglers bringing in slaves past the U.S. Navy's [[African Slave Trade Patrol]] to South Carolina, and overland from Texas and Florida, both under Spanish control.[{{cite book |first=Hugh |last=Thomas |title=The Slave Trade. The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870 |location=New York |publisher=Simon and Schuster |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-684-81063-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/slavetradestoryo00thom/page/568 568] |url=https://archive.org/details/slavetradestoryo00thom |url-access=registration }}] Congress increased the punishment associated with importing slaves, classifying it in 1820 as an act of piracy, with smugglers subject to harsh penalties, including death if caught. After that, "it is unlikely that more than 10,000 [slaves] were successfully landed in the United States."[{{cite web |url=http://abolition.nypl.org/print/us_constitution/ |first=Paul |last=Finkelman |title=The Abolition of the Slave Trade |work=New York Public Library |date=2007 |access-date=February 14, 2012 |archive-date=August 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200807102107/http://abolition.nypl.org/print/us_constitution/ |url-status=live }}] But, some smuggling of slaves into the United States continued until just before the start of the Civil War.
===Colonization movement===
{{Main|American Colonization Society|History of Liberia}}
[[File:Mitchell Map Liberia colony 1839.jpg|thumb|The 1839 Mitchell [[Geography of Liberia|map of Liberia]] shows colonial settlements including [[New Georgia, Liberia|New Georgia]], [[Pennsylvania Colony (Liberia)|Pennsylvania Colony]], [[Mississippi-in-Africa|Mississippi Colony]], [[Louisiana Colony (Liberia)|Louisiana Colony]], and [[Republic of Maryland|Maryland Colony]] ]]
[[File:Only think of it.jpg|thumb|"Only think of it!—There is actually a scheme on foot for transporting to the shores of Africa ''a large portion of the yeomanry of this country!'' And why? Because it is said they can never attain to respectability or happiness here—among their own countrymen!!—Hail, Columbia! happy land!" (''The Liberator'', December 1, 1832)]]
In the early part of the 19th century, other organizations were founded to take action on the future of black Americans. Some advocated removing free black people from the United States to places where they would enjoy greater freedom; some endorsed [[Colony|colonization]] in Africa, while others advocated [[emigration]], usually to Haiti. During the 1820s and 1830s, the [[American Colonization Society]] (ACS) was the primary organization to implement the "return" of black Americans to Africa.[{{cite web|url=http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=731&issue_id=75|title=Background on Conflict in Liberia|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110108042234/http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=731&issue_id=75|archive-date=January 8, 2011|df=mdy-all}} [[Paul Cuffe]], a successful New England black shipping man, financed and captained a voyage for American blacks in 1815–1816 to British-ruled [[Sierra Leone]]. Cuffe believed that African Americans could more easily "rise to be a people" in Africa than in the United States because of the latter's slavery, racial discrimination, and limits on black rights. Although Cuffee died in 1817, his early efforts encouraged the ACS to promote further settlements. The [[Quakers]] opposed slavery, but they believed that blacks would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the United States. Slaveholders opposed abolition, but they wanted to get rid of [[freedmen]], whom they saw as potential leaders of rebellions and people who encouraged slaves to run away.] The ACS was made up mostly of [[Quakers]] and slaveholders, and they found uneasy common ground in support of what was incorrectly called "repatriation". By this time, however, most black Americans were native-born and did not want to emigrate, saying they were no more African than white Americans were British. Rather, they wanted full rights in the United States, where their families had lived and worked for generations.
In 1822, the ACS and affiliated state societies established what would become the colony of [[Liberia]], in West Africa.[{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/446/ |title = Map of Liberia, West Africa |work = [[World Digital Library]] |year = 1830 |access-date = June 3, 2013 |archive-date = May 18, 2020 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200518201022/https://www.wdl.org/en/item/446/ |url-status = dead }}] The ACS assisted thousands of freedmen and free blacks (with legislated limits) to emigrate there from the United States. Many white people considered this preferable to [[Abolitionism in the United States|emancipation]] in the United States. [[Henry Clay]], one of the founders and a prominent slaveholder politician from Kentucky, said that blacks faced:
{{Blockquote|text=...unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off.[{{cite book |first=Maggie Montesinos |last=Sale |title=The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and the Production of Rebellious Masculinity |publisher=Duke University Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-8223-1992-4 |page=45 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1yQowl-nEh8C&pg=PA45 }}]}}
Deportation would also be a way to prevent reprisals against former slaveholders and white people in general, as had occurred in the [[1804 Haiti massacre]], which had contributed to a consuming fear amongst whites of retributive black violence, a phobia dubbed Haitianism.
===Domestic slave trade and forced migration===
{{Main|Slave trade in the United States}}
{{Further|List of slave traders of the United States|Kidnapping into slavery in the United States|Family separation in American slavery}}
[[File:Crowe-Slaves Waiting for Sale - Richmond, Virginia.jpg|thumb|{{ill|Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia|qid=Q111822148|short=yes|italic=yes}}, painting by [[Eyre Crowe (painter)|Eyre Crowe]] based on a sketch made 1853 while visiting the United States with [[William Thackeray]]]]
[[File:Slavery map.jpg|thumb|Movement of slaves between 1790 and 1860]]
The [[U.S. Constitution]] barred the federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves for twenty years. Various states passed bans on the international slave trade during that period; by 1808, the only state still allowing the importation of African slaves was South Carolina. After 1808, legal importation of slaves ceased, although there was smuggling via [[Spanish Florida]] and the disputed Gulf Coast to the west.[{{cite book|title=The African American Heritage of Florida|contribution=African Religious Retentions in Florida|first=Robert L.|last=Hall|publisher=University Press of Florida|year=1995|isbn=978-0-8130-1332-9|pages=42–70|editor1-first=David R.|editor1-last=Colburn|editor2-first=Jane L.|editor2-last=Landers}}]{{rp|48–49}}[{{cite book|title=A People's History of Florida 1513–1876. How Africans, Seminoles, Women, and Lower Class Whites Shaped the Sunshine State|first=Adam|last=Wasserman|isbn=978-1-4421-6709-4|year=2010|publisher=Adam Wasserman|edition=Revised 4th}}]{{rp|138}} This route all but ended after Florida [[Florida Territory|became a U.S. territory]] in 1821 (but see [[slave ship]]s [[Wanderer (slave ship)|''Wanderer'']] and [[Clotilda (slave ship)|''Clotilda'']]).
The replacement for the importation of slaves from abroad was increased domestic production. Virginia and Maryland had little new agricultural development, and their need for slaves was mostly for replacements for decedents. Normal reproduction more than supplied these: Virginia and Maryland had surpluses of slaves. Their tobacco farms were "worn out"[{{cite web|title=Alexandria to New Orleans: The Human Tragedy of the Interstate Slave Trade|newspaper=[[Alexandria Gazette-Packet]]|first=Donald|last=Sweig|date=October 2014|access-date=February 13, 2018|url=http://connectionarchives.com/PDF/2014/Slave%20Trader/Slave%20Trader.PDF|archive-date=June 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200609042954/http://connectionarchives.com/PDF/2014/Slave%20Trader/Slave%20Trader.PDF|url-status=dead}}] and the climate was not suitable for cotton or sugar cane. The surplus was even greater because [[Slave breeding in the United States|slaves were encouraged to reproduce]] (though [[Marriage of enslaved people (United States)|they could not marry]]). The pro-slavery Virginian [[Thomas Roderick Dew]] wrote in 1832 that Virginia was a "negro-raising state"; i.e. Virginia "produced" slaves.[{{cite book|first=Charles B.|last=Dew|title=The Making of a Racist|publisher=[[University of Virginia Press]]|year=2016|isbn=978-0-8139-3887-5|page=2}}] According to him, in 1832 Virginia exported "upwards of 6,000 slaves" per year, "a source of wealth to Virginia".[{{cite book|title=Slavery in America: Theodore Weld's ''American Slavery As It Is''|first1=Richard O.|last1=Curry|first2=Joanna Dunlop|last2=Cowden|location=[[Itasca, Illinois]]|publisher=F. E. Peacock|year=1972|oclc=699102217}}]{{rp|198}} A newspaper from 1836 gives the figure as 40,000, earning for Virginia an estimated $24,000,000 per year.[{{cite news|title=(Untitled)|newspaper=[[South Branch Intelligencer]]|location=[[Romney, West Virginia]]|date=10 Dec 1836|page=2|via=[[newspapers.com]]|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/103141201/slaves-exported-from-virginia/}}][{{rp|201}} Demand for slaves was the strongest in what was then the southwest of the country: Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and, later, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Here there was abundant land suitable for plantation agriculture, which young men with some [[capital (economics)|capital]] established. This was expansion of the white, monied population: younger men seeking their fortune.
The most valuable crop that could be grown on a plantation in that climate was cotton. That crop was labor-intensive, and the least-costly laborers were slaves. Demand for slaves exceeded the supply in the southwest; therefore slaves, never cheap if they were productive, went for a higher price. As portrayed in ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (the "original" cabin was in Maryland),][{{cite episode|series=All Things Considered|title=A Visit to the Real 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'|date=February 4, 2006|access-date=February 28, 2018|first=Debbie|last=Elliot|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5188487|network=[[NPR]]}}] "selling South" was greatly feared. A recently (2018) publicized example of the practice of "selling South" is the [[1838 Jesuit slave sale|1838 sale]] by [[Jesuits]] of 272 slaves from Maryland, to plantations in Louisiana, to benefit [[Georgetown University]], which has been described as "ow[ing] its existence" to this transaction.[{{cite news|last1=Swarns|first1=Rachel|title=272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416193641/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html|archive-date=2016-04-16|url-access=subscription|url-status=live|access-date=February 15, 2018|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=February 14, 2018}}][{{cite news|title=A Glimpse Into the Life of a Slave Sold to Save Georgetown|first=Rachel L.|last=Swarns|date=March 12, 2017|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/us/georgetown-university-slaves-life-campbell.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170312203811/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/us/georgetown-university-slaves-life-campbell.html|archive-date=2017-03-12|url-access=subscription|url-status=live}}][{{cite news|title=Georgetown Students Agree to Create Reparations Fund|first=Adeel|last=Hassan|date=April 12, 2019|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/georgetown-reparations.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412174603/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/georgetown-reparations.html|archive-date=2019-04-12|url-access=subscription |url-status=live}}]
The growing international demand for cotton led many plantation owners further west in search of suitable land. In addition, the invention of the [[cotton gin]] in 1793 enabled profitable processing of short-staple cotton, which could readily be grown in the uplands. The invention revolutionized the cotton industry by increasing fifty-fold the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day. At the end of the [[War of 1812]], fewer than 300,000 bales of cotton were produced nationally. By 1820, the amount of cotton produced had increased to 600,000 bales, and by 1850 it had reached 4,000,000. There was an explosive growth of cotton cultivation throughout the Deep South and greatly increased demand for slave labor to support it.[''The People's Chronology'', 1994, by James Trager.] As a result, manumissions decreased dramatically in the South.[Kolchin p. 96.
Through the domestic slave trade, about one million enslaved African Americans were forcibly removed from the Upper South to the Deep South, with some transported by ship in the coastwise trade. In 1834, [[Alabama]], [[Mississippi]], and [[Louisiana]] grew half the nation's cotton; by 1859, along with [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], they grew 78%. By 1859, cotton growth in the [[Carolinas]] had fallen to just 10% of the national total. Berlin p. 166.]
Most of the slaves sold from the Upper South were from [[Maryland]], [[Virginia]] and the [[Carolinas]], where changes in agriculture decreased the need for their labor and the demand for slaves. Before 1810, primary destinations for the slaves who were sold were [[Kentucky]] and [[Tennessee]], but, after 1810, the Deep South states of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], [[Alabama]], [[Mississippi]], [[Louisiana]] and [[Texas]] received the most slaves. This is where cotton became "king".[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 168–169. Kolchin p. 96.] Meanwhile, the Upper South states of Kentucky and Tennessee joined the slave-exporting states.
By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a major economic activity in the United States; it lasted until the 1860s.[{{Cite book|last=Morgan|first=Marcyliena|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mhJcsiydNe8C&pg=PA20|title=Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture|date=2002-07-04|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-00149-6|language=en|page=20}}] Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines.[{{Cite web|title=1860 Census Results|url=http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100325032630/http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html|archive-date=2010-03-25|access-date=2022-12-29|website=The Civil War Home Page|language=en-US}}] amounting to 8% of all American families.[{{cite web |url=http://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total |title=American Civil War Census Data |publisher=Civil-war.net |access-date=May 27, 2014 |archive-date=March 22, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160322110116/http://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total }}]
[[File:Ashley's Sack (Slave Sack c. mid-19th century).jpg|thumb|left|[[Ashley's Sack]] is a cloth that recounts a slave sale separating a mother and her daughter. The sack belonged to a nine-year-old girl Ashley and was a parting gift from her mother, Rose, after Ashley had been sold. Rose filled the sack with a dress, braid of her hair, pecans, and "my love always". ([[Middleton Place Foundation]], South Carolina)]]
The historian [[Ira Berlin]] called this forced migration of slaves the "Second Middle Passage" because it reproduced many of the same horrors as the [[Middle Passage]] (the name given to the transportation of slaves from Africa to North America). These sales of slaves broke up many families and caused much hardship. Characterizing it as the "central event" in the life of a slave between the [[American Revolution]] and the Civil War, Berlin wrote that, whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people, both slave and free".[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 161–162.] Individuals lost their connection to families and clans. Added to the earlier colonists combining slaves from different tribes, many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. Most were descended from families that had been in the United States for many generations.[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 168–169. Kolchin p. 96. Kolchin notes that Fogel and Engerman maintained that 84% of slaves moved with their families but "most other scholars assign far greater weight{{spaces}}... to slave sales." Ransome (p. 582) notes that Fogel and Engerman based their conclusions on the study of some counties in Maryland in the 1830s and attempted to extrapolate that analysis as reflective of the entire South over the entire period.] The death rate for the slaves on their way to their new destination across the American South was less than that suffered by captives shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, but mortality nevertheless was higher than the normal death rate.
[[Interregional slave trade|Slave traders]] transported two-thirds of the slaves who moved West.[{{cite book |first=Allan |last=Kulikoff |title=The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism |location=Charlottesville |publisher=University of Virginia Press |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-8139-1388-9 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/agrarianoriginso00kuli/page/226 226]–269 |url=https://archive.org/details/agrarianoriginso00kuli |url-access=registration }}] Only a minority moved with their families and existing master. Slave traders had little interest in purchasing or transporting intact slave families; in the early years, planters demanded only the young male slaves needed for heavy labor. Later, in the interest of creating a "self-reproducing labor force", planters purchased nearly equal numbers of men and women. Berlin wrote:
The internal slave trade became the largest enterprise in the South outside the plantation itself, and probably the most advanced in its employment of modern transportation, finance, and publicity. The slave trade industry developed its own unique language, with terms such as "prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and '[[fancy girls]]' coming into common use."[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 166–169.]
[[File:"Northern Industry" and "Southern Industry" prior to the American Civil War.jpg|thumb|"Northern Industry" and "Southern Industry" before the American Civil War (''Scribner's Popular History of the United States'', 1896)]]
The expansion of the interstate slave trade contributed to the "economic revival of once depressed seaboard states" as demand accelerated the value of slaves who were subject to sale.[Kolchin, p. 98.] Some traders moved their "chattels" by sea, with [[Norfolk, Virginia|Norfolk]] to [[New Orleans, Louisiana|New Orleans]] the most common route, but most slaves were forced to walk overland. Others were shipped downriver from such markets as [[Louisville, Kentucky|Louisville]] on the Ohio River and [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]] on the Mississippi. Traders created regular migration routes served by a network of slave pens, yards and warehouses needed as temporary housing for the slaves. In addition, other vendors provided clothes, food and supplies for slaves. As the trek advanced, some slaves were sold and new ones purchased. Berlin concluded, "In all, the slave trade, with its hubs and regional centers, its spurs and circuits, reached into every cranny of southern society. Few southerners, black or white, were untouched."[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 168–171.]
Once the trip ended, slaves faced a life on the frontier significantly different from most labor in the Upper South. Clearing trees and starting crops on virgin fields was harsh and backbreaking work. A combination of inadequate nutrition, bad water and exhaustion from both the journey and the work weakened the newly arrived slaves and produced casualties. New plantations were built at rivers' edges for ease of transportation and travel. [[Mosquito]]es and other environmental challenges spread disease, which killed many slaves. They had acquired only limited immunity to lowland diseases in their previous homes. The death rate was so high that, in the first few years of hewing a plantation out of the wilderness, some planters preferred when possible to use rented slaves rather than their own.[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', p. 174.]
The frontier's harsh conditions increased slave resistance and led owners and overseers to rely on violence for control. Many of the slaves were new to cotton fields and unaccustomed to the "sunrise-to-sunset gang labor" their new life required. Slaves were driven much harder than when they had been growing tobacco or wheat back East. Slaves had less time and opportunity to improve their quality of life by raising their own [[livestock]] or tending vegetable gardens, for either their own consumption or trade, than they did in the East.[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 175–177.]
[[File:Broadside for 1858 Sale of Slaves in New Orleans.jpg|thumb|Broadside for an 1858 slave sale at the [[St. Louis Hotel]] in New Orleans ([[Museum of African American History and Culture]] 2011.155.305)]]
In [[French Louisiana|Louisiana]], French colonists had established [[sugar cane]] plantations and exported sugar as the chief commodity crop. After the [[Louisiana Purchase]] in 1803, Americans entered the state and joined the sugar cultivation. Between 1810 and 1830, planters bought slaves from the North and the number of slaves increased from fewer than 10,000 to more than 42,000. Planters preferred young males, who represented two-thirds of the slave purchases. Dealing with sugar cane was even more physically demanding than growing cotton. The largely young, unmarried male slave force made the reliance on violence by the owners "especially savage".[Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity'', pp. 179–180.]
[[File:Slave Market-Atlanta Georgia 1864.jpg|thumb|[[Crawford, Frazer & Co.]], a slave trading business in [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], photographed by [[George N. Barnard]] just before the 1864 [[burning of Atlanta]]]]
[[New Orleans]] became nationally important as a slave market and port, as slaves were shipped from there upriver by steamboat to plantations on the Mississippi River; it also sold slaves who had been shipped downriver from markets such as Louisville. By 1840, the [[New Orleans slave market]] was North America's largest. It became the wealthiest and the fourth-largest city in the nation, thanks chiefly to the slave trade and associated businesses.[Walter Johnson, ''Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. pages=90 ("miraculous things"), 228 (property law status)] The trading season was from September to May, after the harvest.[Johnson (1999), ''Soul by Soul'', p. 2.]
The notion that slave traders were social outcasts of low reputation, even in the South, was initially promulgated by defensive southerners and later by figures like historian [[Ulrich Bonnell Phillips]].[{{Cite book |last=Tadman |first=Michael |title=Internal Slave Trades |date=2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |editor-last=Smith |editor-first=Mark M. |volume=1 |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199227990.013.0029 |isbn=978-0-19-922799-0 |editor-last2=Paquette |editor-first2=Robert L.}}] Historian [[Frederic Bancroft]], author of ''[[Slave-Trading in the Old South]]'' (1931) found—contrary to Phillips's position—that many traders were esteemed members of their communities.[{{cite journal |title=Review of Slave-Trading in the Old South |journal=The Journal of Negro History |date=1931 |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages=240–241 |doi=10.2307/2714086 |jstor=2714086 }}] Contemporary researcher [[Steven Deyle]] argues that the "trader's position in society was not unproblematic and owners who dealt with the trader felt the need to satisfy themselves that they acted honorably"; [[Michael Tadman]] contends that "'trader as outcast' operated at the level of propaganda" whereas white slave owners almost universally professed a belief that slaves were not human like them, and thus dismissed the consequences of slave trading as beneath consideration.[{{cite book |last=Dew |first=Charles B. |title=The making of a racist: a southerner reflects on family, history, and the slave trade |publisher=University of Virginia Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-8139-3888-2 |location=Charlottesville |page=154 |language=en-us |lccn=2015043815 |oclc=956713856 |author-link=Charles B. Dew}}]
In the [[1828 United States presidential election|1828 presidential election]], candidate [[Andrew Jackson]] was strongly criticized by opponents [[Andrew Jackson and the slave trade in the United States|as a slave trader]] who transacted in slaves in defiance of modern standards or morality.[{{Cite web |first=Mark |last=Cheathem |date=2014 |title=Frontiersman or Southern Gentleman? Newspaper Coverage of Andrew Jackson during the 1828 Presidential Campaign {{pipe}} Readex |url=https://www.readex.com/readex-report/issues/volume-9-issue-3/frontiersman-or-southern-gentleman-newspaper-coverage-andrew |access-date=2022-12-29 |website=www.readex.com |archive-date=December 9, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211209171727/https://www.readex.com/readex-report/issues/volume-9-issue-3/frontiersman-or-southern-gentleman-newspaper-coverage-andrew |url-status=live }}]
===Treatment===
{{Main|Treatment of slaves in the United States}}
{{See also|Torture of slaves in the United States|Slave health on plantations in the United States|Slave quarters in the United States|Field slaves in the United States}}
[[File:Scourged back by McPherson & Oliver, 1863, retouched.jpg|thumb|[[Peter (enslaved man)|Peter]], formerly enslaved on a cotton plantation along the [[Atchafalaya River]], photo taken at [[Baton Rouge, Louisiana]], 1863; after the whipping, Peter's wounds were salted, a common practice;[{{Cite news |last=Bostonian |date=1863-12-03 |orig-date=1863-11-12 |title=The Realities of Slavery: To the Editor of the N.Y. Tribune |language=en-us |page=4 |work=New-York Tribune |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/new-york-tribune-the-realities-of-slaver/128982438/ |access-date=2023-07-27 |issn=2158-2661 |via=[[Newspapers.com]] |archive-date=July 27, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230727215430/https://www.newspapers.com/article/new-york-tribune-the-realities-of-slaver/128982438/ |url-status=live }}][{{cite thesis |last1=Dickman |first1=Michael |title=Honor, Control, and Powerlessness: Plantation Whipping in the Antebellum South |publisher=Boston College |year=2015 |hdl=2345/bc-ir:104219 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:104219}}] the overseer who whipped Peter was fired by slave owner [[John Lyons (Louisiana)|Capt. John Lyons]][{{cite news|first=Kathleen|last=Collins|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/books/review/Letters-t-ASLAVENAMEDG_LETTERS.html?_r=0|title=The Scourged Back|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=January 9, 1985|pages=43–45}}] (original ''[[carte de visite]]'' by [[McPherson & Oliver]])]]
The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, time, and place, but in general it was brutal, especially on plantations. Whippings and rape were routine. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites that had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave.[Moore, p. 114.] Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders, conditions permitting abuses.
[[William Wells Brown]], who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick eighty pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick seventy pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to one lash of the whip for each pound that they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales.[Clinton, Catherine, ''Scholastic Encyclopedia of the Civil War'', New York: Scholastic Inc., 1999, p. 8.] A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping.[{{cite book|first=Maurie D.|last=McInnis|title=Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R3W4M4UojrEC&pg=PA129|year=2011|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-55933-9|pages=129–}}] By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.[Moore, p. 118.]
Historian [[Lawrence M. Friedman]] wrote: "Ten Southern codes made it a crime to mistreat a slave.{{spaces}}... Under the [[Louisiana Civil Code]] of 1825 (art. 192), if a master was "convicted of cruel treatment", the judge could order the sale of the mistreated slave, presumably to a better master.[[[Lawrence M. Friedman]] (2005). ''A History of American Law: Third Edition''. Simon and Schuster, p. 163. {{ISBN|0-7432-8258-2}}] Masters and overseers were seldom prosecuted under these laws. No slave could give testimony in the courts.
[[File:Wilson Chinn.jpg|thumb|left|[[Wilson Chinn]], a branded slave from Louisiana—also exhibiting instruments of torture used to punish slaves (carte de visite by [[Charles Paxson]], Metropolitan Museum of Art 2019.521)]]
According to Adalberto Aguirre's research, 1,161 slaves were executed in the United States between the 1790s and 1850s.[A. Aguirre, Jr., "[http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-54370544/slave-executions-united-states.html Slave executions in the United States] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130518075117/http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-54370544/slave-executions-united-states.html |date=May 18, 2013 }}", ''The Social Science Journal'', vol. 36, issue 1 (1999), pp. 1–31.] Quick executions of innocent slaves as well as suspects typically followed any attempted slave rebellions, as white militias overreacted with widespread killings that expressed their fears of rebellions, or suspected rebellions.
Although most slaves had lives that were very restricted in terms of their movements and agency, exceptions existed to virtually every generalization; for instance, there were also slaves who had considerable freedom in their daily lives: slaves allowed to rent out their labor and who might live independently of their master in cities, slaves who employed white workers, and slave doctors who treated upper-class white patients.[Davis, p. 124.] After 1820, in response to the inability to import new slaves from Africa and in part to abolitionist criticism, some slaveholders improved the living conditions of their slaves, to encourage them to be productive and to try to prevent escapes.[Christian, Charles M., and Bennet, Sari, ''Black Saga: The African American Experience: A Chronology'', Basic Civitas Books, 1998, p. 90.] It was part of a paternalistic approach in the [[Antebellum South|antebellum era]] that was encouraged by ministers trying to use Christianity to improve the treatment of slaves. Slaveholders published articles in Southern agricultural journals to share best practices in treatment and management of slaves; they intended to show that their system was better than the living conditions of Northern industrial workers.
Medical care for slaves was limited in terms of the medical knowledge available to anyone. It was generally provided by other slaves or by slaveholders' family members, although sometimes "plantation physicians", like [[J. Marion Sims]], were called by the owners to protect their investment by treating sick slaves. Many slaves possessed medical skills needed to tend to each other, and used folk remedies brought from Africa. They also developed new remedies based on American plants and herbs.[Burke, p. 155.]
An estimated 9% of [[Disability in American slavery|slaves were disabled]] due to a physical, sensory, psychological, neurological, or developmental condition. But slaves were often described as disabled if they could not work or bear a child, and often subjected to harsh treatment as a result.[Barclay, J. L. (2021). ''The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America''. University of Illinois Press.]
In some cases, enslaved persons were cruelly tortured to death as punishment while other slaves had to watch.[{{Cite book |last1=Woodard |first1=Vincent |title=The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture |title-link=The Delectable Negro |date=2014 |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4798-4926-0 |pages=34, 59–60}}] According to Andrew Fede, an owner could be held criminally liable for killing a slave only if the slave he killed was "completely submissive and under the master's absolute control".[Andrew Fede (2012). ''People Without Rights (Routledge Revivals): An Interpretation of the Fundamentals of the Law of Slavery in the U.S. South''. Routledge, p. 79. {{ISBN|1-136-71610-6}}] For example, in 1791 the [[North Carolina General Assembly]] defined the willful killing of a slave as criminal [[murder]], unless done in resisting or under moderate correction (that is, corporal punishment).[{{cite book |first=Thomas D. |last=Morris |year=1999 |title=Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |page=172 |isbn=978-0-8078-6430-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VmPWCKh0hZAC&pg=PA172 |archive-date=November 15, 2025 |access-date=September 2, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251115012008/https://books.google.com/books?id=VmPWCKh0hZAC&pg=PA172 |url-status=live }}]
[[File:BRIGHTEN Eyre Crowe - Subasta de esclavos.jpg|thumb|Sale at auction, by [[Alonzo J. White]] on the plaza north of the [[Exchange and Provost|Exchange Building]] in [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]] on March 10, 1853, of 96 people who had previously been enslaved near the [[Combahee River]] (Eyre Crowe, [[Museo della Belle Artes|Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes]], Havana, Cuba)]]
While slaves' living conditions were poor by modern standards, [[Robert Fogel]] argued that all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the 19th century were subject to hardship.[[http://eh.net/node/2749 Thomas Weiss, Review: ''Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111220190203/http://eh.net/node/2749 |date=December 20, 2011 }}, ''Project 2001: Significant Works in Economic History'', EH.net (Economic History.net)] Unlike free individuals, however, enslaved people were far more likely to be underfed, physically punished, sexually abused, or killed, with no recourse, legal or otherwise, against those who perpetrated these crimes against them.
===Commodification of human tissue===
In a very grim fashion, the commodification of the human body was legal in the case of African slaves as they were not legally seen as fully human. The most popular means of commodifying slave tissues was through medical experimentation. Slaves were routinely used as medical specimens forced to take part in experimental surgeries, amputations, disease research, and developing medical techniques.[{{cite journal |last1=Kenney |first1=Stephen |title=Power, opportunism, racism: Human experiments under American slavery |journal=Endeavour |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=10–20 |date=March 2015 |doi=10.1016/j.endeavour.2015.02.002 |pmid=25824012}}] Many slaves in these routine experiments were not given pain relief or analgesics, resulting in death by shock on the table. The bodies of such slaves were grouped with other medical cadavers, or sold with the bodies of other slaves sold, stolen, or grave robbed for medical experimentation.[{{Cite journal |last=Halperin |first=Edward C. |date=July 2007 |title=The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education |journal=Clinical Anatomy |volume=20 |issue=5 |pages=489–495 |doi=10.1002/ca.20445 |issn=0897-3806 |pmid=17226823}}] In many cases, slave cadavers were used in demonstrations and dissection tables,[{{cite journal |last1=Savitt |first1=Todd |title=The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South |journal=The Journal of Southern History |date=August 1982 |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=331–348 |doi=10.2307/2207450 |jstor=2207450|pmid=11645888 }}] oftentimes resulting in their tissues being sold for profit.
For the reason of slave punishment, decoration, or self-expression, the skin of slaves was in many instances allowed to be made into leather for furniture, accessories, and clothing,[{{cite journal |last1=Berry |first1=Daina |title=Nat Turner's Skull and My Student's Purse of Skin |journal=The New York Times |date=October 18, 2016 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/nat-turners-skull-and-my-students-purse-of-skin.html |access-date=16 October 2022 |archive-date=January 28, 2026 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260128202713/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/nat-turners-skull-and-my-students-purse-of-skin.html |url-status=live }}] a common instance of which being that of wealthy clientele sending cadaver skin to tanners and shoemakers under the guise of animal leather.[{{cite news |title=Leather Made From Human Skin |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9144128 |access-date=16 October 2022 |agency=The Mercury |publisher=Philadelphia News |date=March 17, 1888 |archive-date=December 12, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251212221001/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9144128 |url-status=live }}] Slave hair could be shaved and used for stuffing in pillows and furniture. In some instances, the inner body tissue of slaves (fat, bones, etc.) could be made into soap, medicinal grease, trophies, and other commodities.[{{cite news |last1=Plaisance |first1=Patrick |title=A Museum for Nat Turner |url=https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-19980902-1998-09-02-9809020063-story.html |access-date=16 October 2022 |publisher=Daily Press |date=September 2, 1998 |archive-date=October 15, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221015191955/https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-19980902-1998-09-02-9809020063-story.html |url-status=live }}]
===Sexual abuse, reproductive exploitation, and breeding farms===
{{Main|Slave breeding in the United States|Children of the plantation|Shadow family|Enslaved women's resistance in the United States and Caribbean}}
[[File:The Port Gibson Herald, and Correspondent, March 1, 1850.jpg|thumb|"The negroes to be sold" including America and Obedience, ''The Port Gibson Herald'', March 1, 1850]]
As in any slave society,{{sfn|Genovese|1974|page=416}} [[slave women in the United States]] were at high risk of rape and sexual exploitation, due to their owners' rights over their bodies.[{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9d9FC-gcWaAC&pg=PA38 |title=Who Is Black?: One Nation's Definition |last=Davis |first=Floyd James |year=2001 |publisher=Penn State Press |page=38 |isbn=978-0-271-04463-7}}][Moon, p. 234.] Their children were repeatedly taken away from them and sold as chattel; usually they never saw each other again. Many slaves fought back against sexual attacks, and some died resisting. Others carried psychological and physical scars from the attacks.[Marable, p. 74.] Sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in a patriarchal Southern culture that treated black women as property or chattel.[{{cite web | title = Memoirs of Madison Hemings | publisher = PBS Frontline | url = https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/cron/1873march.html | access-date = September 11, 2017 | archive-date = May 6, 2021 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210506035836/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/cron/1873march.html | url-status = live }}]
While publicly opposed to race mixing, in his ''[[Notes on the State of Virginia]]'' published in 1785, Jefferson wrote: "The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life".[{{cite book |last1=Higginbotham |first1=A. Leon |title=In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process. The Colonial Period |date=1980 |page=10}}] Historians estimate that 58% of enslaved women in the U.S. aged 15–30 years were sexually assaulted by their slave owners and other white men.[{{cite journal |title=Racism, African American Women, and Their Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Evidence and Implications for Health Equity |date=2018 |publisher=National Institutes of Health (NIH)|pmc=6167003 |last1=Prather |first1=C. |last2=Fuller |first2=T. R. |last3=Jeffries Wl |first3=I. V. |last4=Marshall |first4=K. J. |last5=Howell |first5=A. V. |last6=Belyue-Umole |first6=A. |last7=King |first7=W. |journal=Health Equity |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=249–259 |doi=10.1089/heq.2017.0045 |pmid=30283874 }}] As a result of centuries of slavery and such relationships, DNA studies have shown that the vast majority of African Americans also have historic European ancestry, generally through paternal lines.[{{cite journal|first1=Katarzyna |last1=Bryc |first2= Eric Y. |last2=Durand |first3=J. Michael |last3=Macpherson |first4=David |last4=Reich |first5=Joanna L. |last5=Mountain|title=The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States|journal=The American Journal of Human Genetics|date=January 8, 2015|volume=96|issue=1|pages=37–53|doi=10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.11.010|pmid=25529636 |doi-access=free|pmc=4289685}}][{{cite journal |last1=Zakharia |first1=Fouad |last2=Basu |first2=Analabha |last3=Absher |first3=Devin |last4=Assimes |first4=Themistocles L |last5=Go |first5=Alan S |last6=Hlatky |first6=Mark A |last7=Iribarren |first7=Carlos |last8=Knowles |first8=Joshua W |last9=Li |first9=Jun |last10=Narasimhan |first10=Balasubramanian |last11=Sidney |first11=Steven |last12=Southwick |first12=Audrey |last13=Myers |first13=Richard M |last14=Quertermous |first14=Thomas |last15=Risch |first15=Neil |last16=Tang |first16=Hua |title=Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans |journal=Genome Biology |date=22 December 2009 |volume=10 |issue=12 |article-number=R141 |doi=10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141 |pmid=20025784 |pmc=2812948 |doi-access=free }}] The average Black American genome is roughly 20-25% European,[{{Cite web |date=2023-09-30 |title=Learn About Hidden African DNA & Ancestry |url=https://www.23andme.org/blog/articles/hidden-african-ancestry |access-date=2024-12-08 |website=23andMe Blog |language=en}}] and it is estimated that as much as one third of their Y chromosomes are of European origin.[{{Cite book |title=American sexual histories |date=2012 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-4443-3929-1 |editor-last=Reis |editor-first=Elizabeth |edition=2. |series=Blackwell readers in American social and cultural history |location=Malden, Mass.}}] and masked the experiences of sexual violence faced by black male slaves, especially by white women. Subject not only to rape and sexual exploitation, slaves faced sexual violence in many forms. A black man could be forced by his slaveowner to rape another slave or even a free black woman.[{{Cite book |last1=Berry |first1=Daina Ramey |title=Sexuality and slavery: reclaiming intimate histories in the Americas |last2=Harris |first2=Leslie Maria |date=2018 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-5403-3 |series=Gender and slavery |location=Athens, Ga}}] Forced pairings with other slaves, including forced breeding, which neither slave might desire, were common.[Smith, Julia Floyd (1991) ''Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia, 1750-1860'' University of Tennessee Press, [https://books.google.com/books?id=bZzDDt3RPkoC&pg=PA104 104.]]
[[File:'The Quadroon Girl' by Henry Mosler, Cincinnati Art Museum.JPG|thumb|left|''The Quadroon Girl'' (1878) oil painting by [[Henry Mosler]]; scholars of slavery have described the image of the "quadroon bride" and the Southern "fixation on interracial sex and violence" as a form of folk pornography[{{Cite book |last=Lightweis-Goff |first=Jennie |title=Captive city: meditations on slavery in the urban south |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |year=2025 |isbn=978-1-5128-2668-5 |location=Philadelphia |pages=23, 154–155 n. 45 |language=en-us}}] ([[Cincinnati Art Museum]] 1976.25)]]
In the United States in the early 19th century, owners of female slaves could freely and legally [[history of sexual slavery in the United States|use them as sexual object]]s. This follows free use of female slaves on slaving vessels by the crews.[{{cite book|title=Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World. Slave Trader, Plantation Owner, Emancipator|first=Daniel L.|last=Schafer|year=2013|publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=978-0-8130-4462-0}}]{{rp|83}}
The slaveholder has it in his power, to violate the chastity of his slaves. And not a few are beastly enough to exercise such power. Hence it happens that, in some families, it is difficult to distinguish the free children from the slaves. It is sometimes the case, that the largest part of the master's own children are born, not of his wife, but of the wives and daughters of his slaves, whom he has basely prostituted as well as enslaved.[{{cite book|title=Letters on American slavery, addressed to Mr. Thomas Rankin, merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta County, Va|last=Rankin|first=John|author-link=John Rankin (abolitionist)|location=Boston|publisher=[[William Lloyd Garrison|Garrison]] and [[Isaac Knapp|Knapp]]|url=https://archive.org/details/lettersonamerica00rank_0/page/28|date=1833}}]{{rp|38}}
One commentator complained: "This vice, this bane of society, has already become so common, that it is scarcely esteemed a disgrace."[{{cite book|title=The Horrors of Slavery|page=44|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|year=1817|author-link=John Kenrick, 1755–1833|first=John|last=Kenrick|url=https://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=mayantislavery;cc=mayantislavery;q1=American;rgn=full%20text;idno=19869004;didno=19869004;view=image;seq=1;node=19869004%3A1|archive-date=June 29, 2020|access-date=July 25, 2026|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200629202954/http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=mayantislavery;cc=mayantislavery;q1=American;rgn=full%20text;idno=19869004;didno=19869004;view=image;seq=1;node=19869004:1|url-status=live}}]
[[File:"$100 Runaway" Cahawba Democrat, June 16, 1838.jpg|thumb|[[Andreas Byrenheidt]], a 70-year-old physician,[{{Cite web |last=Commerce |first=D'Iberville/St Martin Chamber of |title=D'Iberville/St. Martin Chamber of Commerce |url=https://dsmchamber.com/diberville-time-line |access-date=2024-06-21 |website=D'Iberville/St. Martin Chamber of Commerce |language=en-US |archive-date=June 25, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240625212553/https://dsmchamber.com/diberville-time-line |url-status=live }}] placed an unusually long and detailed [[runaway slave ad]] in two Alabama newspapers in hopes of recovering a 20-year-old enslaved woman, whom he had purchased four years earlier, and her four-year-old daughter, who sometimes called herself Lolo {{small|("$100 Reward" ''Cahawba Democrat'', [[Cahaba, Alabama]], June 16, 1838)}}]]
"Fancy" was a code word that indicated that the girl or young woman was suitable or trained for sexual use.[{{cite book|title=Transatlantic spectacles of race: the tragic mulatta and the tragic muse|year=2012|publisher=Rutgers University Press|first=Kimberly Snyder|last=Manganelli|isbn=978-0-8135-4987-3}}]{{rp|38, 55}}[{{cite web|title=Clary and the Fancy Girl Trade, 1806|first=Nancy|last=Bercaw|publisher=[[National Museum of African-American History and Culture]]|url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2010.1.117ab|access-date=May 15, 2018}}] Special markets for the [[fancy girls|fancy girl]] trade existed in New Orleans{{sfn|Genovese|1974|page=416}}[{{cite news|title=Without the Civil War, who knows when Lexington's slave trade might have ended?|first=Tom|last=Eblen|newspaper=[[Lexington Herald-Leader]]|date=February 1, 2012|url=http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article44152383.html|access-date=May 15, 2018|archive-date=May 19, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180519032845/http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article44152383.html|url-status=live}}][{{cite book|page=[https://archive.org/details/townthatstartedt00bran/page/5 5]|title=The town that started the Civil War|last=Brandt|first=Nat|year=1990|url=https://archive.org/details/townthatstartedt00bran|url-access=registration|isbn=978-0-8156-0243-9|location=[[Syracuse, New York]]|publisher=[[Syracuse University Press]]}}] Historian Philip Shaw describes an occasion when [[Abraham Lincoln]] and Allen Gentry witnessed such sales in New Orleans in 1828:
{{Blockquote|Gentry vividly remembered a day in New Orleans when he and the nineteen-year-old Lincoln came upon a slave market. Pausing to watch, Gentry recalled looking down at Lincoln's hands and seeing that he "doubled his fists tightly; his knuckles went white". Men wearing black coats and white hats buy field hands, "black and ugly", for $500 to 800. And then the real horror begins: "When the sale of "fancy girls" began, Lincoln, "unable to stand it any longer", muttered to Gentry "Allen that's a disgrace. If I ever get a lick at that thing I'll hit it hard."[{{cite journal|title=Lincoln and Negro Slavery: I Haven't Got Time for the Pain|first=Phillip Shaw|last=Paludan|journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association|volume=27|issue=2|date=Summer 2006|pages=1–23|doi=10.5406/19457987.27.2.03 |hdl=2027/spo.2629860.0027.203}}]}}
In some cases, children were abused in this manner. Adolescent "fancy girls" were sometimes sold as "virgins"[{{rp|55}} and the sale of a 13-year-old "nearly a fancy" is documented.][{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Walter |title=The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s |journal=The Journal of American History |date=2000 |volume=87 |issue=1 |pages=13–38 |doi=10.2307/2567914 |jstor=2567914 }}] [[Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr.]], bought his wife when she was 13.[Schwartz, Marie Jenkins (2004). ''Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South''. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 10–11.] The variations in skin color found in the United States make it obvious how often black women were impregnated by whites.[{{cite book|title=Blood at the Root. A Racial Cleansing in America|first=Patrick|last=Phillips|pages=78–79|year=2016|publisher=[[W. W. Norton]]|isbn=978-0-393-29301-2}}] For example, in the 1850 Census, 75.4% of "free negros" in Florida were described as [[mulatto]]s, of mixed race.[{{cite book|title=Balancing Evils Judiciously: The Proslavery Writings of Zephaniah Kingsley|year=2000|first1=Zephaniah Jr.|last1=Kingsley|first2=Daniel W.|last2=Stowell|contribution=Introduction|page=2|publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=978-0-8130-1733-4}}{{Dead link|date=February 2019|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}] Nevertheless, it is only very recently, with [[DNA]] studies, that any sort of reliable number can be provided, and the research has only begun. Light-skinned girls, who contrasted with the darker field workers, were preferred.[{{citation|first=Monique|last=Guillory|title=Some Enchanted Evening on the Auction Block: The Cultural Legacy of the New Orleans Quadroon Balls|publisher=PhD dissertation, New York University|year=1999}}]
As it became popular on many plantations to breed slaves for strength, fertility, or extra labor, there grew many documented instances of "[[Slave breeding in the United States|breeding farms]]" in the United States. Slaves were forced to conceive and birth as many new slaves as possible. The largest farms were located in Virginia and Maryland.[{{cite book |last1=Sublette |first1=Ned |last2=Sublette |first2=Constance |title=The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry |date=October 1, 2015 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iwCKCgAAQBAJ |publisher=Chicago Review Press |isbn=978-1-61373-893-1 |access-date=October 15, 2022}}] Because the industry of slave breeding came from a desire for larger than natural population growth of slaves, slaveowners often turned towards systematic practices for creating more slaves. Female slaves "were subjected to repeated rape or forced sex and became pregnant again and again",[{{cite web |title=Childbirth and Midwifery {{!}} Encyclopedia.com |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/childbirth-and-midwifery |access-date=2023-05-22 |website=www.encyclopedia.com}}] even by [[incest]]. In horrific accounts of former slaves, some stated that hoods or bags were placed over their heads to prevent them from knowing who they were forced to have sex with. Journalist William Spivey wrote, "It could be someone they know, perhaps a niece, aunt, sister, or their own mother. The breeders only wanted a child that could be sold."[{{cite web |last=Spivey |first=William |date=2023-01-23 |title=America's Breeding Farms: What History Books Never Told You |url=https://williamspivey.medium.com/americas-breeding-farms-what-history-books-never-told-you-6704e8b152a4 |access-date=2023-05-22 |website=Medium |language=en}}]
As [[Caroline Randall Williams]] was quoted in ''[[The New York Times]]'': "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument." "I have rape-colored skin", she added.[{{cite news|title=You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument. The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?|first=Caroline Randall|last=Williams|author-link=Caroline Randall Williams|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=June 26, 2020|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626112011/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html|archive-date=2020-06-26|url-access=subscription|url-status=live}}]
The sexual use of black slaves by either slave owners or by those who could purchase the temporary services of a slave took various forms. A slaveowner, or his teenage son, could go to the [[slave quarters in the United States|slave quarters area of the plantation]] and do what he wanted, with minimal privacy if any. It was common for a "house" female (housekeeper, maid, cook, laundress, or [[nanny]]) to be raped by one or more members of the household. [[Brothel|Houses of prostitution]] throughout the slave states were largely staffed by female slaves providing sexual services, to their owners' profit. There were a small number of free black females engaged in prostitution, or concubinage, especially in New Orleans.[{{cite book|pages=87–88|first=Marvin|last=Dunn|title=A History of Florida through Black Eyes|year=2016|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform|isbn=978-1-5193-7267-3}}]{{Self-published inline|date=April 2026|certain=yes}} [[Isaac Franklin]] and [[John Armfield]], co-founders of a successful slave trading firm and well-established community members, joked frequently in their letters about the black women and girls they were raping. It never occurred to them that there was anything wrong in what they were doing.[{{cite news|title=They were once America's cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?|first=Hannah|last=Natanson|date=September 14, 2019|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/14/they-were-once-americas-cruelest-richest-slave-traders-why-does-no-one-know-their-names/|archive-date=February 20, 2021|access-date=April 20, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210220075710/https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/14/they-were-once-americas-cruelest-richest-slave-traders-why-does-no-one-know-their-names/|url-status=live}}]
An issue that came up frequently was the threat of sexual intercourse between black males and white females. Just as the black women were perceived as having "a trace of Africa, that supposedly incited passion and sexual wantonness",[{{cite book|contribution=Black Violence in the New South. Patterns of Conflict in Late-Nineteenth-Century Tampa|first=Jeffrey S.|last=Adler|pages=207–239 [212–213]|title=The African Ameritage Heritage of Florida|editor1-first=David R.|editor1-last=Colburn|editor2-first=Jane L.|editor2-last=Landers|publisher=University Press of Florida|isbn=978-0-8130-1332-9|year=1995}}]
Another approach to the question was offered by [[Quaker]] and Florida planter [[Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr.]] He advocated, and personally practiced, deliberate racial mixing through marriage, as part of his proposed solution to the slavery issue: [[racial integration]], called "[[Miscegenation#Etymological history|amalgamation]]" at the time. In [[A Treatise on the Patriarchal, or Co-operative System of Society|an 1829 ''Treatise'']], he stated that mixed-race people were healthier and often more beautiful, that interracial sex was hygienic, and slavery made it convenient.[{{cite book|title=Finding Florida. The True History of the Sunshine State|first=T.D.|last=Allman|publisher=Atlantic Monthly Press|year=2013|isbn=978-0-8021-2076-2}}]{{rp|190}} Because of these views, tolerated in [[Spanish Florida]], he found it impossible to remain long in [[Florida Territory|Territorial Florida]], and moved with his slaves and multiple wives to a plantation, [[Mayorasgo de Koka]], in [[Haiti]] (now in the [[Dominican Republic]]). There were many others who less flagrantly practiced interracial, common-law marriages with slaves (see ''[[Partus sequitur ventrem#Mixed-race slaves|Partus sequitur ventrem]]'').
===Slave markets and slave prisons===
{{main|Slave markets and slave jails in the United States}}
In New Orleans, most sales were made between September and May. Buyers visited the slave pen and inspected enslaved people prior to the sale.[[https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/1364#:~:text=Slave%2520pens%2520were%2520realms%2520of,women%2520to%2520avoid%2520spreading%2520 Henry Bibb and The Slave Pens of New Orleans]. Retrieved 4 February 2025.] People were held until their means of transportation was arranged. They were transported in groups by boat, walked to their new owners, or a combination of the two. They were moved in groups in a coffle. This meant that people were chained together with iron rings around their necks which were fastened with wooden or iron bars. Men on horseback herded the groups, or coffles, to their destination. They used dogs, guns, and whips. Railroads brought a new, simpler means of travel that did not rely on the use of coffles. In some cases, slave traders, like Franklin & Armfield, had a network of slave depots that were located along their routes.[[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/digging-up-the-past-at-a-richmond-jail-50642859/ Digging Up the Past at a Richmond Jail] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250812055158/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/digging-up-the-past-at-a-richmond-jail-50642859/ |date=August 12, 2025 }}. Retrieved 4 February 2025.] Circa 1833, an Appalachian newspaper complained about the slave traders traveling through the region with coffles, and reported that private jails had been built by slave traders at Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, and near Fredericksburg.[[https://www.newspapers.com/article/middlebury-register-and-addison-county-j/131979078/ A Most Disgraceful Business]. Retrieved 4 February 2025.] Abolitionist [[Theodore Dwight Weld]] wrote around 1840:
{{blockquote|The procurement of from fifty to three hundred slaves is a work of days, sometimes of weeks or months. Many plantations must be visited by the trader and his agents. Then a variety of circumstances occasions necessary delays, before the gang can be put in motion for the south. During this period the slaves are secured by handcuffs, fetters, and chains, and put into some place of confinement. The national prison at Washington city, and the state prisons, are prostituted to this use when occasion requires. The more extensive slave-dealers have private prisons constructed expressly for this purpose.[{{cite book |last1=Weld |first1=Theodore Dwight |author1-link=Theodore Dwight Weld |title=Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America |date=1841 |publisher=T. Ward |location=London |page=[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075911457&seq=72 50]}}]}}
Lumpkin's Jail, the largest in the state of Virginia, was a particularly inhumane place that resulted in people dying of starvation, illness, or beating. They were so cramped that they were sometimes on top of one another. There were no toilet facilities.[ A 1928 history described jail cells built on the Maryland farm of trader George Kephart: "Mr. Kephart was probably the largest slavedealer in the county. He had two underground jails built where he kept the unruly, as well as a brick jail above ground."][[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015024834841&seq=142 History of Carrollton manor, Frederick County, Maryland] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250807064532/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015024834841&seq=142 |date=August 7, 2025 }}. Retrieved 4 February 2025.]
Some jails may have been tidy and officious operations, but many or most were not. Henry Bibb described one jail where he was held as repugnant "on account of the filth and dirt of the most disagreeable kind...there were bedbugs, fleas, lice and mosquitoes in abundance to contend with. At night we had to lie down on the floor in this filth. Our food was very scanty, and of the most inferior quality. No gentleman's dog would eat what we were compelled to eat or starve."[Bibb, Henry. [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000112181&seq=103 Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave]. Retrieved 4 February 2025.] St. Louis slave trader Bernard M. Lynch offered jailing services to owners for 37½ cents per slave per day.[[https://cdm16792.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/showmemo/id/38 Bernard M. Lynch's Cash Box] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250813061724/https://cdm16792.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/showmemo/id/38 |date=August 13, 2025 }}. Retrieved 4 February 2025.]
A negro mart was usually a type of urban retail market, usually consisting of a dedicated showroom and/or a workyard, a jail, and storerooms or kitchens for food. Negro marts were urban "clearinghouses" that both acquired enslaved people from more rural districts and sold people for use as farm, skilled, or domestic labor. The term negro mart was most commonly used in Charleston, South Carolina, but can also be found in Memphis, Tennessee, and multiple locations in Georgia. In the 1850s, future Confederate military leader Nathan Bedford Forrest operated a heavily advertised negro mart on Adams Street in Memphis. In January 1860, the ''New York Times'' reported that the Forrest & Jones negro mart in Memphis had collapsed and caught fire; two people died but the bills of sale for people, "amounting in the aggregate to US$400,000" were salvaged.[[https://www.nytimes.com/1860/01/19/archives/a-double-catastrophe-in-memphis-a-negro-market-and-a-newspaper.html A Double Catastrophe in Memphis. A Negro Market and a Newspaper Office in Ruins] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230504184250/https://www.nytimes.com/1860/01/19/archives/a-double-catastrophe-in-memphis-a-negro-market-and-a-newspaper.html |date=May 4, 2023 }}. Retrieved 4 February 2025.]
===Slave codes===
{{Main|Slave codes}}
{{Further|Slave catcher|Slave patrol|Slave pass}}
{{See also|South Carolina slave codes|New York slave codes}}
[[File:Jonathan Walker branded hand, 1845.png|thumb|The inscription on the back of the case reads: ''This Daguerreotype was taken by Southworth Aug. 1845 it is a copy of Captain [[Jonathan Walker (abolitionist)|Jonathan Walker]]'s hand as branded by the [[United States District Court for the District of Florida|U.S. Marshall of the Dist. of Florida]] for having helped 7 men to obtain 'Life Liberty, and Happiness.' SS Slave Saviour Northern Dist. SS Slave Stealer Southern Dist.'']]
[[File:National Museum of American History - Slave tags of Charleston South Carolina.jpg|thumb|Tags to be used for identifying and tracking enslaved people of Charleston, South Carolina (National Museum of American History 1993.0503)]]
To help regulate the relationship between slave and owner, including legal support for keeping the slave as property, states established [[slave codes]], most based on laws existing since the colonial era. The code for the District of Columbia defined a slave as "a human being, who is by law deprived of his or her liberty for life, and is the property of another".[[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampagecollId=llsc&fileName=001//llsc001.db&recNum=2 "Slaves and the Courts, 1740–1860 Slave code for the District of Columbia, 1860."]{{dead link|date=November 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} The Library of Congress. Retrieved July 19, 2008.]
While each state had its own slave code, many concepts were shared throughout the slave states.[{{cite book |title=Nat Turner |url=https://archive.org/details/natturner0000fone |url-access=registration |first=Eric |last=Foner |year=1971 |publisher=Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall |author-link=Eric Foner}}] According to the slave codes, some of which were passed in reaction to slave rebellions, teaching a slave to read or write was illegal. This prohibition was unique to American slavery, believed to reduce slaves forming aspirations that could lead to escape or rebellion.[Rodriguez, pp. 616–617.] Informal education occurred when white children taught slave companions what they were learning; in other cases, adult slaves learned from free artisan workers, especially if located in cities, where there was more freedom of movement.
In Alabama, slaves were not allowed to leave their master's premises without written consent or passes. This was a common requirement in other states as well, and locally run patrols (known to slaves as ''pater rollers'') often checked the passes of slaves who appeared to be away from their plantations. In Alabama slaves were prohibited from trading goods among themselves. In Virginia, a slave was not permitted to drink in public within one mile of his master or during public gatherings. Slaves were not permitted to carry firearms in any of the slave states.
Slaves were generally prohibited by law from associating in groups, with the exception of worship services (a reason why the [[Black Church]] is such a notable institution in black communities today). Following [[Nat Turner's slave rebellion|Nat Turner's rebellion]] in 1831, which raised white fears throughout the South, some states also prohibited or restricted religious gatherings of slaves, or required that they be officiated by white men. Planters feared that group meetings would facilitate communication among slaves that could lead to rebellion.[{{cite book |first=Thomas D. |last=Morris |year=1999 |title=Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |page=347 |isbn=978-0-8078-6430-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VmPWCKh0hZAC&pg=PA347 }}] Slaves held private, secret "brush meetings" in the woods.
In Ohio, an emancipated slave was prohibited from returning to the state in which he or she had been enslaved. Other Northern states discouraged the settling of free blacks within their boundaries. Fearing the influence of free blacks, Virginia and other Southern states passed laws to require blacks who had been freed to leave the state within a year (or sometimes less time) unless granted a stay by an act of the legislature.
===Religion===
{{main|African American Christianity during Slavery}}
{{Further|Religion of black Americans|Black Catholicism|Marriage of enslaved people (United States)}}
[[File:Eastman Johnson, The Lord is My Shepherd.jpg|thumb|[[Eastman Johnson]]'s 1863 oil painting painting [[The Lord Is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson)|''The Lord is My Shepherd'']] ([[Smithsonian American Art Museum]] 1979.5.13)]]
Africans brought their religions with them from Africa, including Islam,[{{Cite journal |last=Gomez |first=Michael A. |date=1994 |title=Muslims in Early America |journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=671–710 |doi=10.2307/2211064 |jstor=2211064 |issn=0022-4642 }}] Catholicism,[{{cite web|last=Costello|first=Damian|date=2020-09-01|title=Pray with Our Lady of Stono to heal the wounds of slavery|url=https://uscatholic.org/articles/202009/pray-with-our-lady-of-stono-to-heal-the-wounds-of-slavery/|access-date=2020-10-12|website=U.S. Catholic magazine – Faith in Real Life|language=en-US|archive-date=August 4, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220804061634/https://uscatholic.org/articles/202009/pray-with-our-lady-of-stono-to-heal-the-wounds-of-slavery/|url-status=live}}] and traditional religions.
Prior to the American Revolution, masters and revivalists spread Christianity to slave communities, including Catholicism in [[History of slavery in Florida|Spanish Florida]] and [[History of slavery in California#Spanish missionaries (1769–1820)|California]], and in French and Spanish [[History of slavery in Louisiana|Louisiana]], and Protestantism in English colonies, supported by the [[Society for the Propagation of the Gospel]]. In the [[First Great Awakening]] of the mid-18th century, [[Baptists]] and [[Methodists]] from New England preached a message against slavery, encouraged masters to free their slaves, converted both slaves and free blacks, and gave them active roles in new congregations.[{{cite book |first=J. William |last=Frost |chapter=Christianity and Culture in America |title=Christianity: A Social and Cultural History |editor-first=Howard Clark |editor-last=Kee |location=Upper Saddle River, NJ |publisher=Prentice Hall |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-13-578071-8 |page=446 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8YrYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA446 }}] The first independent black congregations were started in the South before the Revolution, in South Carolina and Georgia. Believing that, "slavery was contrary to the ethics of Jesus", Christian congregations and church clergy, especially in the North, played a role in the [[Underground Railroad]], especially [[Wesleyan Methodist Church (United States)|Wesleyan Methodists]] and [[Quaker]]s.[{{cite book |last1=Smedley |first1=R. C. |title=History of the Underground Railroad: In Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania |date=2005 |publisher=Stackpole Books |url=https://archive.org/details/DKC0089/mode/1up|isbn=978-0-8117-3189-8 |page=106 |language=English}}][{{cite book |title=History of Salem Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan |date=1976 |publisher=Salem Area Historical Society |page=56 |language=English}}]
Over the decades and with the growth of slavery throughout the South, some Baptist and Methodist ministers gradually changed their messages to accommodate the institution. After 1830, [[white Southerners]] argued for the compatibility of Christianity and slavery, with a multitude of both [[Old Testament|Old]] and [[New Testament]] citations.[{{cite book |first=J. William |last=Frost |chapter=Christianity and Culture in America |title=Christianity: A Social and Cultural History |editor-first=Howard Clark |editor-last=Kee |location=Upper Saddle River, NJ |publisher=Prentice Hall |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-13-578071-8 |page=447 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8YrYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA447 }}] They promoted Christianity as encouraging better treatment of slaves and argued for a paternalistic approach. In the 1840s and 1850s, the issue of accepting slavery split the nation's largest religious denominations (the [[History of Methodism in the United States|Methodist]], [[Baptists in the United States|Baptist]] and [[American Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]] churches) into separate Northern and Southern organizations (see [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South]], [[Southern Baptist Convention]], and [[Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America]]).[{{cite book|last=Ahlstrom|first=Sydney E.|title=A Religious History of the American People|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1972|location=New Haven, Connecticut|isbn=978-0-300-01762-5|url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=5kFF6a1viGcC}} |pages=648–649}}] Schisms occurred, such as that between the [[Wesleyan Methodist Church (United States)|Wesleyan Methodist Church]] and the [[Methodist Episcopal Church]].[{{cite web |title=Abolition and the Splintering of the Church |url=https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_2/p_5.html |publisher=[[PBS]] |access-date=11 May 2021 |language=English |date=2003}}]
Southern slaves generally attended their masters' white churches, where they often outnumbered the white congregants. They were usually permitted to sit only in the back or in the balcony. They listened to white preachers, who emphasized the obligation of slaves to keep in their place, and acknowledged the slave's identity as both person and property.[Frost (1998), ''Christianity'', 448.]
===Mandatory illiteracy===
{{Main|Anti-literacy laws in the United States}}
{{Further|Education during the slave period in the United States|Education of freed people during the Civil War}}
[[File:Former Slave Reading.jpg|thumb|Former slave reading, 1870. After slavery ended, illiteracy rates among black people dropped from 80% in 1870 to 30% in 1910.[{{cite news |title=Story Behind the Number: Literacy and Lynchings |url=https://www.npr.org/2006/02/04/5189912/story-behind-the-number-literacy-and-lynchings |access-date=August 14, 2025 |publisher=NPR}}]]]
In a feature unique to American slavery, legislatures across the South enacted new laws to curtail the already limited rights of black people. For example, Virginia prohibited blacks, free or slave, from practicing preaching, prohibited them from owning firearms, and forbade anyone to teach slaves or free blacks how to read.[{{Cite book|last=Basu|first=B.D.|title=History of Education in India under the rule of the East India Company|editor=Chatterjee, R.|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofeducati00basurich|access-date=March 9, 2009|place=Calcutta|publisher=Modern Review Office|pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofeducati00basurich/page/3 3]–4}}]
[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.[{{Cite book|title=The Code of Virginia|pages=747–748|year=1849|place=Richmond|publisher=William F. Ritchie}}]
Slave owners saw [[literacy]] as a threat to the institution of slavery and their financial investment in it; as a North Carolina statute passed in 1830-1831 stated, "Teaching slaves to read and write, tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion."[{{Cite web|url=https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/slaveprohibit.html|title=Slaves Are Prohibited to Read and Write by Law | North Carolina Law (1830-31)|website=www.historyisaweapon.com|access-date=August 4, 2023|archive-date=July 5, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230705022352/https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/slaveprohibit.html|url-status=live}}][{{cite book|title=An Inquiry Into the Character and Tendency of the American Colonization, and American Anti-slavery Societies|author-link=William Jay (jurist)|first=William|last=Jay|year=1835|edition=2nd|location=New York|publisher=[[Dudley Leavitt (publisher)|Leavitt, Lord & Co.]]|url=https://archive.org/details/aninquiryintoch05jaygoog/page/n6/mode/2up|page=136}}] Literacy enabled the enslaved to read the writings of [[abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]]s, which discussed the abolition of slavery and described the [[Haitian Revolution|slave revolution in Haiti]] of 1791–1804 and the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|end of slavery in the British Empire]] in 1833. It also allowed slaves to learn that thousands of enslaved individuals had escaped, often with the assistance of the [[Underground Railroad]]. Literacy also was believed to make the enslaved unhappy at best, insolent and sullen at worst. As put by prominent Washington lawyer [[Elias B. Caldwell]] in 1822:
{{Blockquote|The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them, in their present state. You give them a higher relish for those privilegies which they can never attain, and turn what we intend for a blessing [slavery] into a curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, keep them in the lowest state of degradation and ignorance. The nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy.[{{cite book|page=102|url=https://archive.org/details/americanslavetr00torrgoog/page/n118/mode/2up|title=American slave trade; or, An Account of the Manner in which the Slave Dealers take Free People from some of the United States of America, and carry them away, and sell them as Slaves in other of the States; and of the horrible Cruelties practiced in the carrying on of this infamous Traffic: with Reflections on the Project for forming a Colony of American Blacks in Africa, and certain Documents respecting that Project|last=Torrey|first=Jesse|author-link=Jesse Torrey|date=1822|location=London|publisher=[[John Morgan Cobbett |J[ohn] M[organ] Cobbett]]}}]}}
Unlike in the South, slave owners in Utah were required to send their slaves to school.[{{cite web|url=http://www.blackpast.org/primarywest/utah-slave-code-1852|title=The Utah Territory Slave Code (1852) – The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed|website=www.blackpast.org|access-date=August 28, 2017|date=2007-06-27|archive-date=October 3, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161003163550/http://www.blackpast.org/primarywest/utah-slave-code-1852|url-status=live}}] Black slaves did not have to spend as much time in school as Indian slaves.[{{cite book|title=Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials Passed at the ... Annual, and Special Sessions, of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uNFGAQAAMAAJ|publisher=Brigham H. Young, Printers|year=1866|pages=87–88}}]
===Freedom suits and Dred Scott===
{{Main|Dred Scott v. Sandford|Freedom suits}}
[[File:Liberation of slave allegory.png|thumb|Allegorical liberation of a slave entering a free state, [[wood-engraving]] from ''[[Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave]]'', 1849[{{cite web |title=Image 74 of Page view |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2019gen05639/?sp=74 |access-date=2023-08-28 |website=Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA |archive-date=August 28, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230828031506/https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2019gen05639/?sp=74 |url-status=live }}]]]
With the development of slave and free states after the American Revolution, and far-flung commercial and military activities, new situations arose in which slaves might be taken by masters into free states. Most free states not only prohibited slavery, but ruled that slaves brought and kept there illegally could be freed. Such cases were sometimes known as transit cases.[Paul Finkelman, '' Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents'' (Bedford Books, 1997).] [[Dred Scott]] and his wife Harriet Scott each [[Freedom suit|sued for freedom]] in [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]] after the death of their master, based on their having been held in a free territory (the northern part of the [[Louisiana Purchase]] from which slavery was excluded under the terms of the [[Missouri Compromise]]). (Later the two cases were combined under Dred Scott's name.) Scott filed suit for freedom in 1846 and went through two state trials, the first denying and the second granting freedom to the couple (and, by extension, their two daughters, who had also been held illegally in free territories). For 28 years, Missouri state precedent had generally respected laws of neighboring free states and territories, ruling for freedom in such transit cases where slaves had been held illegally in free territory. But in the Dred Scott case, the [[Supreme Court of Missouri|Missouri Supreme Court]] ruled against the slaves.[{{cite book |first=Don E. |last=Fehrenbacher |author-link=Don E. Fehrenbacher |title=The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1978 |isbn=978-0-19-502403-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=btkgAQAAIAAJ }}]
After Scott and his team appealed the case to the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]], Chief Justice [[Roger B. Taney]], in a sweeping decision, denied Scott his freedom. The 1857 [[Dred Scott v. Sandford|decision]], decided 7–2, held that a slave did not become free when taken into a free state; Congress could not bar slavery from a territory; and people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, could never be citizens and thus had no status to bring suit in a U.S. court. A state could not bar slaveowners from bringing slaves into that state. Many Republicans, including [[Abraham Lincoln]], considered the decision unjust and evidence that the [[Slave Power]] had seized control of the Supreme Court. Anti-slavery groups were enraged and slave owners encouraged, escalating the tensions that led to civil war.[Fehrenbacher, ''The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics'' (2001).]
===1850 to the firing on Fort Sumter===
{{Further|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War#Compromise of 1850 to the Election of 1860|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War#Election of 1860 to the Battle of Fort Sumter}}
[[File:Map of the United States, showing by colors the area of freedom and slavery, and the territories whose destiny is yet to be decided, exhibiting also the Missouri compromise line, and the routes of (4578788503).jpg|thumb|Map of the United States in 1856, showing the areas where slavery was still present, and those where it wasn't]]
[[File:1853 slave trader advertisement.jpg|thumb|1853 advertisement by a slave trader seeking to buy slaves to resell in the lucrative [[New Orleans slave market]]]]
[[File:Eastman Johnson - A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''[[A Ride for Liberty{{snd}}The Fugitive Slaves]]'', oil on paperboard, {{circa|1862}} by Eastman Johnson ([[Brooklyn Museum]] 40.59a-b)]]
In 1850, Congress passed the [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850|Fugitive Slave Act]], as part of the [[Compromise of 1850]], which required law enforcement and citizens of free states to cooperate in the capture and return of slaves. This met with considerable overt and covert resistance in free states and cities such as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Refugees from slavery continued to flee the South across the [[Ohio River]] and other parts of the [[Mason–Dixon line]] dividing North from South, to the North and [[Province of Canada|Canada]] via the [[Underground Railroad]]. Some white Northerners helped hide former slaves from their former owners or helped them reach freedom in Canada.[Larry Gara, '' The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad'' (University Press of Kentucky, 2013).]
As part of the [[Compromise of 1850]], Congress abolished the slave trade (though not the ownership of slaves) in the [[District of Columbia]]; fearing this would happen, [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]], regional slave trading center and port, successfully sought [[District of Columbia retrocession|its removal from the District of Columbia and devolution to Virginia]]. After 1854, [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republicans]] argued that the "[[Slave Power]]", especially the pro-slavery [[History of the United States Democratic Party|Democratic Party in the South]], controlled two of the three branches of the Federal government.[Leonard L. Richards, ''The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860'' (LSU Press, 2000).]
The abolitionists, realizing that the total elimination of slavery was unrealistic as an immediate goal, worked to prevent the expansion of slavery into the western territories that eventually would become new states. The [[Missouri Compromise]], the [[Compromise of 1850]], and the [[Bleeding Kansas]] period dealt with whether new states would be slave or free, or how that was to be decided. Both sides were anxious about effects of these decisions on the balance of power in the [[U.S. Senate|Senate]].
After the passage of the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] in 1854, border fighting broke out in the [[Kansas Territory]], where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a [[Slave state|slave]] or [[Free state (USA)|free state]] was [[Popular Sovereignty|left to the inhabitants]]. Migrants from both free and slave states moved into the territory to prepare for the vote on slavery. Abolitionist [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]], the most famous of the anti-slavery immigrants, was active in the fighting in "Bleeding Kansas", but so too were many white Southerners (many from adjacent Missouri) who opposed abolition.
Abraham Lincoln's and the Republicans' political platform in 1860 was to stop slavery's expansion. Historian [[James M. McPherson]] says that in his famous "[[Lincoln's House Divided Speech|House Divided]]" speech in 1858, Lincoln said [[Republicanism in the United States|American republicanism]] can be purified by restricting the further expansion of slavery as the first step to putting it on the road to 'ultimate extinction.' Southerners took Lincoln at his word. When he won the presidency, they left the Union to escape the 'ultimate extinction' of slavery."[{{cite book|first=James M.|last=McPherson|title=Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tYdpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA134|year=1992|page=134|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-976270-5}}]
The divisions became fully exposed with the [[1860 United States presidential election|1860 presidential election]]. The electorate split four ways. The [[Southern Democrats]] endorsed slavery, while the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] denounced it. The [[Northern Democratic Party|Northern Democrats]] said democracy required the people to decide on slavery locally, state by state and territory by territory. The [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]] said the survival of the Union was at stake and everything else should be compromised.[David M. Potter, ''The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848–1861'' (Harper & Row, 1976).]
Lincoln, the Republican, won with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of [[United States Electoral College|electoral votes]]. Lincoln, however, did not appear on the ballots of ten southern slave states. 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 disastrous for the slave owners and for the economy that drew its greatest profits from the labor of people who were not paid. The slave owners feared that ending the balance could lead to the domination of the [[Federal government of the United States|federal government]] by the northern free states. This led seven southern states to [[Ordinance of Secession|secede from the Union]]. When the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate Army]] [[Battle of Fort Sumter|attacked a U.S. Army installation at Fort Sumter]], the [[American Civil War]] began and four additional slave states seceded. Northern leaders had viewed the slavery interests as a threat politically, but with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new Southern nation, the [[Confederate States of America]], with control over the [[Mississippi River]] and parts of the [[Western United States|West]], as politically unacceptable. Most of all, they could not accept this repudiation of [[American nationalism]].[Potter, pp. 448–554.]
==Civil War and emancipation==
{{Main|Slavery during the American Civil War}}
[[File:Unite-or-Die GW-Falen.gif|thumb|Modification by G. W. Falen of Ben Franklin's ''[[Join, or Die]]'' graphic, advocating a confederation of slave states, with a quote from [[Jefferson Davis]]: "SLAVE STATES, once more let me repeat that the only way of preserving our slave property, or what we prize more than life, our LIBERTY, is by a UNION WITH EACH OTHER." ([[New-York Historical Society]])]]
[[File:Confederate chieftains - Engd by J.C. Buttre, New York.jpg|thumb|Pro-slavery activists [[Judah P. Benjamin]], [[Henry A. Wise]], [[R. Barnwell Rhett Jr.]], [[Alexander H. Stephens]], [[James M. Mason]], [[Jefferson Davis]], [[John B. Floyd]], [[John Slidell]], [[William L. Yancey]], [[Robert Toombs House State Historic Site|Robert Toombs]], and [[Isham G. Harris]] ("Confederate chieftains" engraving by [[J.C. Buttre]], 1864)]]
===American Civil War===
{{Main|Origins of the American Civil War|American Civil War|Contraband (American Civil War)|Military history of African Americans in the American Civil War}}
{{See also|Confiscation Acts|Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves}}
The [[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 by Union General [[Benjamin Butler (politician)|Benjamin F. Butler]], a lawyer by profession, slaves who fled to Union lines were considered [[Contraband (American Civil War)|"contraband of war"]]. General Butler ruled that they were not subject to return to Confederate owners as they had been before the war. "Lincoln and his Cabinet discussed the issue on May 30 and decided to support Butler's stance".[Stahr, Walter, ''Samuel Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021, p. 342.] 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 [[United States Colored Troops|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.
[[File:SMITHSONIAN - Ambrotype of African American Woman with Flag - believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia.jpg|thumb|[[Ambrotype]] of African-American woman with a flag, "believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia" (National Museum of American History 2005.0002)]]
At the beginning of the war, some Union commanders thought they were supposed to return escaped slaves to their masters. By 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 Congressman [[George Washington Julian|George W. Julian]] of Indiana put it in an 1862 speech in Congress, the slaves "cannot be neutral. As laborers, if not as soldiers, they will be allies of the rebels, or of the Union."[[[James M. McPherson|McPherson]], ''[[Battle Cry of Freedom (book)|Battle Cry of Freedom]]'', p. 495.] Julian and his fellow [[Radical Republicans]] put pressure on Lincoln to rapidly emancipate the slaves, whereas moderate Republicans favored gradual, compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization.[McPherson, ''Battle Cry'', pp. 355, 494–496, quote from [[George Washington Julian|George Julian]] on 495.] The [[Border states (Civil War)|border states]], [[Copperheads (politics)|Peace Democrats (Copperheads)]], and [[War Democrats]] opposed emancipation, although the border states and [[War Democrat]]s eventually accepted it as part of the [[total war]] needed to save the Union.
===Emancipation Proclamation===
{{Main|Emancipation Proclamation}}
The Emancipation Proclamation was an [[executive order]] issued by President [[Abraham Lincoln]] on January 1, 1863. In a single stroke it changed the legal status of three million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free". It had the practical effect that as soon as a slave escaped the control of his or her owner, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave's proclaimed freedom became actual. Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army. By June 1865, the [[Union Army]] controlled all of the Confederacy and had liberated all of the designated slaves.[{{cite book |first=Leon F. |last=Litwack |author-link=Leon Litwack |title=Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery |location=New York |publisher=Knopf |year=1979 |isbn=978-0-394-50099-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bi2aAAAAIAAJ }}]
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."[Lincoln's letter to O. H. Browning, September 22, 1861.] At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War [[Simon Cameron]] and Generals [[John C. Frémont]] (in Missouri) and [[David Hunter]] (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats.
[[File:Contrabands accompanying the line of Sherman's march through Georgia (Frank Leslie's Illustrated News).jpg|thumb|left|Contrabands accompanying the line of [[Sherman's march through Georgia]] (unidentified [[war artist]] "F", ''[[Frank Leslie's Illustrated News]]'', March 18, 1865)]]
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln told his cabinet of his plan to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Secretary of State [[William H. Seward]] advised Lincoln to wait for a victory before issuing the proclamation, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".[[[Stephen B. Oates]], ''Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths'', p. 106.] On September 17, 1862, the [[Battle of Antietam]] provided this opportunity, and on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary [[Emancipation Proclamation]], which provided that enslaved people in the states in rebellion against the United States on January 1, 1863, "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free".[{{Cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/transcript_preliminary_emancipation.html|title=The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, 1862|website=www.archives.gov|access-date=May 3, 2022|archive-date=December 5, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221205150008/https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/transcript_preliminary_emancipation.html|url-status=live}}] On September 24 and 25, the [[War Governors' Conference]] added support for the proclamation.[''Images of America: Altoona'', by Sr. Anne Francis Pulling, 2001, p. 10.] Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In a letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that
{{Blockquote|If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong{{spaces}}... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling{{spaces}}... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.[{{Cite book|url=http://name.umdl.umich.edu/lincoln7|title=Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7 [Nov. 5, 1863-Sept. 12, 1864].|first=Abraham|last=Lincoln|date=June 15, 1953}}]}}
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared freedom for slaves in the Confederate states and authorized the enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the [[border states (Civil War)|border states]], which were the slaveholding states that remained in the Union. As a practical matter, the proclamation freed only those slaves who escaped to Union lines. But the proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal and was implemented as the Union took territory from the Confederacy. According to the [[1860 United States census|Census of 1860]], this policy would free nearly four million slaves, or over 12% of the total [[Demographics of the United States|U.S. population]].
Because the Emancipation Proclamation was issued under the president's war powers, it might not have continued in force after the war ended. Therefore, Lincoln played a leading role in getting the constitutionally required two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress to vote for the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]],[[[James M. McPherson|McPherson, James M.]], "Who Freed the Slaves?" in McPherson, James M. (1996). ''Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War''. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 192-207.] which, after ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states,[[[Article Five of the United States Constitution]] prescribes the procedure for amending the Constitution.] made emancipation universal and permanent, "except as a punishment for crime".
[[File:Five generations on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina LCCN98504449.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.95|Four [[generation]]s of a formerly enslaved family, photographed by [[Timothy H. O'Sullivan]] on J. J. Smith's confiscated plantation at [[Beaufort, South Carolina]] (now [[United States Naval Hospital Beaufort|U.S. Naval Hospital Beaufort]]) during the [[Port Royal Experiment]], 1862]]
Enslaved African Americans had not waited for Lincoln before escaping and seeking freedom behind Union lines. From the early years of the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans escaped to Union lines, especially in Union-controlled areas such as [[Norfolk, Virginia|Norfolk]] and the [[Hampton Roads]] region in 1862 Virginia, Tennessee from 1862 on, and the line of [[Sherman's march to the sea]]. 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 (American Civil War)|contraband]] camps, for instance, establishing schools in Norfolk and on nearby plantations.
In addition, nearly 200,000 African American men served with distinction in the Union forces as soldiers and sailors; most were escaped slaves. The Confederacy was outraged by [[United States Colored Troops|armed black soldiers]] and refused to treat those they captured as [[prisoners of war]]. They murdered many, as at the [[Fort Pillow massacre]], and re-enslaved others.[{{cite book|last=Doyle |first=Robert C. C.|title=The Enemy in Our Hands: America's Treatment of Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror|url=https://archive.org/details/enemyinourhandsa0000doyl |url-access=registration |year= 2010|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|page=[https://archive.org/details/enemyinourhandsa0000doyl/page/76 76]|isbn=978-0-8131-3961-6}}]
On February 24, 1863, the [[Arizona Organic Act]] abolished slavery in the newly formed [[Arizona Territory]]. [[Tennessee]] and all of the border states (except Kentucky and Delaware) 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 came to the remaining Southern slaves after the surrender of all the Confederate troops in spring 1865.
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. Finally, in early 1865, General [[Robert E. Lee]] said that black soldiers were essential, and legislation was passed. The first black units were in training when the war ended in April.[Bruce C. Levine, ''Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War'' (2007).]
===End of slavery===
{{Main|End of slavery in the United States of America}}
{{Further|Slave states and free states#End of slavery|Emancipation Day#United States|Compensated emancipation in the United States}}
{{See also|Family reunification ads after emancipation}}
[[File:Emancipation proclamation.jpg|thumb|alt=A dark-haired, bearded, middle-aged man holding documents is seated among seven other men|''[[First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln]]'' (1864) oil painting by [[Francis Bicknell Carpenter]] (U.S. Senate Collection 33.00005.000)]]
[[Booker T. Washington]] remembered [[Emancipation Day]] in early 1863, when he was a boy of nine in Virginia:[''Up from Slavery'' (1901), pp. 19–21.]
{{Blockquote|As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom.{{spaces}}... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper{{snd}}the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.}}
[[File:Abolition of slavery in the United States SVG map.svg|thumb|Abolition of slavery in the various states of the United States over time:{{Legend|#84c6c9|Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution}}
{{Legend|#7be3de|The [[Northwest Ordinance]], 1787}}
{{Legend|#64e5c5|[[Gradual emancipation (United States)|Gradual emancipation]] in New York (starting 1799) and New Jersey (starting 1804)}}
{{Legend|#7ab377|The [[Missouri Compromise]], 1821}}
{{Legend|#5f9b4a|Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican or joint US/British authority}}
{{Legend|#97cf2d|Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1861}}
{{Legend|#c7dd47|Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862}}
{{Legend|#ffe86d|[[Emancipation Proclamation]] as originally issued, 1 Jan 1863}}
{{Legend|#f1c84e|Subsequent operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863}}
{{Legend|#d39c59|Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War}}
{{Legend|#f7b360|Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864}}
{{Legend|#f6a89a|Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865}}
{{Legend|#d3595f|[[Thirteenth Amendment]] to the U.S. constitution, 18 Dec 1865}}
{{Legend|#bca4b1|Territory incorporated into the U.S. after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment}}]]
The war ended on June 22, 1865, and following that surrender, the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] was enforced throughout remaining regions of the South that had not yet freed the slaves. Slavery officially continued for a couple of months in other locations.[{{cite web|title= History of Juneteenth|url= http://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm|work= Juneteenth World Wide Celebration|access-date= March 9, 2014|archive-date= May 27, 2007|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070527081441/http://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm}}] Federal troops arrived in [[Galveston, Texas]], on June 19, 1865, to enforce the emancipation. The commemoration of that event, [[Juneteenth National Independence Day]], was declared a [[Public holidays in the United States|national holiday]] in 2021.[{{Cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjBhwFcQ4U&t=3811s|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230204195847/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjBhwFcQ4U&t=3811s|archive-date=February 4, 2023|url-status=live|title=President Biden Signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act Into Law|publisher=The White House|date=June 17, 2021|via=YouTube|access-date=December 3, 2024}}]
The [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]], abolishing slavery except as punishment for a crime, had been passed by the Senate in April 1864, and by the House of Representatives in January 1865.[{{Cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs|title=America's Founding Documents|date=October 30, 2015|website=National Archives}}]
[[File:Library Company of Philadelphia 1865-3 variant 101540.F Thomas Nast Emancipation crop and straighten and brighten from tiff.jpg|thumb|Color lithograph of [[Thomas Nast]]'s 1863 woodblock etching ''Emancipation: The Past and the Future'' ([[Library Company of Philadelphia]] 1865-3 variant 101540.F) ]]
The amendment did not take effect until it was ratified by three-fourths of the states, which occurred on December 6, 1865, when Georgia ratified it. On that date, the last 40,000–45,000 enslaved Americans in the remaining two slave states of [[Kentucky]] and [[Delaware]], as well as the 200 or so perpetual apprentices in New Jersey left from the very gradual emancipation process begun in 1804, were freed.[E. Merton Coulter. ''The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky'' (1926), pp. 268–270; James J. Gigantino, ''The Ragged Road to Abolition; Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775–1865''.] The [[List of last survivors of American slavery|last Americans]] known to have been born into legal slavery died in the 1970s.
==Reconstruction to the present==
{{Further|Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction Amendments}}
{{See also|History of unfree labor in the United States|History of civil rights in the United States}}
[[File:Radical Reconstruction.jpg|thumb|Against (often physically) brutal opposition from the whites of the late rebel states, [[Radical Republicans]] like [[Thaddeus Stevens]] and [[Charles Sumner]], and black representatives elected by newly enfranchised former slaves, including [[Hiram Revels]], who took [[Jefferson Davis]]'s old Senate seat, worked to realize the lofty goals of the abolitionists through Congressional legislation]]
In his [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning book ''[[Slavery By Another Name]]'', journalist [[Douglas A. Blackmon]] reports that many black persons were virtually enslaved under [[convict leasing]] programs, which started after the Civil War. Most Southern states had no prisons; they leased convicts to businesses and farms for their labor, and the lessee paid for food and board. Incentives for abuse were present.
The continued involuntary servitude took various forms, but the primary forms included [[Convict lease|convict leasing]], [[peon]]age and [[sharecropping]], with the latter eventually encompassing [[poor white]]s as well. By the 1930s, whites constituted most of the South's sharecroppers. [[Mechanized agriculture]] reduced the need for farm labor, and many black people left the South in the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]].
Jurisdictions and states created fines and sentences for a wide variety of minor crimes and used these as an excuse to arrest and sentence black people. Under convict-leasing programs, African-American men, often guilty of petty crimes or even no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of the leaseholder.
Sharecropping, as it was practiced during this period, often involved severe restrictions on the free movement of sharecroppers, who could be whipped for leaving the plantation. Both sharecropping and convict leasing were legal and tolerated by both the North and South. Peonage was an illicit form of forced labor. Authorities ignored its existence while thousands of African Americans and poor white Americans were subjugated and held in bondage until the mid-1960s to the late 1970s.
Except in cases of peonage, the federal government took almost no action after the [[Reconstruction era]] to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment until December 1941. Five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, at President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]'s request, Attorney General [[Francis Biddle]] issued [[s:Circular No. 3591|Circular No. 3591]] to all [[United States Attorney|federal prosecutors]], instructing them to actively investigate and try any case of involuntary servitude or slavery.
Several months later, convict leasing was officially abolished. But aspects have persisted in other forms. Historians argue that other systems of penal labor were all created in 1865, and convict leasing was simply the most oppressive form. Over time, a large [[civil rights movement]] arose to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans.[Thomas C. Holt, ed. ''Major Problems in African-American History: From Freedom to "Freedom Now", 1865–1990s'' (2000),]
===Convict leasing===
{{Main|Convict lease|Penal labor in the United States}}
[[File:Nathan B. Forrest, Confederate General from Tennessee.jpg|thumb|[[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] transitioned from being a slave trader before the war[{{Cite journal |last=Huebner |first=Timothy S. |date=March 2023 |title=Taking Profits, Making Myths: The Slave Trading Career of Nathan Bedford Forrest |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/879775 |journal=Civil War History |language=en |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=42–75 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2023.0009 }}] to using convict labor on his farm on [[President's Island]] near Memphis after the war[{{Cite news |date=1877-05-16 |title=Convict Labor in Georgia and Tennessee |page=2 |work=The Daily Memphis Avalanche |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-memphis-avalanche-convict-labo/130036626/ |access-date=2023-08-24}}] (glass copy negative, Library of Congress LC-BH821-3061)]]
[[File:Picking cotton, Angola State Farm (circa 1900).jpg|thumb|Prisoners pick cotton {{circa|1900}} at [[Angola Prison Farm]] in Louisiana, which was built on land that had formerly been plantations owned by hugely successful interstate slave trader [[Isaac Franklin]][{{Cite news |last=Brockell |first=Gillian |date=2022-11-10 |title=La. voters keep 'slavery' at Angola prison, once and still a plantation |language=en-US |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/11/10/angola-prison-louisiana-slave-labor/ |access-date=2023-08-24 |issn=0190-8286}}]]]
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 lease|convict leasing]] began during Reconstruction and was fully implemented in the 1880s, officially ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928. It persisted in various forms until President Roosevelt abolished it in 1942, several months after the attack on [[Pearl Harbor]] involved the U.S. in [[World War II]].
This system allowed private contractors to purchase the services of convicts from the state or local governments for a specific period. Due to "vigorous and selective enforcement of laws and discriminatory sentencing", African Americans made up the vast majority of the convicts leased.[Litwack (1998), p. 271.] Blackmon writes:
{{Blockquote|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.[Blackmon (2008), p. 4.]}}
The constitutional basis for convict leasing is that the Thirteenth Amendment, while abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude generally, expressly [[Penal labor in the United States|permits it as punishment for crime]].[{{Cite web |date=November 4, 2015 |title=The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription |url=https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript |access-date=March 8, 2025 |website=National Archives |language=en}}]
===Educational issues===
Historian Mark Summers Wahlgren notes that the estimated literacy rate among formerly enslaved southern blacks at the time of emancipation was 5% to 10%, but had reached 40% to 50% (and higher in cities) by the turn of the century, a "great advance".[The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction (Littlefield History of the Civil War Era) by Mark Wahlgren Summers, 978-1-4696-1758-9, page=397]
As [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] noted, 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".[{{cite book |first=James D. |last=Anderson |title=The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 |location=Chapel Hill, NC |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=1988 |pages=244–245 |isbn=978-0-8078-1793-3 |title-link=The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 }}][[File:Freedmen richmond sewing women.jpg|thumb|left|An industrial school set up for ex-slaves in Richmond during Reconstruction (''[[Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper]]'', September 22, 1866)]]
Northern philanthropists continued to support black education in the 20th century. A major donor to Hampton Institute and Tuskegee was [[George Eastman]], who also helped fund health programs at colleges and in communities.[{{cite book|first=Carin T.|last=Ford|year=2004|title=George Eastman: The Kodak Camera Man|publisher=Enslow Publishers, INC}}]
===Apologies===
{{Main|Public apologies for slavery in the United States}}
In the 21st century, various legislative bodies have issued [[public apologies for slavery in the United States]].
===Political legacy===
A 2016 study published in ''[[The Journal of Politics]]'' found that "[w]hites who currently live in Southern counties that had high shares of slaves in 1860 are more likely to identify as a Republican, oppose affirmative action, and express racial resentment and colder feelings toward blacks." The study contends that "contemporary differences in political attitudes across counties in the American South in part trace their origins to slavery's prevalence more than 150 years ago. "[{{Cite journal|last1=Acharya|first1=Avidit|last2=Blackwell|first2=Matthew|last3=Sen|first3=Maya|date=May 19, 2016|title=The Political Legacy of American Slavery|journal=The Journal of Politics|volume=78|issue=3|pages=621–641 |doi=10.1086/686631 }}]
The authors argue that their findings are consistent with the theory that "following the Civil War, Southern whites faced political and economic incentives to reinforce existing racist norms and institutions to maintain control over the newly freed African American population. This amplified local differences in racially conservative political attitudes, which in turn have been passed down locally across generations."[{{cite journal |last1=Nikolova |first1=Elena |title=Destined for Democracy? Labour Markets and Political Change in Colonial British America |journal=British Journal of Political Science |date=January 2017 |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=19–45 |doi=10.1017/S0007123415000101 |url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1573632/ }}]
An 2022 article in the ''[[Journal of Economic History]]'' reports that former slave owners remained politically dominant long after slavery was abolished. Using data from Texas, the authors write, "In 1900, still around 50 percent of all state legislators came from a slave-owning background."[{{cite journal |last1=Bellani |first1=Luna |last2=Hager |first2=Anselm |last3=Maurer |first3=Stephan E. |title=The Long Shadow of Slavery: The Persistence of Slave Owners in Southern Lawmaking |journal=The Journal of Economic History |date=March 2022 |volume=82 |issue=1 |pages=250–283 |doi=10.1017/S0022050721000590 |doi-access=free }}]
==Economics==
{{main|Economics of slavery in the United States}}
[[File:Prices of slaves noted in pencil on slave sale broadside with listing of names, ages and special skills.jpg|thumb|Prices noted in pencil on slave sale broadside with listing of names, ages and special skills; a note was made on an outer page "average $623.45"[{{Cite web |title=P.J. Porcher and Baya slave sale broadside – Lowcountry Digital Library Catalog Search |url=https://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:69851 |access-date=2023-08-27 |website=lcdl.library.cofc.edu}}](Hutson Lee papers, [[South Carolina Historical Society]] via [[Lowcountry Digital Library]])]]
[[Robert Fogel]] and [[Stanley Engerman]], in their 1974 book ''[[Time on the Cross]]'', argued that the [[rate of return]] of slavery at the market price was close to ten percent, a number close to investment in other assets. The transition from indentured servants to slaves is cited to show that slaves offered greater profits to their owners. A qualified consensus among economic historians and economists is that "Slave agriculture was efficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of scale, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture considerably more efficient than nonslave southern farming",[{{cite journal |last1=Whaples |first1=Robert |author-link=Robert Whaples |title=Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions |journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]] |date=March 1995 |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=139–154 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700040602 }}] and it is the near-universal consensus among economic historians and economists that slavery was not "a system irrationally kept in existence by plantation owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests".[{{cite journal |last1=Galenson |first1=David W. |title=The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis |journal=The Journal of Economic History |date=March 1984 |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=1–26 |doi=10.1017/S002205070003134X }}] At the same time, slaves were mostly supplied from within the United States and thus language was not a barrier, and the cost of transporting slaves from one state to another was relatively low.
However, as in [[Slavery in Brazil|Brazil]] and [[Slavery in medieval Europe|Europe]], slavery at its end in the United States tended to be concentrated in the poorest regions of the United States,[{{cite book|last1=Sowell|first1=Thomas|author-link1=Thomas Sowell|title=Black Rednecks and White Liberals|chapter=The Real History of Slavery|publisher=[[Encounter Books]]|place=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/blackredneckswhi00thom/page/157 157–158]|isbn=978-1-59403-086-4|year=2005|title-link=Black Rednecks and White Liberals}}] with a qualified consensus among economists and economic historians concluding that the "modern period of the South's economic convergence to the level of the North only began in earnest when the institutional foundations of the southern regional labor market were undermined, largely by [[New Deal|federal farm and labor legislation dating from the 1930s]]."[{{cite journal|last=Tadman|first=M.|title=The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates on Slave Societies and Natural Increase in the Americas |journal=[[American Historical Review]] |date=December 2000|doi=10.2307/2652029|volume=105|issue=5|pages=1534–1575|jstor=2652029}}] Unlike the [[trans-Saharan slave trade]] with [[Slavery in Africa|Africa]], the slave population transported by the [[Atlantic slave trade]] to the United States was sex-balanced.[{{cite book|last1=Sowell|first1=Thomas|author-link1=Thomas Sowell|title=Black Rednecks and White Liberals|chapter=The Real History of Slavery|publisher=[[Encounter Books]]|place=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/blackredneckswhi00thom/page/156 156]|isbn=978-1-59403-086-4|year=2005|title-link=Black Rednecks and White Liberals}}] The slave population multiplied nearly fourfold between 1810 and 1860, despite the passage of the [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]] signed into law by [[President of the United States|President]] [[Thomas Jefferson]] in 1807 banning the international slave trade.[{{cite web|title=Historical Demographic, Economic and Social Data: the United States, 1790–1970|url=http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/.|work=Historical Statistics of the United States|publisher=ICPSR Study|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030401083841/http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/|archive-date=April 1, 2003|df=mdy-all}}] Thus, it is also the universal consensus among modern economic historians and economists that slavery in the United States was not "economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War".[{{cite book |last= Baptist|first=Edward E.|date=2016 |title=The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery And The Making Of American Capitalism|url=https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/edward-e-baptist/the-half-has-never-been-told/9780465097685/|publisher=[[Basic Books]] |isbn=978-0-465-09768-5|author-link=Edward E. Baptist}}][{{cite book|title=Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development|editor1-first=Sven|editor1-last=Beckert|editor2-first=Seth|editor2-last=Rockman|editor1-link=Sven Beckert|url=https://site.pennpress.org/aaihs-2021/9780812224177/slaverys-capitalism/|publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]]|year=2016|isbn=978-0-8122-2417-7}}][{{cite book |last=Johnson |first=Walter |title=River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-674-04555-2 |pages=86–87 (credit backed by slave labor) |author-link=Walter Johnson (historian)}}][{{cite book|first=Calvin|last=Schermerhorn|title=The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860|url=https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300192001/business-slavery-and-rise-american-capitalism-1815-1860| publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|year=2015|isbn=978-0-300-19200-1}}][{{cite web |last= Desmond|first=Matthew|date=August 14, 2019|title=In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html|website=[[The New York Times Magazine]]|location= |publisher= |access-date=April 10, 2025}}]
Johnson wrote in ''River of Dark Dreams'' (2013): "The cords of credit and debt—of advance and obligation—that cinched the Atlantic economy together were anchored with the mutually defining values of land and slaves: without land and slaves, there was no credit, and without slaves, land itself was valueless. Promises made in the Mississippi Valley were backed by the value of slaves and fulfilled in their labor."[{{Cite journal |last=Wright |first=Gavin |date=2022 |title=Slavery and the Rise of the Nineteenth-Century American Economy |journal=Journal of Economic Perspectives |language=en |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=123–148 |doi=10.1257/jep.36.2.123 |doi-access=free }}][{{cite journal |last1=Wright |first1=Gavin |title=Slavery and Anglo-American capitalism revisited |journal=The Economic History Review |date=May 2020 |volume=73 |issue=2 |pages=353–383 |doi=10.1111/ehr.12962 }}][{{Cite journal|last=Clegg|first=John J.|date=2015|title=Capitalism and Slavery|journal=Critical Historical Studies|volume=2|issue=2|pages=281–304|doi=10.1086/683036|jstor=10.1086/683036 }}][{{cite journal |last1=Murray |first1=John E. |last2=Olmstead |first2=Alan L. |last3=Logan |first3=Trevon D. |last4=Pritchett |first4=Jonathan B. |last5=Rousseau |first5=Peter L. |title=The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. By Edward E. Baptist. New York: Basic Books, 2014. Pp. xxvii, 498. $35.00, cloth. |journal=The Journal of Economic History |date=September 2015 |volume=75 |issue=3 |pages=919–931 |doi=10.1017/S0022050715000996 }}][{{cite journal |last1=Engerman |first1=Stanley L. |title=Review of The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 by Calvin Schermerhorn and The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist |journal=Journal of Economic Literature |date=June 2017 |volume=55 |issue=2 |pages=637–643 |doi=10.1257/jel.20151334 }}][{{cite web|url=https://www.law.columbia.edu/law-economic-studies/workshops/fall-2016-workshops|title=Cotton, Slavery, and the New History of Capitalism|last1=Alan L. Olmstead|last2=Paul W. Rhode|date=12 September 2016|website=Center for Law and Economic Studies|publisher=Columbia University|access-date=23 June 2019|quote=mishandle historical evidence and mischaracterize important events in ways that affect their major interpretations on the nature of slavery}}{{cite journal|last1=Alan L. Olmstead|last2=Paul W. Rhode|date=January 2018|title=Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism|journal=[[Explorations in Economic History]]|volume=67|pages=1–17|doi=10.1016/j.eeh.2017.12.002}}][{{Cite news|last=Parry|first=Marc|url=http://www.chronicle.com/article/ShacklesDollars/238598?key=yop9k7-B1QiWD6aZpWTJr3Ge-x6XSRuIwbSFcNhqE7B9uMfC2WvYE1p7I2kjzRzpSkFvXzJQajd5azZCOWUzcUZld1AzVnNoVlpWOXBiOWJEMGgxLUJUX2p4Yw|title=Shackles and Dollars|date=2016-12-08|work=The Chronicle of Higher Education|access-date=2017-06-12|issn=0009-5982}}] A 2023 study estimates that prior to the onset of the US Civil War, the enslaved population produced 12.6% of US national product.[{{Cite journal |last=Rhode |first=Paul W. |date=2023 |title=What Fraction of Antebellum US National Product did the Enslaved Produce? |journal=Explorations in Economic History |volume=91 |article-number=101552 |doi=10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101552 |doi-access=free }}]
[[File:Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (cropped).JPG|thumb|left|[[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States|Plantations]] featuring the forced labor of large numbers of black slaves, such as [[Monticello]] owned by Thomas Jefferson, produced wealth for the white elite, the [[planter class]].[{{cite book |last=Guelzo|first=Allen C.|author-link=Allen C. Guelzo|title=Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-19-984328-2|pages=33–36}}]]]
Slavery had a long-lasting impact on wealth and [[racial inequality in the United States]]. Black families whose ancestors were freed before the start of the Civil War have had better socio-economic outcomes than families who were freed in the Civil War.[{{cite journal |last1=Althoff |first1=Lukas |last2=Reichardt |first2=Hugo |title=Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress after Slavery |journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics |date=9 October 2024 |volume=139 |issue=4 |pages=2279–2330 |doi=10.1093/qje/qjae023 }}] The end of slavery has seen marginal change in the racial wealth gap. In 1863, two years before emancipation, black people owned 0.5% of the national wealth, while in 2019 it was just over 1.5%.[{{cite news |title=Why the racial wealth gap persists, more than 150 years after emancipation |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racial-wealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation/ |access-date=March 8, 2025 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}]
Those who economically gained the most from slavery were the [[planter class]], owners of large-scale agricultural estates, plantations, where large numbers of enslaved Africans were held captive and forced to produce crops to create wealth for a white elite.[{{cite news |title=Enslavers dominated Southern politics long after the Civil War ended |url=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/10/23/enslavers-dominated-southern-politics-long-after-the-civil-war-ended/ |access-date=March 8, 2025 |publisher=London School of Economics}}]
===Efficiency of slaves===
[[File:Weighing Cotton After the Day's Picking circa 1908.jpg|thumb|"Weighing cotton after the day's picking" {{circa|1908}} in Monticello, Florida, with a black man in a sack used as the counterweight; when a New York reporter visited a cotton gin in South Carolina in 1851, the managers reported that it cost an average of $75 a year to staff the gin with black slaves, whereas it would have cost $116 to use free whites[{{cite book |last1=Watkins |first1=James Lawrence |title=King Cotton: A Historical and Statistical Review, 1790 to 1908 |date=1908 |publisher=J. L. Watkins & Sons |pages=82–83 |hdl=2027/njp.32101058916295?urlappend=%3Bseq=95 |hdl-access=free }}]]]
Scholars disagree on how to quantify the efficiency of slavery. In ''Time on the Cross'' Fogel and Engerman equate efficiency to [[total factor productivity]] (TFP), the output per average unit of input on a farm. Using this measurement, Southern farms that enslaved black people using the [[gang system]] were 35% more efficient than Northern farms, which used free labor.
Under the gang system, groups of slaves perform synchronized tasks under the constant vigilance of an overseer. Each group was like a part of a machine. If perceived to be working below his capacity, a slave could be punished. Fogel argues that this kind of negative enforcement was not frequent and that slaves and free laborers had a similar quality of life; however, there is controversy on this last point.[{{cite book|last=Fogel & Engerman|title=Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery|year=1974|publisher=W.W. Norton and Company|location=New York}}{{isbn?}}{{page needed|date=April 2026}}] A critique of Fogel and Engerman's view was published by Paul A. David in 1976.[David, Paul A., Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, and Peter Temin. "Reckoning with slavery." (1985).{{isbn?}}{{page needed|date=April 2026}}]
In 1995, a random survey of 178 members of the [[Economic History Association]] sought to study the views of economists and economic historians on the debate. The study found that 72% of economists and 65% of economic historians would generally agree that "Slave agriculture was efficient compared with free agriculture.
Economies of scale, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture considerably more efficient than nonslave southern farming." On the other hand, 58% of economic historians and 42% of economists disagreed with Fogel and Engerman's "proposition that the material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers in the decades before the Civil War".[{{cite journal |last1=Hilt |first1=Eric |title=Economic History, Historical Analysis, and the 'New History of Capitalism' |journal=The Journal of Economic History |date=June 2017 |volume=77 |issue=2 |pages=511–536 |doi=10.1017/S002205071700016X |doi-access=free }}] Similar arguments have been made by other historians.[{{cite journal |last1=Olmstead |first1=Alan L. |last2=Rhode |first2=Paul W. |title=Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism |journal=Explorations in Economic History |date=January 2018 |volume=67 |pages=1–17 |doi=10.1016/j.eeh.2017.12.002 }}]
===Prices of slaves===
The U.S. has a capitalist economy, so the price of slaves was determined by the law of [[supply and demand]]. For example, following bans on the import of slaves after the UK's [[Slave Trade Act 1807]] and the American 1807 [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]], the prices for slaves increased. The markets for the products produced by slaves also affected the price of slaves (e.g. the price of slaves fell when the price of cotton fell in 1840). Anticipation of slavery's abolition also influenced prices. During the Civil War the price for slave men in New Orleans dropped from $1,381 in 1861 to $1,116 by 1862 (the [[Capture of New Orleans|city was captured]] by U.S. forces in the Spring of 1862).[{{cite journal|last=Kotlikoff|first=L. J.|title=The Structure of Slave prices in New Orleans|journal=Economic Inquiry|date=October 1979|pages=496–518|doi=10.1111/j.1465-7295.1979.tb00544.x|volume=17|issue=4|url=http://www.econ.ucla.edu/workingpapers/wp119.pdf}}]
[[File:Portraits from Survivors from the Cargo of the Negro Slave Yacht Wanderer Charles J. Montgomery American Anthropologist, Vol. 10, No. 4 Oct–Dec 1908 02.jpg|thumb|Survivors of the ''Wanderer'': Ward Lee, Tucker Henderson, and Romeo—born Cilucängy, Pucka Gaeta, and Tahro in the [[Congo River]] basin—were purchased at a Portuguese-run African slave market in 1858 for an estimated {{USD|50|1858}} each, and resold in the United States where the fair-market price for a healthy young enslaved male was easily {{USD|1000|1858}}[{{Cite book |last=Calonius |first=Erik |title=The Wanderer: the last American slave ship and the conspiracy that set its sails |date=2006 |publisher=Saint Martin's Press |isbn=978-0-312-34347-7 |location=New York, N.Y |pages=101–102 (Portuguese-African market), 125–126 (prices), 250–253 (origin, biography) |language=en-us}}] (Charles J. Montgomery, ''[[American Anthropologist]]'', 1908)]]
Controlling for inflation, prices of slaves rose dramatically in the six decades prior to the Civil War, reflecting demand due to commodity cotton, as well as use of slaves in shipping and manufacturing. Although the prices of slaves relative to indentured servants declined, both got more expensive. Cotton production was rising and relied on the use of slaves to yield high profits. Fogel and Engeman initially argued that if the Civil War had not happened, the slave prices would have increased even more, an average of more than 50% by 1890.[{{Cite journal|last=Wright|first=Gavin|author-link=Gavin Wright|journal=[[Journal of Economic Perspectives|The Journal of Economic Perspectives]]|volume=1|issue=1|pages=161–178|jstor=1942954|title=The Economic Revolution in the American South|date=Summer 1987|doi=10.1257/jep.1.1.161 |doi-access=free}}][{{cite book|last=Wright|first=Gavin|author-link=Gavin Wright|title=The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century|url=https://archive.org/details/politicaleconomy0000wrig|url-access=registration|year=1978|publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]]|location=New York|isbn=978-0-393-09038-3}}]
[[File:Le coton aux États-Unis (1903) Cotton of the United States by Yves Henry 02.jpg|thumb|left|Soils of the cotton-growing regions of the United States]]
In ''[[Democracy in America]]'', [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] noted that "the colonies in which there were no slaves became more populous and more rich than those in which slavery flourished".[{{cite book|title=Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged, Volumes I and II|title-link=Democracy in America|last=de Tocqueville|first=Alexise|translator-last=Reeve|translator-first=Henry|translator-link=Henry Reeve (journalist)|author-link=Alexis de Tocqueville|chapter=Volume I, Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races In The United States|orig-date=1835|year=2004|page=419|place=New York|publisher=[[Bantam Books]]|edition=Reissue|isbn=978-0-553-21464-2|chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm}}] In 1857, in ''[[The Impending Crisis of the South]]: How to Meet It'', [[Hinton Rowan Helper]] made the same point.[Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968 edition edited by [[George M. Fredrickson]].]
Economists Peter H. Lindert and [[Jeffrey G. Williamson]], in a pair of articles published in 2012 and 2013, found that, despite the American South initially having per capita income roughly double that of the North in 1774, incomes in the South had declined 27% by 1800 and continued to decline over the next four decades, while the economies in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states vastly expanded. By 1840, per capita income in the South was well behind the Northeast and the national average (Note: this is also true [[List of United States counties by per capita income|in the early 21st century]]).[{{cite journal |first1=Peter H. |last1=Lindert |first2=Jeffrey G. |last2=Williamson |author-link2=Jeffrey G. Williamson |title=American Incomes Before and After the Revolution |journal=[[Journal of Economic History]] |volume=73 |issue=3 |year=2013 |pages=725–765 |doi=10.1017/S0022050713000594 |url=https://www.nber.org/papers/w17211.pdf}}][{{Cite journal |last1=Lindert |first1=Peter H. |last2=Williamson |first2=Jeffrey G. |author-link2=Jeffrey G. Williamson|title=American Incomes 1774–1860 |journal=NBER Working Paper Series No. 18396 |date=September 2012 |doi=10.3386/w18396 |doi-access=free }}]
Lindert and Williamson argue that this antebellum period is an example of what economists [[Daron Acemoglu]], [[Simon Johnson (economist)|Simon Johnson]], and [[James A. Robinson (economist)|James A. Robinson]] call "a reversal of fortune".[{{Cite journal |last1=Acemoğlu |first1=Daron |last2=Johnson |first2=Simon |last3=Robinson |first3=James A. |author-link1=Daron Acemoglu |author-link2=Simon Johnson (economist) |author-link3=James A. Robinson (economist) |title=Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution |journal=[[Quarterly Journal of Economics]] |volume=117 |issue=4 |year=2002 |pages=1231–1294 |doi=10.3386/w18396 |doi-access=free }}] In his essay "[[Black Rednecks and White Liberals#The Real History of Slavery|The Real History of Slavery]]", economist [[Thomas Sowell]] reiterated and augmented the observation made by de Tocqueville by comparing slavery in the United States to [[slavery in Brazil]]. He notes that slave societies reflected similar economic trends in those and other parts of the world, suggesting that the trend Lindert and Williamson identify may have continued until the [[American Civil War]]:
{{blockquote|Both in [[Empire of Brazil|Brazil]] and in the United States{{snd}}the countries with the two largest slave populations in the Western Hemisphere{{snd}}the end of slavery found the regions in which slaves had been concentrated poorer than other regions of these same countries. For the United States, a case could be made that this was due to the Civil War, which did so much damage to the South, but no such explanation would apply to Brazil, which fought no Civil War over this issue. Moreover, even in the United States, the South lagged behind the North in many ways even before the Civil War.
Although slavery in Europe died out before it was abolished in the Western Hemisphere, as late as 1776 slavery had not yet died out all across the continent when [[Adam Smith]] wrote in ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]'' that it still existed in some eastern regions. But, even then, Eastern Europe was much poorer than Western Europe. The slavery of North Africa and the Middle East, over the centuries, took more slaves from sub-Saharan Africa than the Western Hemisphere did{{spaces}}... But these remained largely poor countries until the discovery and extraction of their vast oil deposits.[{{Cite book|last1=Eaton|first1=Clement|author-link1=Clement Eaton|title=The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South|publisher=[[Harper (publisher)#Harper & Row|Harper & Row]]|place=New York|pages=39–40|date=1964}}] Most slaveholders lived on farms rather than plantations,{{sfn|Genovese|1974|page=7}} and few plantations were as large as the fictional ones depicted in ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]''.[{{cite book|last1=Sowell|first1=Thomas|author-link1=Thomas Sowell|title=Ethnic America: A History|publisher=[[Basic Books]]|place=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/ethnicamericahis00thom/page/190 190]|date=1981|isbn=978-0-465-02075-1|url=https://archive.org/details/ethnicamericahis00thom/page/190}}]
In "The Real History of Slavery", Sowell also notes in comparison to [[History of slavery in the Muslim world|slavery in the Arab world and the Middle East]] (where slaves were seldom used for productive purposes) and [[Slavery in China|China]] (where the slaves consumed the entire output they created), Sowell observes that many commercial slaveowners in the antebellum South tended to be [[spendthrift]] and many lost their plantations due to creditor [[foreclosure]]s, and in Britain, profits by British slave traders amounted to only 2% of British [[Gross domestic product#Expenditure approach|domestic investment]] at the [[Atlantic slave trade#Destinations and flags of carriers|height of the Atlantic slave trade in the 18th century]].[{{cite book|last1=Sowell|first1=Thomas|author-link1=Thomas Sowell|title=Black Rednecks and White Liberals|chapter=The Real History of Slavery|publisher=[[Encounter Books]]|place=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/blackredneckswhi00thom/page/158 158]|isbn=978-1-59403-086-4|year=2005|title-link=Black Rednecks and White Liberals}}][{{cite book|last=Anstey|first=Roger|editor-first1=Stanley|editor-last1=Engerman|editor-link1=Stanley Engerman|editor-first2=Eugene|editor-last2=Genovese|editor-link2=Eugene Genovese|title=Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere|chapter=The Volume and Profitability of the British Slave Trade, 1675–1800|year=1975|pages=22–23|place=[[Princeton, New Jersey|Princeton, NJ]]|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|isbn=978-0-691-04625-9}}]
Sowell draws the following conclusion regarding the [[macroeconomics|macroeconomic]] value of slavery:
In short, even though some individual slaveowners grew rich and some family fortunes were founded on the exploitation of slaves, that is very different from saying that the whole society, or even its non-slave population as a whole, was more economically advanced than it would have been in the absence of slavery. What this means is that, whether employed as domestic servants or producing crops or other goods, millions suffered exploitation and dehumanization for no higher purpose than the{{spaces}}... aggrandizement of slaveowners.[{{cite book|last1=Sowell|first1=Thomas|author-link1=Thomas Sowell|title=Black Rednecks and White Liberals|chapter=The Real History of Slavery|publisher=[[Encounter Books]]|place=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/blackredneckswhi00thom/page/158 158–159]|isbn=978-1-59403-086-4|date=2005|title-link=Black Rednecks and White Liberals}}]
===Sexual economy of American slavery===
[[File:Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh The Slave Market circa 1859 artist unknown.png|thumb|''Slave Market'', artist unknown, date unknown ([[Carnegie Museum of Art]], Pittsburgh)]]
Scholar Adrienne Davis articulates how the economics of slavery also can be defined as a sexual economy, specifically focusing on how [[black women]] were expected to perform physical, sexual and reproductive labor to provide a consistent enslaved workforce and increase the profits of white slavers.
Davis writes that black women were needed for their "sexual and reproductive labor to satisfy the economic, political, and personal interest of white men of the elite class"[{{Cite book|title=Sister Circle: Black Women and Work|last=Davis|first=Adrienne|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-8135-3061-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/107 107]|chapter="Don't Let Nobody Bother Yo' Principle" The Sexual Economy of American Slavery|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/107}}] articulating that black women's reproductive capacity was important in the maintenance of the system of slavery due to its ability to perpetuate an enslaved workforce. She is also drawing attention to black women's labor being needed to maintain the aristocracy of a white ruling class, due to the intimate nature of reproduction and its potential for producing more enslaved peoples.
Due to the institution of ''[[partus sequitur ventrem]]'', black women's wombs became the site where slavery was developed and transferred,[{{Cite book|title=Sister Circle: Black Women and Work|last=Davis|first=Adrienne|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-8135-3061-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/108 108]|chapter="Don't Let Nobody Bother Yo' Principle" Sexual Economy of American Slavery|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/108}}] meaning that black women were not only used for their physical labor, but for their sexual and reproductive labor as well.
"The rule that the children's status follows their mothers' was a foundational one for our economy. It converted enslaved women's reproductive capacity into market capital"[{{Cite book|title=Sister Circle: Black Women and Work|last=Davis|first=Adrienne|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-8135-3061-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/109 109]|chapter="Don't Let Nobody Bother Yo' Principle" The Sexual Economy of American Slavery|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/109}}]
[[File:St Louis Hotel Slave Block Sold as a Child Postcard.jpg|thumb|left|[[Divided-back era]] postcard: "The Old Slave Block in the [[St. Louis Hotel|Old St. Louis Hotel]], New Orleans, La. The colored woman standing on the block was sold for $1500.00 on this same block when a little girl."]]
This articulation by Davis illustrates how black women's reproductive capacity was commodified under slavery, and that an analysis of the economic structures of slavery requires an acknowledgment of how pivotal black women's sexuality was in maintaining slavery's economic power.
Davis writes how black women performed labor under slavery, writing: "[black women were] male when convenient and horrifically female when needed".[{{Cite book|title=Sister Circle: Black Women and Work|last=Davis|first=Adrienne|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-8135-3061-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/119 119]|chapter="Don't Let Nobody Bother Yo' Principle" The Sexual Economy of American Slavery|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sistercircle00rutg/page/119}}] The fluctuating expectations of black women's gendered labor under slavery disrupted the white normative roles that were assigned to white men and white women. This ungendering black women received under slavery contributed to the systemic dehumanization experienced by enslaved black women, as they were unable to receive the expectations or experiences of either gender within the white binary.
Davis's arguments address the fact that, under slavery, black women's sexuality became linked to the economic and public sphere, making their intimate lives into public institutions. Black women's physical labor was gendered as masculine under slavery when they were needed to yield more profit, but their reproductive capacities and sexual labor were equally as important in maintaining white power over black communities and perpetuating an enslaved workforce.[Source: Miller and Smith, eds. ''Dictionary of American Slavery'' (1988) p. 678]
|-
! Time period !! Quantity
|-
| 1620–1700 || 21,000
|-
| 1701–1760 || 189,000
|-
| 1761–1770 || 63,000
|-
| 1771–1790 || 56,000
|-
| 1791–1800 || 79,000
|-
| 1801–1810 || 124,000[Includes 10,000 to Louisiana before 1803.]
|-
| 1810–1865 || 51,000
|-
| Total || 597,000
|}
The great majority of enslaved Africans were transported to [[sugar plantations in the Caribbean]] and to [[Colonial Brazil|Portuguese Brazil]]. As life expectancy was short, their numbers had to be continually replenished. Life expectancy was much higher in the United States, and the enslaved population was successful in reproduction, which was called "natural increase" by enslavers. The population of enslaved people in the United States grew to {{nowrap|4 million}} by the [[1860 United States census|1860 census]]. Historian J. David Hacker conducted research that estimated that the cumulative number of slaves in colonial America and the United States (1619–1865) was 10 million.[Gomez, Michael A: ''Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South'', p. 29. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1998.][{{cite book|title=The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America |first=Walter C. |last=Rucker |publisher=LSU Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-8071-3109-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c2XlG4rRK4QC&pg=PA126 |page=126}}]
|-
! Origin !! Amount %
(exceeds 100%)
|-
| [[Central Africa|West-central Africa]] ([[Kongo people|Kongo]], [[Northern Mbundu people|N. Mbundu]], [[Southern Mbundu people|S. Mbundu]]) ||align=center| 26.1
|-
| [[Bight of Bonny|Bight of Biafra]] ([[Igbo people|Igbo]], [[Tikar]], [[Ibibio people|Ibibio]], [[Bamileke]], [[Bubi people|Bubi]]) ||align=center| 24.4
|-
| [[Sierra Leone]] ([[Mende people|Mende]], [[Temne people|Temne]]) ||align=center| 15.8
|-
| [[Senegambia]] ([[Mandinka people|Mandinka]], [[Fula people|Fula]], [[Wolof people|Wolof]]) ||align=center| 14.5
|-
| [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]] ([[Akan people|Akan]], [[Fon people|Fon]]) ||align=center| 13.1
|-
| [[Windward Coast]] ([[Mandé peoples|Mandé]], [[Kru people|Kru]]) ||align=center| 5.2
|-
| [[Bight of Benin]] ([[Yoruba people|Yoruba]], [[Ewe people|Ewe]], [[Fon people|Fon]], [[Allada]] and [[Mahi people|Mahi]]) ||align=center| 4.3
|-
| [[East Africa|Southeast Africa]] ([[Macua (people)|Macua]], [[Malagasy people|Malagasy]]) ||align=center| 1.8
|}
===Distribution of slaves===
[[File:SlavePopulationUS1860.jpg|thumb|right|''Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States'' (1861) created by Edwin Hergesheimer of the [[United States Coast and Geodetic Survey|United States Coast Survey]]; Lincoln kept a copy of this map in the White House and studied it often, using it to track Union troop movements[{{Cite journal |last=Susan Schulten |date=2010 |title=The Cartography of Slavery and the Authority of Statistics |journal=Civil War History |language=en |volume=56 |issue=1 |pages=5–32 |doi=10.1353/cwh.0.0141 |doi-access=free }}]]]
{| class="wikitable" style="ftext-align:right; font-size:95%;"
|- style="border-bottom:2px solid gray;"
! Census
Year !! # Slaves !! # Free
Africans !! Total
Africans!! % Free
Africans!!Total US
population!! % Africans
of total
|-
| 1790 || 697,681 || 59,527 || 757,208 || 8% || 3,929,214 || 19%
|-
| 1800 || 893,602 || 108,435 || 1,002,037 || 11% || 5,308,483 || 19%
|-
| 1810 || 1,191,362 || 186,446 || 1,377,808 || 14% || 7,239,881 || 19%
|-
| 1820 || 1,538,022 || 233,634 || 1,771,656 || 13% || 9,638,453 || 18%
|-
| 1830 || 2,009,043 || 319,599 || 2,328,642 || 14% || 12,860,702 || 18%
|-
| 1840 || 2,487,355 || 386,293 || 2,873,648 || 13% || 17,063,353 || 17%
|-
| 1850 || 3,204,313 || 434,495 || 3,638,808 || 12% || 23,191,876 || 16%
|-
| 1860 || 3,953,760 || 488,070 || 4,441,830 || 11% || 31,443,321 || 14%
|-
| 1870 || 0 ||4,880,009|| 4,880,009 || 100% || 38,558,371 || 13%
|-
| colspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|Source:{{cite web |url=http://thomaslegioncherokee.tripod.com/distributionofslavesinunitedstateshistory.html |access-date=May 13, 2010 |title=Distribution of Slaves in U.S. History}}
|}
[[File:US-SlaveryPercentbyState1790-1860.svg|thumb|right|Evolution of the enslaved population of the United States as a percentage of the population of each state, 1790–1860]]
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:right; font-size:80%;"
|+ Total Slave Population in U.S., 1790–1860, by State and Territory[{{Cite web |title=Chapter V: Slave Population of the United States (through 1850) |url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1850/1850c/1850c-04.pdf? |website=census.gov}}][{{Cite web |title=Population of Slaves in 1860: Introduction |url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf |website=census.gov}}]
|- style="text-align:center; background: #efefef; border-bottom:2px solid gray;"
! Census
Year !! 1790 !! 1800 !! 1810 !! 1820 !! 1830 !! 1840 !! 1850 !! 1860
|-
!align=left| All States || 694,207 || 893,308 || 1,191,338 || 1,531,490 || 2,009,079 || 2,487,392 || 3,204,215 || 3,953,820
|-
|align=left| Alabama || – || 494 || 2,565 || 41,879 || 117,549 || 253,532 || 342,844 || 435,080
|-
|align=left| Arkansas || – || – || 136 || 1,617 || 4,576 || 19,935 || 47,100 || 111,115
|-
|align=left| California || – || – || – || – || – || – || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Connecticut || 2,648 || 951 || 310 || 97 || 25 || 54 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Delaware || 8,887 || 6,153 || 4,177 || 4,509 || 3,292 || 2,605 || 2,290 || 1,798
|-
|align=left| District of Columbia || – || 2,072 || 3,554 || 4,520 || 4,505 || 3,320 || 3,687 || 3,185
|-
|align=left| Florida || – || – || – || – || 15,501 || 25,717 || 39,310 || 61,745
|-
|align=left| Georgia || 29,264 || 59,699 || 105,218 || 149,656 || 217,531 || 280,944 || 381,682 || 462,198
|-
|align=left| Illinois || – || 107 || 168 || 917 || 747 || 331 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Indiana || – || 28 || 237 || 190 || 3 || 3 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Iowa || – || – || – || – || – || 16 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Kansas || – || – || – || – || – || – || – || 2
|-
|align=left| Kentucky || 12,430 || 40,343 || 80,561 || 126,732 || 165,213 || 182,258 || 210,981 || 225,483
|-
|align=left| Louisiana || – || – || 34,660 || 69,064 || 109,588 || 168,452 || 244,809 || 331,726
|-
|align=left| Maine || – || – || – || – || 2 || 0 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Maryland || 103,036 || 105,635 || 111,502 || 107,398 || 102,994 || 89,737 || 90,368 || 87,189
|-
|align=left| Massachusetts || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 1 || 0 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Michigan || – || – || 24 || 0 || 1 || 0 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Minnesota || – || – || – || – || – || – || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Mississippi || – || 2,995 || 14,523 || 32,814 || 65,659 || 195,211 || 309,878 || 436,631
|-
|align=left| Missouri || – || – || – || 10,222 || 25,096 || 58,240 || 87,422 || 114,931
|-
|align=left| Nebraska || – || – || – || – || – || – || – || 15
|-
|align=left| Nevada || – || – || – || – || – || – || – || 0
|-
|align=left| New Hampshire || 157 || 8 || 0 || 0 || 3 || 1 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| New Jersey || 11,423 || 12,422 || 10,851 || 7,557 || 2,254 || 674 || 236 || 18
|-
|align=left| New York || 21,193 || 20,613 || 15,017 || 10,088 || 75 || 4 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| North Carolina || 100,783 || 133,296 || 168,824 || 205,017 || 245,601 || 245,817 || 288,548 || 331,059
|-
|align=left| Ohio || – || 0 || 0 || 0 || 6 || 3 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Oregon || – || – || – || – || – || – || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Pennsylvania || 3,707 || 1,706 || 795 || 211 || 403 || 64 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Rhode Island || 958 || 380 || 108 || 48 || 17 || 5 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| South Carolina || 107,094 || 146,151 || 196,365 || 251,783 || 315,401 || 327,038 || 384,984 || 402,406
|-
|align=left| Tennessee || 3,417 || 13,584 || 44,535 || 80,107 || 141,603 || 183,059 || 239,459 || 275,719
|-
|align=left| Texas || – || – || – || – || – || – || 58,161 || 182,566
|-
|align=left| Utah || – || – || – || – || – || – || 26 || 29
|-
|align=left| Vermont || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0
|-
|align=left| Virginia || 287,959 || 339,499 || 383,521 || 411,886 || 453,698 || 431,873 || 452,028 || 472,494
|-
|align=left| West Virginia || 4,668 || 7,172 || 10,836 || 15,178 || 17,673 || 18,488 || 20,428 || 18,371
|-
|align="left" | Wisconsin || – || – || – || – || – || 11 || 4 || 0
|}
For various reasons, the census did not always include all of the slaves, especially in the West, and also [[Slavery among Native Americans in the United States#Native-American enslavement of Africans|black slaves owned by Native-American in the Southeast]]. [[New Mexico Territory]] never reported any slaves on the census, yet sued the government for compensation for 600 slaves that were freed when Congress outlawed slavery in the territory.[{{cite book|title=The Civil War Era and Reconstruction: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural and Economic History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cWysBwAAQBAJ|author=Mary Ellen Snodgrass|page=556|isbn=978-1-317-45791-6|year=2015| publisher=Routledge }}] Utah was actively trying to hide its slave population from Congress[{{cite thesis|last=Ricks |first=Nathaniel R. |date=2007 |title=A Peculiar Place for the Peculiar Institution: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early Territorial Utah |type=MA thesis |publisher=Brigham Young University |url=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1007/ |hdl=1877/etd1909}}][{{cite book|title=Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qLji9wwnaoUC|page=26|author2-link=Ardis E. Parshall|author1-link=W. Paul Reeve|first1= W. Paul |last1=Reeve |first2=Ardis E |last2=Parshall|isbn=978-1-59884-107-7|year=2010| publisher=Bloomsbury Academic }}] and did not report slaves in several communities.[{{cite book|title=Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy|first=Ronald G.|last=Coleman|url=http://content.lib.utah.edu/utils/getfile/collection/USHSArchPub/id/5295/filename/5330.pdf}}]
[[File:Panning for gold during the Californian Gold Rush of 1849.jpg|thumb|African American slaves working for their masters who had come to [[California gold rush|California in search of gold]], 1849.[{{Cite web |last=Johnson|first=Jason B.|date=2007-01-27|title=Slavery in Gold Rush days: New discoveries prompt exhibition, re-examination of state's involvement|url=https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/27/BAG8ANQ1OG1.DTL|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120324122538/https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/27/BAG8ANQ1OG1.DTL|url-status=dead|archive-date=2012-03-24|website=SFGate}}]]]
California was admitted as a free state and reported no slaves. However, there were many slaves that were brought to work in the mines during the [[California Gold Rush]].[{{Cite web|last=Johnson|first=Jason B.|date=2007-01-27|title=Slavery in Gold Rush days: New discoveries prompt exhibition, re-examination of state's involvement|url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Slavery-in-Gold-Rush-days-New-2653800.php|access-date=2022-12-29|website=SFGATE|language=en-US}}] Some Californian communities openly tolerated slavery, such as [[History of San Bernardino, California#Mormon San Bernardino|San Bernardino]], which was mostly made up of transplants from the neighboring slave [[Utah Territory|territory of Utah]].[{{cite news|url=https://sbcsentinel.com/2016/07/mormons-created-and-then-abandoned-san-bernardino/|title=Mormons Created And Then Abandoned San Bernardino|first=Mark|last=Gutglueck|publisher=San Bernardino County Sentinel}}] Additionally, the census did not traditionally include Native Americans, and hence did not include Native American slaves. The 1850 [[Act for the Government and Protection of Indians]] introduced a system of custodianship for indigenous children and established [[convict leasing]] as a form of slavery or [[forced labor in California]].[{{Cite journal |last=Magliari |first=M. |date=August 2004 |title=Free Soil, Unfree Labor |journal=Pacific Historical Review |language=en |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=349–390 |doi=10.1525/phr.2004.73.3.349 |id={{ProQuest|212441173}} |issn=0030-8684 |publisher=University of California Press}}] White settlers took 10,000 to 27,000 Native Americans as forced laborers in California, including 4,000 to 7,000 children.[{{cite web |last1=Exchange Team |first1=The Jefferson |title=NorCal Native Writes Of California Genocide |url=https://www.ijpr.org/post/norcal-native-writes-california-genocide |website=JPR Jefferson Public Radio |publisher=Info is in the podcast |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191114111002/https://www.ijpr.org/post/norcal-native-writes-california-genocide |archive-date=November 14, 2019}}][Castillo, E.D. 1998. ''[http://www.ceres.ca.gov/nahc/califindian.html "Short Overview of California Indian History]'' {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061214031402/http://www.ceres.ca.gov/nahc/califindian.html |date=December 14, 2006 }}, ''California Native American Heritage Commission'', 1998. Retrieved October 24, 2007.] There were other Native American slaves in Utah[{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/congressionalgl41bailgoog|pages=[https://archive.org/details/congressionalgl41bailgoog/page/n247 287]–288|title=The Congressional Globe, Part 2|author=United States. Congress|publisher=Blair & Rives|year=1857}}] and New Mexico[[http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/ Large Slaveholders of 1860 and African American Surname Matches from 1870] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905223723/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/|date=September 5, 2015}}, by Tom Blake, 2001–2005.]
* Enumerating slave schedules by county, 393,975 [[slave name|named persons]] held 3,950,546 unnamed slaves, for an average of about ten slaves per holder. As some large holders held slaves in multiple counties and are thus multiply counted, this slightly overestimates the number of slaveholders.
* Excluding slaves, the 1860 U.S. population was 27,167,529; therefore, approximately 1.45% of free persons (roughly one in 69) was a named slaveholder (393,975 named slaveholders among 27,167,529 free persons). By counting only named slaveholders, this approach does not acknowledge people who benefited from slavery by being in a slaveowning household, e.g., the wife and children of an owner; in 1850, there was an average of 5.55 people per household,[{{Cite web|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/01/the-number-of-people-in-the-average-u-s-household-is-going-up-for-the-first-time-in-over-160-years/|title=The number of people in the average U.S. household is going up for the first time in over 160 years|first=Richard|last=Fry|date=October 2019 }}] so on average, around 8.05% of free persons lived in a slave-owning household. According to historian Joseph Glatthaar, the number of soldiers of the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia who either owned slaves or came from slave owning households is "almost one of every two 1861 recruits". In addition he notes that, "Untold numbers of enlistees rented land from, sold crops to, or worked for slaveholders. In the final tabulation, the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery."[{{Cite book|last=Glatthaar |first=Joseph |title=General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse |location=New York |publisher=Free Press |year=2009 |pages=20, 474 |isbn=978-1-4165-9697-4}}]
* It is estimated by the transcriber Tom Blake, that holders of 200 or more slaves, constituting less than 1% of all U.S. slaveholders (fewer than 4,000 persons, one in 7,000 free persons, or 0.015% of the population) held an estimated 20–30% of all slaves (800,000 to 1,200,000 slaves). Nineteen holders of 500 or more slaves have been identified.[[http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/biggest16.htm The Sixteen Largest American Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130719043247/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/biggest16.htm |date=July 19, 2013 }}, Transcribed by Tom Blake, April to July 2001, (updated October 2001 and December 2004; now includes 19 holders)] The largest slaveholder was [[Joshua John Ward]], of [[Georgetown, South Carolina]], who in 1850 held 1,092 slaves,[{{cite journal |last1=Pargas |first1=Damian Alan |title=Boundaries and Opportunities: Comparing Slave Family Formation in the Antebellum South |journal=Journal of Family History |date=July 2008 |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=316–345 |doi=10.1177/0363199008318919 |pmid=18831111 }}] and one of his plantations is now part of [[Brookgreen Gardens]].
* The percentage of families that owned slaves in 1860 in various groupings of states was as follows:[{{cite book |last=Bonekemper III |first=Edward H. |author-link=Edward H. Bonekemper |title=The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won |year=2015 |publisher=Regnery Publishing |location=Washington, D.C. |page=39 }}]
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Group of States
! States in Group
! Slave-Owning Families
|-
| style="width: 325px;"|15 states where slavery was legal
| style="width: 600px;"|Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia
| style="width: 50px; padding-left: 2.5em;"|26%
|-
| 11 states that seceded
| Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia
| style="width: 50px; padding-left: 2.5em;"|31%
|-
| 7 states that seceded before Lincoln's inauguration
| Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas
| style="width: 50px; padding-left: 2.5em;"|37%
|-
| 4 states that seceded later
| Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia
| style="width: 50px; padding-left: 2.5em;"|25%
|-
| 4 slave states that did not secede
| Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri
| style="width: 50px; padding-left: 2.5em;"|16%
|}
==Historiography==
{{Main|Historiography of American slavery}}
{{See also|Bibliography of slavery in the United States}}
[[File:WINDOW GRATING OF OLD SLAVE PRISON CELL - Girod House, 500-506 Chartres.jpg|thumb|"Window grating of old slave prison cell" at [[Girod House]], 500–506 Chartres, New Orleans (Richard Koch, [[Historic American Buildings Survey]], April 1934)]]
Early historical writing on American slavery, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often reflected the racial attitudes of the time. Influenced by the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]] narrative, many historians portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution with passive or content slaves. [[Ulrich Bonnell Phillips]] was a leading figure in this school of thought, focusing on plantation economics and framing slavery as economically backward but socially civilizing.{{sfn|Kolchin|1993|pp=134–135}} Black perspectives were largely absent from mainstream historiography during this period, though some early work was advanced in historically Black colleges and universities.{{sfn|Meier|Rudwick|1986}}
A major historiographical shift occurred in the mid-20th century. [[Kenneth M. Stampp]]{{sfn|Stampp|1956}} challenged earlier narratives by emphasizing the brutality and exploitation of slavery and highlighting enslaved people's resistance.{{sfn|David|Temin|1974|p=741}} [[Stanley Elkins]] took a psychological approach, controversially comparing the effects of slavery to those of totalitarian systems like Nazi concentration camps. By the 1970s, historians such as [[John Blassingame]], [[Eugene Genovese]], and [[Herbert Gutman]] used sources like slave narratives, plantation records, folklore, and WPA interviews to develop more nuanced portrayals of enslaved life, showing how enslaved people built communities, maintained families, and exercised degrees of autonomy within a system of oppression.{{sfn|Kolchin|1993|pp= 137–143}}{{sfn|Horton|Horton|2006|p=9}}
In the same period, economic historians [[Robert Fogel]] and [[Stanley Engerman]] sparked debate with their work ''Time on the Cross'' (1974), which used [[cliometrics|cliometric]] methods to argue that slavery was economically efficient and that the material conditions of slaves were not substantially worse than those of contemporary free laborers. Their conclusions drew widespread criticism for downplaying the human costs of slavery.{{sfn|Kolchin|1993|p=136}} More recently, scholars like [[Steven Hahn]] have explored the political lives of enslaved people, demonstrating how they built forms of collective identity and political consciousness that shaped post-emancipation society.{{sfn|Hahn|2003}} Economic models, such as those proposed by [[Robert E. Wright]], have further examined why slavery persisted more intensely in some regions and industries than others.{{sfn|Wright|2010}}
==Summaries by survivors of slavery==
[[File:Slave gallery in Liberty Presbyterian church Amite County Mississippi.jpg|thumb|Slave gallery, Liberty church]]
Historian Ty Seidule uses a quote from [[Frederick Douglass]]'s autobiography ''My Bondage and My Freedom'' to describe the experience of the average male slave as being "robbed of wife, of children, of his hard earnings, of home, of friends, of society, of knowledge, and of all that makes his life desirable." A quote from a letter by Isabella Gibbons, who had been enslaved by professors at the University of Virginia, is now engraved on the university's Memorial to Enslaved Laborers:
{{Blockquote|Can we forget the crack of the whip, the cowhide, whipping-post, the auction-block, the spaniels, the iron collar, the negro-trader tearing the young child from its mother's breast as a whelp from the lioness? Have we forgotten that by those horrible cruelties, hundreds of our race have been killed? No, we have not, nor ever will.[[https://mel.virginia.edu/history?open=true#the-life-of--isabella-gibbons Memorial to Enslaved Laborers: History]. Retrieved 4 February 2025.]}}
==See also==
{{Portal|Business|History|United States}}
{{div col}}
* [[Abolition of slavery timeline]]
* [[American Descendants of Slavery]] (ADOS)
* ''[[Biography and the Black Atlantic]]''
* [[:Category:American slave owners]]
* [[Glossary of American slavery]]
* {{section link|Historiography of the United States#Slavery and black history}}
* [[Indian removal]]
* [[List of slave owners]]
* [[Lists of United States public officials who owned slaves]]
* [[Reparations for slavery debate in the United States]]
* [[Runaway slaves in Spanish Florida]]
* [[Slave insurance in the United States]]
* {{section link|Slave narrative#North American slave narratives}}
** [[Slave Narrative Collection|WPA Slave Narratives Project]]
* ''[[Slavery and Slaving in World History: A Bibliography]]''
* [[Slavery at American colleges and universities]]
* [[Suicide, infanticide, and self-mutilation by slaves in the United States]]
* [[Triangular trade]]
{{div col end}}
===Histories of slavery in the Western Hemisphere===
* [[Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies]]
* [[Slavery in the British and French Caribbean]]
* [[Slavery in Cuba]]
* [[Slavery in Brazil]]
* [[Slavery in Latin America]]
* [[Slavery in Canada]]
==Notes==
{{notelist}}
==References==
{{reflist}}
==Bibliography==
{{Main|Bibliography of slavery in the United States}}
===National and comparative studies===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Aptheker |first=Herbert |author-link=Herbert Aptheker |title=Negro Slave Revolts in the United States (1526–1860) |publisher=International Publishers |year=1939 |location=New York |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.734/page/1/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Aptheker |first=Herbert |author-mask=2 |title=American Negro Slave Revolts |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1945 |orig-date=1943 |location=New York |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.84187/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Arthur |first=John |author-link=John Arthur (philosopher) |title=Race, Equality, and the Burdens of History |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |year=2007 |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/raceequalityburd0000arth/page/n3/mode/2up Preview]
* {{cite book |last=Baptist |first=Edward E. |author-link=Edward E. Baptist |title=The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism |publisher=Basic Books |year=2016 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-465-04966-0}} [https://archive.org/details/halfhasneverbeen0000bapt_c1d5 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last1=Bateman |first1=Fred |author1-link=Fred Bateman |last2=Weiss |first2=Thomas |title=A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of Industrialization in the Slave Economy |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=1980 |location=Chapel Hill, NC |url= |isbn=0-8078-1447-4}} [https://archive.org/details/deplorablescarci0000bate/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Beckert |first=Sven |author-link=Sven Beckert |title=Empire of Cotton: A Global History |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |year=2014 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-375-41414-5}} [https://archive.org/details/empireofcottongl0000beck Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Berlin |first=Ira |author-link=Ira Berlin |title=Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2003 |location=Cambridge, MA |url= |isbn=0-674-01061-2}} [https://archive.org/details/generationsofcap00berl Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Berlin |first=Ira |author-mask=2 |title=Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=1998 |location=Cambridge, MA |url= |isbn=0-674-81092-9}} [https://archive.org/details/manythousandsgon0000berl_w4u6 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Berlin |first=Ira |author-mask=2 |title=Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South |publisher=The New Press |year=1992 |orig-date=1974 |location=New York |url= |isbn=1-56584-028-3}} [https://archive.org/details/slaveswithoutmas00berl/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Berlin |editor1-first=Ira |editor1-mask=2 |editor2-last=Hoffman |editor2-first=Ronald |title=Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution |publisher=University Press of Virginia |year=1983 |location=Charlottesville, VA |url= |isbn=0-8139-0969-4}} [https://archive.org/details/slaveryfreedomin0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Blackburn |first=Robin |author-link=Robin Blackburn |title=The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights |publisher=Verso |year=2011 |location=London; New York |url= |isbn=978-1-84467-569-2}} [https://archive.org/details/americancrucible0000blac/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Blackburn |first=Robin |author-mask=2 |title=The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery |publisher=Verso |year=1988 |location=London; New York |url= |isbn=0-86091-188-8}} [https://archive.org/details/overthrowofcolon0000blac/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[Douglas A. Blackmon|Blackmon, Douglas A.]] ''Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II'', 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-385-50625-0}}. [https://archive.org/details/slaverybyanother00blac_0 Preview.]
* [[John Wesley Blassingame|Blassingame, John W.]] ''[[The Slave Community]]: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South'' Oxford University Press, 1979, {{ISBN|0-19-502563-6}}. [https://archive.org/details/slavecommunitypl00blas_0 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Brewster |first=Francis E. |title=Slavery and the Constitution. Both Sides of the Question |publisher=Unknown Publisher |year=1850 |location=Philadelphia |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/slaveryconstitut00brew/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book|last=Childers |first=Christopher |title=The Failure of Popular Sovereignty: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the Radicalization of Southern Politics |publisher=University Press of Kansas |year=2012 |location=Lawrence|url= |isbn=978-0-7006-1868-2}} [https://archive.org/details/failureofpopular0000chil Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Coughtry |first=Jay |title=The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807 |publisher=Temple University Press |year=1981 |location=Philadelphia |url=https://archive.org/details/notorioustriangl0000coug/page/n5/mode/2up |isbn=0-87722-218-5}}
* [[David Brion Davis|Davis, David Brion]]. ''[[Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World]]'', 2006.
* {{cite book |last=Davis |first=David Brion |author-mask=2 |title=The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture |publisher=Pelican Books |year=1970 |orig-date=1966 |location=London |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/problemofslavery0000unse_o0v2 Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor-last=Duberman |editor-first=Martin B. |editor-link=Martin Duberman |title=New Essays on the Abolitionists |date=1965 |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press}} [https://archive.org/details/antislaveryvangu1965dube/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Egerton |first=Douglas R. |title=Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2009 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-19-530669-9}} [https://archive.org/details/deathorlibertyaf00eger/page/n5/mode/2up Preview]
* [[Stanley Elkins|Elkins, Stanley]]. ''Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life.'' University of Chicago Press, 1976, {{ISBN|0-226-20477-4}}. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryproblemin00elki Preview.]
* [[Don E. Fehrenbacher|Fehrenbacher, Don E.]] ''Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective'', Oxford University Press, 1981. [https://archive.org/details/slaverylawpoliti0000fehr Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Finkelman |first=Paul |author-link= Paul Finkelman |title=An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=1981 |location=Chapel Hill|url= |isbn=0-8078-1438-5}} [https://archive.org/details/imperfectunionsl0000fink/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[Robert Fogel|Fogel, Robert W.]] ''Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery'', W.W. Norton, 1989. [https://archive.org/details/withoutconsentor00foge_0 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last1=Fogel |first1=Robert William |author1-link=Robert Fogel |author1-mask=2 |last2=Engerman |first2=Stanley L. |author2-link=Stanley Engerman |title=Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery |publisher=W.W. Norton Company, Inc. |year=1995 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-393-31218-6}} [https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last1=Foner |first1=Eric |author1-link=Eric Foner |last2=Brown |first2=Joshua |author2-link=Joshua Brown (historian) |title=Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |year=2005 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-375-40259-4}}[https://archive.org/details/foreverfreestory00fone Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-mask=2 |title=Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |year=2015 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-393-35219-1}} [https://archive.org/details/gatewaytofreedom0000fone_a5t8/page/n9/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-mask=2 |title=The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery |publisher=W. W. Norton & Co. |year=2010 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-393-06618-0}} Pulitzer Prize. [https://archive.org/details/fierytrialabraha0000fone/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[John Hope Franklin|Franklin, John Hope]] and Loren Schweninger. ''Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation'', 1999, {{ISBN|0-19-508449-7}}. [https://archive.org/details/runawayslavesreb00john_0 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Fredrickson |first=George M. |author-link=George M. Fredrickson |title=The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1971 |location=New York |url= |sbn=06-011343-X}} [https://archive.org/details/blackimageinwh00fred/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Freehling |first=William W. |author-link=William W. Freehling |title=The Road to Disunion, Volume I: Secessionists at Bay |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2007 |orig-date=1990 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-19-505814-7}} [https://archive.org/details/roadtodisunion0000free/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Freehling |first=William W. |author-mask=2 |title=The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumph |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2007 |orig-date=1990 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-19-505815-4}}[https://archive.org/details/roadtodisunionvo0000free/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Frey |first=Sylvia R. |title=Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1991 |location=Princeton, NJ |url= |isbn=0-691-04784-7}} [https://archive.org/details/waterfromrockbla0000frey/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[Alan Gallay|Gallay, Alan]]. ''The Indian Slave Trade'', 2002. [https://archive.org/details/indianslavetrade00gall Preview.]
* {{cite book|author-link=Eugene Genovese|last=Genovese|first=Eugene D.|year=1974|title=[[Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made]]|location=New York|publisher=Pantheon Books|isbn=0-394-49131-9}}
* —— (1965). ''[[The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South]]''. New York: Vintage Books. [https://archive.org/details/politicaleconomy00geno Preview.]
* —— and [[Elizabeth Fox-Genovese]] (1983). ''Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-503157-1}}. [https://archive.org/details/fruitsofmerchant00foxg Preview.]
* Harrold, Stanley. ''American Abolitionism: Its Direct Political Impact from Colonial Times into Reconstruction'' (U of Virginia Press, 2019) [https://books.google.com/books?id=inlzDwAAQBAJ&dq=+Harrold,+Stanley.+%27%27American+Abolitionism%22&pg=PP7 online].
* {{cite book |last=Hashaw |first=Tim |title=The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown |publisher=Carroll & Graf Publishers |year=2007 |location=New York |url= |isbn=978-0-7867-1718-7}} [https://archive.org/details/birthofblackamer00hash/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.|Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr.]] ''In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period.'' Oxford University Press, 1978, {{ISBN|0-19-502745-0}}. [https://archive.org/details/inmatterofcolor00higg Preview.]
* Horton, James Oliver and Horton, Lois E. ''Slavery and the Making of America'', 2005, {{ISBN|0-19-517903-X}}. [https://archive.org/details/slaverymakingof00hort Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Johnson |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Johnson (historian) |title=River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2013 |location=Cambridge, MA |url= |isbn=978-0-674-04555-2}} [https://archive.org/details/riverofdarkdream0000john Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Kaplan |first=Sidney |title=The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770–1800 |publisher=New York Graphic Society |year=1973 |location=Greenwich, CT |url= |isbn=0-8212-0541-2}} [https://archive.org/details/blackpresenceint00kapl/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Kolchin |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Kolchin |title=American Slavery: 1619–1877|year=1993}}
* {{cite book |last=Kolchin |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Kolchin |title=American Slavery, 1619–1877 |publisher=Hill and Wang |year=1999 |orig-date=1992 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-8090-1554-4}} [https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780809015542/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[Leon Litwack|Litwack, Leon F.]] ''Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery'' (1979), social history of how slavery ended in the Confederacy. [https://archive.org/details/beeninstormsolon0000unse Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Litwack |first=Leon F. |author-mask=2 |title=North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1961 |location=Chicago |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/northofslavery00leon/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* Mason, Matthew. ''Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic'', 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-8078-3049-9}}.[https://archive.org/details/slaverypoliticsi0000maso Preview.]
* {{cite book|title=The Complete History of American Slavery|editor-first=James|editor-last=Miller|date=2001|isbn=0737704241|publisher=[[Greenhaven Press]]|location=San Diego, California}}
* Moon, Dannell, "Slavery", article in ''Encyclopedia of Rape'', Merril D. Smith (Ed.), Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.
* [[Wilbert Ellis Moore|Moore, Wilbert Ellis]], ''American Negro Slavery and Abolition: A Sociological Study'', Ayer Publishing, 1980. [https://archive.org/details/americannegrosla0000moor Preview.]
* [[Edmund Morgan (historian)|Morgan, Edmund S.]] ''[[American Slavery, American Freedom]]: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia '', W.W. Norton, 1975. [https://archive.org/details/americanslaverya00morg_0 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Morris |first=Thomas D. |title=Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=1996 |location=Chapel Hill |url= |isbn=0-8078-4817-4}} [https://archive.org/details/southernslavery00thom/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[James Oakes (historian)|Oakes, James]]. ''The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders'', 1982, {{ISBN|0-393-31705-6}}. [https://archive.org/details/rulingracehistor0000oake Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor-last=Palmer |editor-first=Colin A. |editor-link=Colin A. Palmer |title=The Worlds of Unfree Labour: From Indentured Servitude to Slavery |publisher=Ashgate Publishing Company |year=1998 |location=Brookfield, VT |url= |isbn=0-86078-515-7}} [https://archive.org/details/worldsofunfreela0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Robinson |first=Donald L. |title=Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820 |publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |year=1970 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-15-182972-1}} [https://archive.org/details/slaveryinstructu0000robi/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[Junius P. Rodriguez|Rodriguez, Junius P.]], ed. ''Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World'', Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007.
* ——, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion'', Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.
* Scarborough, William K. ''The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South'', 1984. [https://archive.org/details/overseerplantati0000scar/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* Schermerhorn, Calvin. ''The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860'', Yale University Press, 2015.
* {{cite journal |last1=Scott |first1=Daryl Michael |title=The Social and Intellectual Origins of 13thism |journal=Fire!!! |date=2020 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=2–39 |jstor=10.5323/48573836 }}
* Snyder, Terri L. ''The Power to Die: Slavery and Suicide in British North America'', University of Chicago Press, 2015.
* {{cite book|author-link=Kenneth M. Stampp|last=Stampp|first=Kenneth M.|title=The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South|year=1956}} [https://archive.org/details/peculiarinstitut0000kenn_g8x6 Preview.]
* Tadman, Michael. ''Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South'', University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. [https://archive.org/details/speculatorsslave00tadm Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Tannenbaum |first=Frank |author-link=Frank Tannenbaum |title=Slave and Citizen, the Negro in the Americas |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |year=1946 |location=New York |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/slavecitizennegr0000tann Preview.]
* [[United States Census Bureau]]. ''Negro Population in the United States, 1790–1915'', New York: Arno Press, 1968. [https://archive.org/details/americannegrohis0000unse_d4r3/page/56/mode/2up Preview]
* {{cite book |last=Wiecek |first=William M. |title=The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=1977 |location=Ithaca, NY |url=https://archive.org/details/sourcesofantisla00wiec/page/n5/mode/2up |isbn=0-8014-1089-4}} [https://archive.org/details/sourcesofantisla00wiec/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Williams |first=Eric Eustace |title=Capitalism and Slavery |publisher=G.P. Putnam's Sons |year=1966 |location=New York |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/capitalismslaver00will/page/n1/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[W. D. Wright|Wright, W. D.]] ''Historians and Slavery; A Critical Analysis of Perspectives and Irony in American Slavery and Other Recent Works'', Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978.
* {{cite book |last=Yafa |first=Stephen |author-link=Stephen Yafa |title=Big Cotton |url= |date=2006 |publisher=Viking Penguin |isbn=0-670-03367-7}} Republished as ''Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber'' (2006). [https://archive.org/details/bigcottonhowhumb00yafa/page/n5/mode/2up Preview]
{{refend}}
====Journal articles====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Cohen |first1=William |title=Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery |journal=The Journal of American History |date=1969 |volume=56 |issue=3 |pages=503–526 |doi=10.2307/1904203 |jstor=1904203 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Cushing |first1=John D. |title=The Cushing Court and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts: More Notes on the 'Quock Walker Case' |journal=The American Journal of Legal History |date=1961 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=118–144 |doi=10.2307/844116 |jstor=844116 }}
* {{cite journal |author-link1=Paul A. David |first1=Paul A. |last1=David |author-link2=Peter Temin |first2=Peter |last2=Temin |title=Slavery: The progressive institution? |journal=Journal of Economic History |volume=34 |year=1974 |issue=3 |pages=739–783 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700079882}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Finkelman |first1=Paul |author-link=Paul Finkelman |date=2001 |title=The Founders and Slavery: Little Ventured, Little Gained |journal=Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=413–449 |ssrn=1432083 |hdl=20.500.13051/7314 |hdl-access=free }}
* {{cite book |first1=James Oliver |last1=Horton |author-link2=Lois E. Horton |first2=Lois E. |last2=Horton |title=Slavery and the Making of America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uUleEW07AvgC&pg=PA8 |year=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195304510}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lynd |first1=Staughton |title=On Turner, Beard and Slavery |journal=The Journal of Negro History |date=1963 |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=235–250 |doi=10.2307/2716327 |jstor=2716327 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Ransom |first1=Roger L. |title=Was It Really All That Great to Be a Slave? A Review Essay |journal=Agricultural History |date=1974 |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=578–585 |jstor=3741391 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Ransom |first1=Roger L. |title=Was It Really All That Great to Be a Slave? A Review Essay |journal=Agricultural History |date=1974 |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=578–585 |jstor=3741391 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Stampp |first1=Kenneth M. |title=Interpreting the Slaveholders' World: A Review |journal=Agricultural History |date=1970 |volume=44 |issue=4 |pages=407–412 |id={{ProQuest|1296026083}} |jstor=3741525 }}
{{refend}}
====Videos====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* [[Steven Hahn|Hahn, Steven]]. ''[https://southernspaces.org/2004/greatest-slave-rebellion-modern-history-southern-slaves-american-civil-war The Greatest Slave Rebellion in Modern History: Southern Slaves in the American Civil War]'', [[Southern Spaces]], 2004.
{{refend}}
===Slavery and the Constitution===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* [[Eric Foner|Foner, Eric]]. ''The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019).
* {{cite book |last=Goldstone |first=Lawrence |title=Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution |publisher=Walker & Company |year=2005 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-8027-1460-9 |ref=goldstone2005}} [https://archive.org/details/darkbargainslave0000gold/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Drake |first=Charles E. |title=The War of Slavery upon the Constitution: Address of Charles E. Drake on the Anniversary of the Constitution Delivered in St. Louis |date=September 17, 1862 |url=}} [https://archive.org/details/warofslaveryupon00drak/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor1-link=Robert Goldwin |editor-last1=Goldwin |editor-first1=Robert A. |editor-last2=Kaufman |editor-first2=Art |title=Slavery and Its Consequences: The Constitution, Equality, and Race |publisher=American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research |date=1988 |location=Washington, DC |url=https://archive.org/details/slaveryitsconseq0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up |isbn=0-8447-3649-X |ref=goldwin1988}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Kaminski |editor-first=John P. |title=A Necessary Evil?: Slavery and the Debate over the Constitution |publisher=Madison House |year=1995 |location=Madison, WI |url=https://archive.org/details/necessaryevilsla0000unse/page/256/mode/2up |page=256 |isbn=978-0945-61216-2 |ref=kaminski1995}}
* [[James Oakes (historian)|Oakes, James]]. ''The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 2021).
* Van Cleve, George William. ''A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic'' (University of Chicago Press, 2019). [https://scholar.archive.org/work/nl3p77t3vnf7th6int574wusve/access/wayback/https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/downloads/1831ck020?filename=VanCleve_GeorgeW_May2008.pdf online]
* [[Sean Wilentz|Wilentz, Sean]]. ''No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding'' (2nd ed. Harvard University Press, 2019).
* {{cite book |last=Williamson |first=Joel |title=After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 |publisher=University Press of New England |year=1990 |location=Hanover, NH |url= |isbn=0-8195-6236-X}} [https://archive.org/details/afterslaverynegr0000will/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
{{refend}}
====Journal articles====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last1=David |first1=C. W. A. |title=The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 and its Antecedents |journal=The Journal of Negro History |date=1924 |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=18–25 |doi=10.2307/2713433 |jstor=2713433 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Dougherty |first1=Keith L. |last2=Heckelman |first2=Jac C. |title=Voting on slavery at the Constitutional Convention |journal=Public Choice |date=September 2008 |volume=136 |issue=3–4 |article-number=293 |doi=10.1007/s11127-008-9297-7 |jstor=40270762 |doi-access=free }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Finkelman |first1=P. |title=Slavery, the Constitution, and the Origins of the Civil War |journal=OAH Magazine of History |date=April 2011 |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=14–18 |doi=10.1093/oahmag/oar004 |jstor=23210240 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Finkelman |first1=Paul |author-mask=2 |date=Winter 2000 |title=Garrison's Constitution: The Covenant with Death and How It Was Made |url= |journal=Prologue Magazine |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=14–18}} [https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/winter/garrisons-constitution-1 Preview.]
* {{cite journal |last1=Freehling |first1=William W. |title=The Founding Fathers and Slavery |journal=The American Historical Review |date=1972 |volume=77 |issue=1 |pages=81–93 |doi=10.2307/1856595 |jstor=1856595 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Knowles |first1=Helen J. |title=Seeing the Light: Lysander Spooner's Increasingly Popular Constitutionalism |journal=Law and History Review |date=August 2013 |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=531–558 |doi=10.1017/S0738248013000242 |jstor=23489502 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Maltz |first1=Earl M. |title=Slavery, Federalism, and the Structure of the Constitution |journal=The American Journal of Legal History |date=1992 |volume=36 |issue=4 |pages=466–498 |doi=10.2307/845555 |jstor=845555 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Patterson |first1=Orlando |title=The Unholy Trinity: Freedom, Slavery, and the American Constitution |journal=Social Research |date=1987 |volume=54 |issue=3 |pages=543–577 |jstor=40970472 }}
{{refend}}
===State and local studies===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |author=Burke, Diane Mutti |title=On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households, 1815–1865 |year=2010 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-3683-1}} [https://archive.org/details/onslaverysborder0000burk Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Fede |first=Andrew |title=People Without Rights: An Interpretation of the Fundamentals of the Law of Slavery in the U.S. South |publisher=Garland Publishing, Inc. |year=1992 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-8153-0894-9}} [https://archive.org/details/peoplewithoutrig00fede/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* [[Barbara J. Fields|Fields, Barbara J.]] ''Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century'', Yale University Press, 1985. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryfreedomon0000fiel/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Freehling |first=Alice Goodyear |title=Drift Toward Dissolution: The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831–1832 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1982 |location=Baton Rouge, LA |url= |isbn=0-8071-1035-3}} [https://archive.org/details/drifttowarddisso0000free/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Holton |first=Woody |author-link=Woody Holton |title=Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia |publisher=University of North Carolina Press (published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia) |year=1999 |location=Chapel Hill |url= |isbn=0-8078-2501-8}} [https://archive.org/details/forcedfoundersin00holt/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* Jennison, Watson W. ''Cultivating Race: The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 1750–1860'', University Press of Kentucky, 2012. [https://archive.org/details/cultivatingracee0000jenn Preview.]
* Jewett, Clayton E. and John O. Allen; ''Slavery in the South: A State-By-State History'' Greenwood Press, 2004. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryinsouthst0000jewe Preview.]
* Kulikoff, Alan. ''Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800'' University of North Carolina Press, 1986. [https://archive.org/details/tobaccoslaves00kuli Preview.]
* [[Patrick Minges|Minges, Patrick N.]]; ''Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855–1867'', 2003. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryincheroke0000ming Preview.]
* Mohr, Clarence L. ''On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia'' University of Georgia Press, 1986. [https://archive.org/details/onthresholdoffre0000mohr Preview.]
* Mooney, Chase C. ''Slavery in Tennessee'', Indiana University Press, 1957.
* {{cite book |last=Morgan |first=Edmund S. |author-link=Edmund Morgan (historian) |title=American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. |year=1995 |orig-date=1975 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-393-31288-7}} [https://archive.org/details/americanslaverya0000morg/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |last=Nash |first=Gary B. |author-link=Gary B. Nash |title=Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1991 |location=New York |url= |isbn=0-19-504583-1}} [https://archive.org/details/freedombydegrees0000nash/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* Olwell, Robert. ''Masters, Slaves, & Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790'' Cornell University Press, 1998.
* Reidy, Joseph P. ''From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South, Central Georgia, 1800–1880'' University of North Carolina Press, 1992. [https://archive.org/details/fromslaverytoagr00reid_0 Preview.]
* Ripley, C. Peter. ''Slaves and Freemen in Civil War Louisiana'' Louisiana State University Press, 1976.
* Rivers, Larry Eugene. ''Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation'', University Press of Florida, 2000. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryinflorida0000rive Preview.]
* Sellers, James Benson; ''Slavery in Alabama'' University of Alabama Press, 1950. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryinalabama0000jame Preview.]
* Sydnor, Charles S. ''Slavery in Mississippi'', 1933. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryinmississ0000sydn Preview.]
* Takagi, Midori. ''Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond, Virginia, 1782–1865'' University Press of Virginia, 1999. [https://archive.org/details/rearingwolvestoo0000taka Preview.]
* Taylor, Joe Gray. ''Negro Slavery in Louisiana''. Louisiana Historical Society, 1963. [https://archive.org/details/negroslaveryinlo0000tayl Preview.]
* Trexler, Harrison Anthony. ''Slavery in Missouri, 1804–1865'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1914. [https://archive.org/details/slaveryinmissour00trex Preview.]
* [[Peter H. Wood|Wood, Peter H.]] ''Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion'' W.W. Norton & Company, 1974. [https://archive.org/details/blackmajorityneg0000wood Preview.]
{{refend}}
====Videos====
{{refbegin|30em}}
* Jenkins, Gary (director). ''Negroes To Hire'' [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Y5H1VO/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk (Lifedocumentaries, 2010)]; 52 minutes DVD; on slavery in Missouri
* {{cite video |title=A Moral Debt: The Legacy of Slavery in the USA |first=James |last=Gannon |work=[[Al Jazeera Arabic|Al-Jazeera]] |date=October 25, 2018 |quote=Gannon is a descendant of Robert E. Lee |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2018/10/moral-debt-legacy-slavery-usa-181017093941707.html |ref=none |access-date=October 28, 2018 |archive-date=July 22, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722120128/https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2018/10/moral-debt-legacy-slavery-usa-181017093941707.html}}
{{refend}}
===Historiography and memory===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Ayers |first1=E. L. |authorlink1=Edward L. Ayers |title=The American Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction on the World Stage |journal=OAH Magazine of History |date=January 2006 |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=54–61 |doi=10.1093/maghis/20.1.54 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Berlin |first1=Ira |title=American Slavery in History and Memory and the Search for Social Justice |journal=The Journal of American History |date=2004 |volume=90 |issue=4 |pages=1251–1268 |doi=10.2307/3660347 |jstor=3660347 }}
* Boles, John B. and Evelyn T. Nolen, eds., ''Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham'' (1987). [https://archive.org/details/interpretingsout0000unse Preview.]
* {{cite journal |last1=Brown |first1=Vincent |authorlink1=Vincent Brown (historian) |title=Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery |journal=The American Historical Review |date=2009 |volume=114 |issue=5 |pages=1231–1249 |doi=10.1086/ahr.114.5.1231 |jstor=23303423 |pmid=20217990 }} examined historical and sociological studies since the influential 1982 book ''Slavery and Social Death'' by American sociologist [[Orlando Patterson]].
* {{cite journal |last1=Campbell |first1=Gwyn |title=Children and slavery in the new world: A review |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=August 2006 |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=261–285 |doi=10.1080/01440390600765722 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Collins |first1=Bruce |title=American Slavery and Its Consequences |journal=The Historical Journal |date=1979 |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=997–1015 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00017246 |jstor=2638699 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Dirck |first1=Brian |title=Changing Perspectives on Lincoln, Race, and Slavery |journal=OAH Magazine of History |date=2007 |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=9–12 |doi=10.1093/maghis/21.4.9 |jstor=25162137 }}
* Farrow, Anne; Lang, Joel; Frank, Jenifer. ''Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery'', Ballantine Books, 2006, {{ISBN|0-345-46783-3}}. [https://archive.org/details/complicityhownor0000farr Preview.]
* [[Robert Fogel|Fogel, Robert W.]] ''The Slavery Debates, 1952–1990: A Retrospective'', 2007.
* {{cite book |title=Deliver Us from Evil. The Slavery Question in the Old South |first=Lacy K. |last=Ford |year=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-511809-4}} [https://archive.org/details/deliverusfromevi0000ford_h1u1 Preview.]
* Fox-Amato, Matthew. ''Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America'' (Oxford University Press, 2019).
* {{cite journal |last1=Frey |first1=Sylvia R. |title=The Visible Church: Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau |journal=Slavery & Abolition |date=March 2008 |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=83–110 |doi=10.1080/01440390701841083 }}
* {{cite book |last=Hahn |first=Steven |title=A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration |year=2003 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Mass. |isbn=9780674017658}}
* Hettle, Wallace. "White Society in the Old South: The Literary Evidence Reconsidered", ''Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South'', Fall/Winter 2006, Vol. 13, Issue 3/4, pp. 29–44
* {{cite journal |last1=King |first1=Richard H. |title=Marxism and the Slave South |journal=American Quarterly |date=1977 |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=117–131 |doi=10.2307/2712264 |jstor=2712264 }}
* {{cite book |last=Klarman |first=Michael J. |author-link=Michael Klarman |title=Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2016 |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-994203-9}} [https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195304282/page/n5/mode/2up Preview]
* [[Peter Kolchin|Kolchin, Peter]]. "American Historians and Antebellum Southern Slavery, 1959–1984", in [[William J. Cooper, Jr.|William J. Cooper]], Michael F. Holt, and [[John McCardell]], eds., ''A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald'' (1985), 87–111
* {{cite journal |last1=Laurie |first1=Bruce |title=Workers, Abolitionists, and the Historians: A Historiographical Perspective |journal=Labor |date=December 2008 |volume=5 |issue=4 |pages=17–55 |doi=10.1215/15476715-2008-024 }}
* {{cite book |first1=August |last1=Meier |first2=Elliott M. |last2=Rudwick |title=Black history and the historical profession, 1915–80 |year=1986}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Neely |first1=Mark E. |authorlink1=Mark E. Neely, Jr. |title=Lincoln, Slavery, and the Nation |journal=The Journal of American History |date=2009 |volume=96 |issue=2 |pages=456–458 |doi=10.1093/jahist/96.2.456 |jstor=25622304 }}
* Parish; Peter J. ''Slavery: History and Historians'' Westview Press. 1989. [https://archive.org/details/slavery00pete/page/4/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite journal |last1=Penningroth |first1=Dylan |authorlink1=Dylan C. Penningroth |title=Writing Slavery's History |journal=OAH Magazine of History |date=2009 |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=13–20 |doi=10.1093/maghis/23.2.13 |jstor=40505983 }}
* Rael, Patrick. ''Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777–1865.'' Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2015.
* {{cite journal |last1=Sidbury |first1=James |title=Globalization, Creolization, and the Not-So-Peculiar Institution |journal=The Journal of Southern History |date=2007 |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=617–630 |doi=10.2307/27649484 |jstor=27649484 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Stuckey |first1=P. Sterling |title=Reflections on the Scholarship of African Origins and Influence in American Slavery |journal=The Journal of African American History |date=2006 |volume=91 |issue=4 |pages=425–443 |doi=10.1086/JAAHv91n4p425 |jstor=20064125 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Sweet |first1=John Wood |title=The Subject of the Slave Trade: Recent Currents in the Histories of the Atlantic, Great Britain, and Western Africa |journal=Early American Studies |date=2009 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=1–45 |doi=10.1353/eam.0.0011 |jstor=23546554 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Tadman |first1=Michael |title=The Reputation of the Slave Trader in Southern History and the Social Memory of the South |journal=American Nineteenth Century History |date=September 2007 |volume=8 |issue=3 |pages=247–271 |doi=10.1080/14664650701505117 }}
* Tulloch, Hugh. ''The Debate on the American Civil War Era'' (1998), ch. 2–4
{{refend}}
* {{cite book|first=Robert E. |last=Wright|title=Fubarnomics |location=Buffalo, N.Y.|publisher=Prometheus|year=2010}}
===Primary sources===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* [[Octavia V. Rogers Albert|Albert, Octavia V. Rogers]]. ''The House of Bondage Or Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves''. Oxford University Press, 1991. Primary sources with commentary. {{ISBN|0-19-506784-3}}
* {{cite book |title=Cotton is king: or, The culture of cotton, and its relation to Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce; to the free colored people; and to those who hold that slavery is in itself sinful |author=An American |location=Cincinnati |year=1855 |publisher=Moore, Wilstach, Keys |url=https://archive.org/details/cottoniskingorcu01chri |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Basker |first=James G. |author-link=James Basker |title=Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660–1810 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |location=New Haven, CT |url= |isbn=0-300-09172-9}} [https://archive.org/details/amazinggraceanth0000unse Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Berlin |editor1-first=Ira |editor1-link=Ira Berlin |editor2-last=Fields |editor2-first=Barbara J. |editor2-link=Barbara J. Fields |editor3-last=Miller |editor3-first=Steven F. |editor4-last=Reidy |editor4-first=Joseph P. |editor4-link=Joseph P. Reidy |editor5-last=Rowland |editor5-first=Leslie S. |title=Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War |publisher=The New Press |year=1992 |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781565841208/page/n3/mode/2up |isbn=1-56584-120-4 |ref=berlin1992}} [https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781565841208/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Berlin |editor1-first=Ira |editor1-mask=2 |editor2-last=Rowland |editor2-first=Leslie S. |title=Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era |publisher=The New Press |year=1997 |location=New York |url= |isbn=1-56584-026-7 |ref=berlin1997}} [https://archive.org/details/familiesfreedomd00irab/page/n5/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Berlin |editor1-first=Ira |editor1-mask=2 |editor2-last=Favreau |editor2-first=Marc |editor3-last=Miller |editor3-first=Steven F. |title=Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation |publisher=The New Press |year=1998 |location=New York |url= |isbn= |ref=berlin1998}}[https://archive.org/details/rememberingslave0000irab_h1y3/page/n5/mode/2up Preview].
* [[John W. Blassingame|Blassingame, John W.]], ed., ''Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies''. Louisiana State University Press, 1977.
* {{cite book |last=Douglass |first=Frederick |author-link=Frederick Douglass |editor-last=Morris |editor-first=Kenneth B. Jr. |title=[[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave|Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Written by Himself)]] |publisher=Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives |year=2017 |orig-date=1845 |location=Atlanta, GA |url= |isbn=978-0-9984730-2-4}} [https://archive.org/details/narrativeoflifeo0000doug_q4s0/page/n39/mode/2up Preview.]
* ——, "[[The Heroic Slave]]." ''Autographs for Freedom'', [[Julia Griffiths]], ed., Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1853. pp. 174–239. Available at the Documenting the American South website.
* ——, Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass, A Slave (Project Gutenberg)
* [[Missouri History Museum]] Archives [https://www.mohistory.org/files/archives_guides/SlaveryCollection.pdf Slavery Collection]
* Morgan, Kenneth, ed. ''Slavery in America: a reader and guide'' (University of Georgia Press, 2005.)
* [[George Rawick|Rawick, George P.]], ed., ''[[The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography]]''. 19 vols. Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972. Collection of WPA interviews made in the 1930s with ex-slaves
{{refend}}
===Scholarly books===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* Andrews, William L. (2019) ''Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865'' (Oxford University Press).
* {{cite book |author-link=Edward E. Baptist |last=Baptist |first=Edward E. |title=The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-465-00296-2 |ref=none}} [https://archive.org/details/halfhasneverbeen0000bapt_c1d5 Preview.]
* {{cite book |last1=Beckert |first1=Sven |title=Empire of Cotton: A Global History |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=UyyOAwAAQBAJ}} |date=2014 |publisher=[[Knopf Doubleday]] |isbn=978-0-385-35325-0 |author-link=Sven Beckert |ref=none}} [https://archive.org/details/empireofcottongl0000beck Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor1-first=Sven |editor1-last=Beckert |editor2-first=Seth |editor2-last=Rockman |editor1-link=Sven Beckert |title=Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-8122-4841-8 |ref=beckert2016}} [https://archive.org/details/slaverys-capitalism/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* Brady, Steven J. (2022) ''Chained to History: Slavery and US Foreign Relations to 1865'' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). [https://hdiplo.org/to/RT24-21 Online Reviews.]
* {{cite book |last=Finkelman |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Finkelman |title=Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |year=1996 |location=Armonk, NY |url= |isbn=978-1-56324-590-9 |ref=finkelman1996}} [https://archive.org/details/slaveryfoundersr0000fink Preview.]
* {{cite book |editor-last=Finkelman |editor-first=Paul |author-mask=2 |title=Slavery & The Law |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2002 |location=Lanham, MD |url= |isbn=0-945612-36-2 |ref=finkelman2002}} [https://archive.org/details/slaverylaw0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |title=New Directions in Slavery Studies: Commodification, Community, and Comparison |first=Jeff |last=Forret |author-link=Jeff Forret |publisher=[[Louisiana State University Press]] |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-8071-6115-9 |ref=forret2015}}
* Gellman, David Nathaniel. ''Emancipating New York: The politics of slavery and freedom, 1777–1827'' (LSU Press, 2006) [https://books.google.com/books?id=6G3T7KCh_3AC&dq=slavery+new+york&pg=PP9 Online.]
* {{cite book |first=Walter |last=Johnson |author-link=Walter Johnson (historian) |title=River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-674-04555-2 |ref=none}} [https://archive.org/details/riverofdarkdream0000john Preview.]
* Larson, Edward J. (2023) ''American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765–1795'' (W. W. Norton, 2023) [https://www.amazon.com/American-Inheritance-Liberty-Slavery-1765-1795/dp/0393882209/ Excerpt.]
* [[Kenneth O. Morgan|Morgan, Kenneth O.]] (2000) ''Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607–1800'' (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press). [https://archive.org/details/slaveryservitude0000morg/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* Parish, Peter J. (2022) ''Slavery: History and Historians'' (New York: Harper & Row). [https://archive.org/details/slavery00pete/page/n3/mode/2up Preview.]
* {{cite book |first=Andrés |last=Reséndez |author-link=Andrés Reséndez |title=[[The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America]] |year=2016 |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |isbn=978-0-544-94710-8}}
* {{cite book |first=Calvin |last=Schermerhorn |title=The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-300-19200-1 |ref=schermerhorn2015}}
* Schwalm, Leslie A. (1997) ''A Hard Hight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina'' (Chicago: University of Illinois Press). [https://archive.org/details/hardfightforwewo0000schw/page/n7/mode/2up Preview.]
{{refend}}
===Scholarly articles===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* Baker, Regina S. (2022) "The historical racial regime and racial inequality in poverty in the American south." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 127.6 (2022): 1721–1781. [https://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/820.pdf online]
* {{cite journal |last1=Hilt |first1=Eric |title=Revisiting Time on the Cross After 45 Years: The Slavery Debates and the New Economic History |journal=Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics |date=2020 |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=456–483 |doi=10.1353/cap.2020.0000 }}
* {{cite journal |title=Searching for Climax: Black Erotic Lives in Slavery and Freedom |first1=Treva B. |last1=Lindsey |first2=Jessica Marie |last2=Johnson |journal=Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism |volume=12 |number=2 |date=Fall 2014 |access-date=March 25, 2018 |pages=169+ |url=http://edb.pbclibrary.org:2084/apps/doc/A388827961/AONE?u=d0_mlpbcls&sid=AONE&xid=5d794dee |ref=none}}{{Dead link|date=June 2022|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Logan |first1=Trevon D. |title=American Enslavement and the Recovery of Black Economic History |journal=Journal of Economic Perspectives |date=May 2022 |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=81–98 |doi=10.1257/jep.36.2.81 |doi-access=free }}
* {{cite journal |author-link=Thomas A. McCarthy |last=McCarthy |first=Thomas |title=Coming to Terms with Our Past, Part II: On the Morality and Politics of Reparations for Slavery |journal=[[Political Theory (journal)|Political Theory]] |volume=32 |number=6 |date=December 2004 |pages=750–772 |doi=10.1177/0090591704268924 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Naidu |first1=Suresh |title=American slavery and labour market power |journal=Economic History of Developing Regions |date=2 January 2020 |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=3–22 |doi=10.1080/20780389.2020.1734312 }}
* {{cite journal |last=Singleton |first=Theresa A. |author-link=Theresa A. Singleton |title=The Archaeology of Slavery in North America |journal=[[Annual Review of Anthropology]] |volume=24 |year=1995 |pages=119–140 |doi=10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.001003 |ref=none}}
* {{cite journal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=phhLAQAAMAAJ |last=Turner |first=Edward Raymond |title=The First Abolition Society in the United States |journal=[[Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography]] |year=1912 |volume=36 |pages=92–109 |ref=none}}
{{refend}}
===Oral histories and autobiographies of ex-slaves===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |title=Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave |editor1-first=William L. |editor1-last=Andrews |editor2-first=Regina E. |editor2-last=Mason |date=2008 |isbn=978-0-19-534331-1 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]}}
* [[David W. Blight|Blight, David W.]] (2009). ''A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation''. Boston and New York: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. {{ISBN|978-0-15-101-232-9}}.
* {{cite book |title=Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery |first=Henry |last=Goings |publisher=[[University of Virginia Press]] |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-8139-3240-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bpuMd7z3klIC |editor1-first=Calvin |editor1-last=Schermerhorn |editor2-first=Michael |editor2-last=Plunkett |editor3-first=Edward |editor3-last=Gaynor |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=Before Freedom When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves |editor-first=Belinda |editor-last=Hurmence |date=1989 |isbn=978-0-89587-069-8 |publisher=[[Blair]] |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=Before Freedom: Forty-Eight Oral Histories of Former North & South Carolina Slaves |editor-first=Belinda |editor-last=Hurmence |publisher=[[New American Library|Mentor Books]] |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-451-62781-0 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk about Slavery: Twenty-One Oral Histories of Former North Carolina Slaves |editor-first=Belinda |editor-last=Hurmence |year=1990 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=Slavery Time When I Was Chillun |url=https://archive.org/details/slaverytimewheni00beli |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=[[G. P. Putnam's Sons]] |isbn=978-0-399-23194-0 |editor-first=Belinda |editor-last=Hurmence |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Virginia |date=1994 |editor-first=Belinda |editor-last=Hurmence |publisher=[[Blair]] |isbn=978-0-89587-118-3 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself |first=Harriet |last=Jacobs |author-link=Harriet Jacobs |publisher=[[Thayer & Eldridge]] |date=1861 |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html |editor-first=Lydia Maria |editor-last=Child |editor-link=Lydia Maria Child |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |title=God Struck Me Dead: Voices of Ex-Slaves |first=Clifton H. |last=Johnson |year=1993 |publisher=[[Pilgrim Press]] |isbn=978-0-8298-0945-9 |ref=none}}
{{refend}}
===Bibliographies===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Miller |first=Joseph C. |author-link=Joseph C. Miller |title=Slavery and Slaving in World History: A Bibliography, Volume I, 1900–1991 |publisher=Kraus International Publications |year=1993 |location=Millwood, NY |url=https://archive.org/details/slaveryslavingin0000mill/page/n5/mode/2up |isbn=0-527-63660-6 |ref=miller1993}}
* {{cite book |last=Miller |first=Joseph C. |author-mask=2 |title=Slavery and Slaving in World History: A Bibliography, Volume II, 1992–1996 |publisher=M.E. Sharpe, Inc. |year=1999 |location=Armonk, NY |url=https://archive.org/details/slaveryslavingin0002mill/page/n5/mode/2up |isbn=0-765-60279-2 |ref=miller1999}}
{{refend}}
===Discussions by foreigners===
* {{cite book|first=Charles|last=Dickens|author-link=Charles Dickens|chapter=Slavery|url=https://gutenberg.org/files/675/675-h/675-h.htm|title=American Notes for General Circulation|others=First published in 1842. See Louise H. Johnson, "The Source of the Chapter on Slavery in Dickens' ''American Notes''", ''American Literature,'' vol. 14, Jan. 1943, pp. 427–430|location=London|publisher=[[Chapman & Hall]]|year=1913}}
===Literary and cultural criticism===
* Ryan, Tim A. ''Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery Since'' Gone with the Wind. [[Baton Rouge]]: [[Louisiana State University Press]], 2008.
* [[William L. Van Deburg|Van Deburg, William]]. ''Slavery and Race in American Popular Culture''. [[Madison, Wisconsin|Madison]]: [[University of Wisconsin Press]], 1984.
===Documentary films===
* {{cite web|url=https://www.tracesofthetrade.org/|title=Traces of the Trade|website=Traces of the Trade|language=en-US|access-date=2019-03-19}}
==External links==
{{Commons category}}
{{wikisource portal|Slavery in the United States}}
{{Wikiquote}}
* [https://guides.loc.gov/slavery-in-america Slavery in America: A Resource Guide], [[Library of Congress]]
* [https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/ "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938"], Library of Congress
* [https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering-slavery/ "Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories"], audio interviews of former slaves, 1932–1975, Library of Congress
* [https://library.uncg.edu/slavery/ Digital Library on American Slavery] at [[University of North Carolina at Greensboro]]
* [https://www.abolitionseminar.org/lesson-plans/ The Abolitionist Seminar], summaries, lesson plans, documents and illustrations for schools; focus on United States
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051227154013/http://americanabolitionist.liberalarts.iupui.edu/index.htm American Abolitionism], summaries and documents; focus on United States
* [https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/ "Slavery and the Making of America"], [[WNET]] (4-part series)
* [https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery Slavery in America] at the History Channel
* [https://peoplenotproperty.hudsonvalley.org/ People Not Property], ''digital documentary on slavery in the North by Historic Hudson Valley''
* [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/ "Slavery in the United States"], ''Economic History Encyclopedia'', March 26, 2008
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ North American Slave Narratives], ''Documenting the American South'', [[Louis Round Wilson Library]]
* [https://www.slavevoyages.org/ The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database] has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages
* [https://yatlagniappe.com/2016/05/04/100-iconic-photos-of-new-orleans-through-the-ages/ 1850: New Orleans woman and child she held in slavery]
* [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation]. ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]''. August 14, 2019.
* [https://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/bib/ The Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving], [[University of Virginia]]: a searchable database of 25,000 scholarly works on slavery and the slave trade in all western European languages.
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