From the late 18th to the mid-19th century, various states of the United States allowed the enslavement of human beings, most of whom had been transported from Africa during the Atlantic slave trade or were their descendants. The institution of chattel slavery was established in North America in the 16th century under Spanish colonization, British colonization, French colonization, and Dutch colonization.
After the United States was founded in 1776, the country split into slave states (states permitting slavery) and free states (states prohibiting slavery). Slavery became concentrated in the Southern United States. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807 banned the Atlantic slave trade, but not the domestic slave trade or slavery itself. Slavery was finally ended throughout the entire country after the American Civil War (1861–1865), in which the U.S. government defeated a confederation of rebelling slave states that attempted to secede from the U.S. in order to preserve the institution of slavery. During the war, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which ordered the liberation of all slaves in rebelling states. In December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, abolishing chattel slavery nationwide. Native American slave ownership also persisted until 1866, when the federal government negotiated new treaties with the "Five Civilized Tribes" in which they agreed to end slavery. [1] In June 2021, Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S., became a federal holiday.
On 22 August 1791, the Haitian Revolution began; it concluded in 1804 with the independence of Haiti. Slavery in Haiti thus came to an end, and Haiti became the second country on the planet that abolished slavery (after the United Kingdom in 1772). [2] [3]
In 1804, Alexander von Humboldt visited the United States and expressed the idea that slavery was not a good way to treat citizens; this was during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Humboldt's ideas were expanded by the following generation of American politicians, writers, and clergymen, among them Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson. [4] [5] [6]
The growing abolition movement sought to gradually or immediately end slavery in the United States. It was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, which culminated in the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Civil War in the United States from 1861 until 1865 was between the United States of America ("the Union" or "the North") and the Confederate States of America (Southern states that voted to secede: "the Confederacy" or "the South"). [a] The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into newly acquired land after the Mexican–American War. On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, four million of the 32 million Americans (nearly 13 percent) were black enslaved people, mainly in the southern United States. [7]
The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century; decades of political unrest over slavery led up to the war. At the start of the Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which permitted slavery. Before Lincoln took office, seven of these slave states, after conventions devoted to the topic, issued declarations of secession from the United States and created the Confederate States of America. Four more joined them after the war began, and all eleven were represented in the Confederate Congress. [8] [9] The slave states that stayed in the Union — Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky (called border states) — continued to be represented in the U.S. Congress. Because the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863, applied only to states "in rebellion", it did not apply in the border states, nor in Tennessee, because Tennessee was already under Union control. [10] During the war, the abolition of slavery was required by President Abraham Lincoln for the readmission of Confederate states. [11]
The U.S. Congress, after the departure of the powerful Southern contingent in 1861, was generally anti-slavery. In a plan endorsed by Abraham Lincoln, slavery in the District of Columbia, which the Southern contingent had protected, was abolished in 1862. [12] The Union-occupied territories of Louisiana [13] and eastern Virginia, [14] which had been exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, also abolished slavery through state constitutions drafted in 1864. The State of Arkansas, which was not exempt but came partly under Union control by 1864, adopted an anti-slavery constitution in March of that year. [15] The border states of Maryland (November 1864) [16] and Missouri (January 1865), [17] and the Union-occupied Confederate state, Tennessee (January 1865), [18] all abolished slavery prior to the end of the Civil War, as did the new state of West Virginia (February 1865), [19] which had separated from Virginia in 1863 over the issue of slavery. However, slavery persisted in Delaware, [20] Kentucky, [21] and (to a very limited extent) in New Jersey [22] [23] — and on the books in 7 of 11 of the former Confederate states.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. [24] Lincoln preceded it with the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which read:
On January 1, 1863, the Proclamation changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as an enslaved person escaped the control of his or her master, either by running away across Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, the person was permanently free. Ultimately, the Union victory brought the proclamation into effect in all of the former Confederacy.
On June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth — U.S. Army general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced General Order No. 3, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas, [26] which was the last state of the Confederacy with slavery. Juneteenth has been celebrated annually on June 19 ever since in various parts of the United States. It became a federal holiday in the United States on June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. [27] [28] It is observed not only to commemorate the emancipation of African-American slaves but also to celebrate African-American culture.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), emancipation came at different times to different places in the Southern United States. Large celebrations of emancipation, often called Jubilees (recalling the biblical Jubilee in which enslaved people were freed) occurred on September 22, January 1, July 4, August 1, April 6, and November 1, among other dates. Although June 19, 1865, was not the actual end of slavery even in Texas (like the Emancipation Proclamation, General Gordon's military order had to be acted upon), and although it has competed with other dates for emancipation's celebration, [29] ordinary African Americans created, preserved, and spread a shared commemoration of slavery's wartime demise across the United States. [26]
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865. [30] The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the 27th of the then 36 states, fulfilling the constitutional requirement of ratification by 3/4 of states, on December 6, 1865. [30] Secretary of State William H. Seward announced the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865. [30]
The Thirteenth Amendment was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War, [31] the other two being the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
The end of slavery effectively occurred with the federal Padrone Act of 1874 (18 Stat. 251), which was enacted on June 23, 1874, "in response to exploitation of immigrant children in forced begging and street crime by criminalizing the practice of enslaving, buying, selling, or holding any person in involuntary servitude." [32]
Since the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, efforts have been made to eliminate other forms of slavery. In 1890, the Brussels Conference Act adopted a collection of anti-slavery measures to end the slave trade on land and sea. In 1904, the International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic was signed. In 1926, the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery was ratified.
Even after slavery became illegal more than a century ago, many criminal organizations continued to engage in human trafficking and slave trading. For this reason, human trafficking was made a federal crime. In 2000, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 was signed.
In 2014, the Human Trafficking Prevention Act was created. It amended the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 to require training for federal government personnel related to trafficking in persons. [33] On 12 Dec 2000 the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was put in charge of implementing the protocol. In 2002, the Polaris Project was founded. [34] Polaris is one of the few organizations working on all forms of trafficking, including both sex trafficking and labor trafficking. It furnishes support for survivors, whether male, female, transgender, or children, and whether U.S. citizens or foreign nationals. [35]
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Proclamation had the effect of changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States". The Emancipation Proclamation played a significant part in the end of slavery in the United States.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", as it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War. In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved were freed by the victorious Union Army, or abolition laws in some of the remaining U.S. states. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing. Involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime is still legal in the United States.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to their owner. Enforcement of these laws became one of the controversies which arose between slave and free states.
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the Caribbean and areas of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of slaves of African descent.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln frequently expressed his moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework and in the economy of much of the country, even though concentrated in only the Southern United States, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence.
The African slave trade was first brought to Alabama when the region was part of the French Louisiana Colony.
Slavery played the central role during the American Civil War. The primary catalyst for secession was slavery, especially Southern political leaders' resistance to attempts by Northern antislavery political forces to block the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Slave life went through great changes, as the South saw Union Armies take control of broad areas of land. During and before the war, enslaved people played an active role in their own emancipation, and thousands of enslaved people escaped from bondage during the war.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime, through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Slavery in Florida occurred among indigenous tribes and during Spanish rule. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida. Florida became a slave state, seceded, and passed laws to exile or enslave free blacks. Even after abolition, forced labor continued.
The history of slavery in Mississippi began when the region was still Mississippi Territory and continued until abolition in 1865. The U.S. state of Mississippi had one of the largest populations of enslaved people in the Confederacy, third behind Virginia and Georgia. There were very few free people of color in Mississippi the year before the American Civil War: the ratio was one freedman for every 575 enslaved person.
General Order No. 3 was an American legal decree issued in 1865 enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation to the residents of the U.S. state of Texas and freeing all remaining slaves in the state. The general order was issued by Union General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, upon arriving at Galveston, Texas, at the end of the American Civil War and two and a half years after the original issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The order, and Granger's enforcement of it, is the central event commemorated by the holiday of Juneteenth, which originally celebrated the end of slavery in Texas.
Gradual emancipation was a legal mechanism used by some U.S. states to abolish slavery over some time, such as An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery of 1780 in Pennsylvania.
The history of slavery in Colorado began centuries before Colorado achieved statehood when Spanish colonists of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (1598–1848) enslaved Native Americans, called Genízaros. Southern Colorado was part of the Spanish territory until 1848. Comanche and Utes raided villages of other indigenous people and enslaved them.
In the District of Columbia, the slave trade was legal from its creation until it was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850. That restrictions on slavery in the District were probably coming was a major factor in the retrocession of the Virginia part of the District back to Virginia in 1847. Thus the large slave-trading businesses in Alexandria, such as Franklin & Armfield, could continue their operations in Virginia, where slavery was more secure.
Following the creation of the United States in 1776 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the legal status of slavery was generally a matter for individual U.S. state legislatures and judiciaries As such, slavery flourished in some states, and withered on the vine in others. On the whole, the former Thirteen Colonies abolished slavery relatively slowly, if at all, with several Northern states using gradual emancipation systems in which freedom would be granted after so many years of life or service.