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 (outside of several historically significant exceptions including the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857, et al.) As such, slavery flourished in some states (mostly southern), and withered on the vine in others (mostly northern). 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. (Vermont and New York had clear and absolute freedom dates; Massachusetts and New Hampshire were de facto free states with total abolition from the American Revolution forward.)
For many years after the establishment of the republic, new states were admitted in pairs, so-called free state–slave state twins, so that some states entered the Union with guaranteed "free soil" while their twin permitted the continuation and expansion of America's peculiar institution. Fifteen states (in order of admission, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas) never sought to end slavery, and thus bondage and the slave trade continued in those places, and there was even a movement to reopen the transatlantic slave trade. With the admission of California, Oregon, and Iowa as free states, and the prospective admission of Kansas Territory (likely as a free state), with the commensurate increasing political power of free-state legislators in the United States Congress, the political status quo began to disintegrate. This shift convinced the Slave Power's most influential and vocal leaders that secession was the only way to retain long-term control of both their wealth held in slaves and their political power. (Under the Three-Fifths Compromise brokered at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, enslaved people were considered additional population for purposes of apportionment. The prospective end of slavery would have thus deprived slave owners of the disproportionate representation of their interests in the national legislature, relative not just the people they enslaved but to free white male voters in other states.) Ultimately, a massive and devastating four-year-long war resolved the interstate conflict over slavery, and when rebel state governments were finally overwhelmed by force of arms, various civilian and military representatives of the U.S. government emancipated those people who remained legally enslaved. Slavery in the United States was legally abolished nationwide within the 36 newly reunited states under the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, effective December 18, 1865.
The federal district, which is legally part of no state and under the sole jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress, permitted slavery until the American Civil War. For the history of the abolition of the slave trade in the district and the federal government's one and only compensated emancipation program, see slavery in the District of Columbia.
State | Civil War allegiance | Date ratified 13th Amendment [1] | Prior state-wide abolition | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Alabama | CSA | December 2, 1865 | ||
Arkansas | CSA | April 14, 1865 | ||
California | USA | December 20, 1865 | September 9, 1850 (statehood) [2] | |
Connecticut | USA | May 4, 1865 | 1848 [3] | Connecticut passed partial abolition laws and time-delayed manumission laws beginning in 1784. [3] |
Delaware | USA | February 19, 1901 | Delaware was a slave state but did not secede to the Confederacy. | |
Florida | CSA | December 28, 1865 | ||
Georgia | CSA | December 6, 1865 | ||
Illinois | USA | February 1, 1865 | April 1, 1848 [4] | Chattel slavery was prohibited in Illinois at statehood under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance; indentured servitude was not prohibited until the Second Illinois Constitution of 1848. [4] |
Indiana | USA | February 6, 1865 | December 11, 1816 (statehood) [5] | |
Iowa | USA | January 17, 1866 | December 28, 1846 (statehood) [6] | |
Kansas | USA | February 7, 1865 | January 29, 1861 (statehood) [7] | |
Kentucky | Dual government | March 18, 1976 | ||
Louisiana | CSA | February 1865 | Louisiana ratified the Thirteenth Amendment on either Feb. 15 or 16. | |
Maryland | USA | February 3, 1865 | November 1, 1864 [8] | |
Massachusetts | USA | February 7, 1865 | Massachusetts was for intents and purposes a free state with total abolition from the American Revolution forward. [9] | |
Maine | USA | February 7, 1865 | March 15, 1820 (statehood) [10] | The pre-statehood District of Maine was legally a part of Massachusetts; Maine was admitted as Missouri's free-state "twin" under the Missouri Compromise. |
Michigan | USA | February 2, 1865 | January 26, 1837 (statehood) [11] | |
Minnesota | USA | February 23, 1865 | May 11, 1858 (statehood) [12] | |
Missouri | Dual government | February 6, 1865 | ||
Mississippi | CSA | February 7, 2013 [13] | ||
Nevada | USA | February 16, 1865 | October 31, 1864 (statehood) [lower-alpha 1] | Nevada was admitted to the Union during the Civil War, thus its state nickname is Battle-Born. |
New Hampshire | USA | June 30, 1865 | The legal status of slavery in New Hampshire has been described as "ambiguous," [15] and abolition legislation was minimal or non-existent. [16] New Hampshire never passed a state law abolishing slavery. [17] That said, New Hampshire was a free state with no slavery to speak of from the American Revolution forward. [9] | |
New Jersey | USA | January 23, 1866 | April 18, 1846 [18] | New Jersey had some gradual manumission laws prior to 1846, resulting in a "continuum" of servitude statuses that persisted until the Civil War. [18] |
New York | USA | February 3, 1865 | July 4, 1827 [19] | |
North Carolina | CSA | December 4, 1865 | ||
Ohio | USA | February 10, 1865 | February 19, 1803 (statehood) | |
Oregon | USA | December 11, 1865 | February 14, 1859 (statehood) [20] [lower-alpha 2] | |
Pennsylvania | USA | February 8, 1865 | March 1, 1780 [21] | Pennsylvania's gradual emancipation system meant that enslavement and indentured servitude continued until 1847. [21] |
Rhode Island | USA | February 2, 1865 | 1843 [22] | Rhode Island passed gradual emancipation laws after the American Revolution. [9] |
South Carolina | CSA | November 13, 1865 | ||
Tennessee | CSA | April 7, 1865 | October 24, 1864 (Moses speech declaration by military governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson), [23] and state constitutional amendment certified February 27, 1865 [24] | |
Texas | CSA | February 17, 1870 | June 19, 1865 (Juneteenth declaration by U.S. Army) [25] | |
Vermont | USA | March 9, 1865 | March 4, 1791 (statehood) [26] | Constitution of the Vermont Republic abolished slavery effective July 2, 1777. [26] |
Virginia | CSA | February 9, 1865 | ||
West Virginia | Dual government | February 3, 1865 | The Appalachian counties of Virginia separated from the rest of the state during the Civil War. Gradual emancipation was written in West Virginia state constitution of 1863. [27] | |
Wisconsin | USA | February 24, 1865 | May 29, 1848 (statehood) |
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 people around the world.
Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the end of slavery. Its name is a portmanteau of "June" and "nineteenth", as it is celebrated on the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when as the American Civil War was ending, Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas. Originating in Galveston, Juneteenth has since been observed annually in various parts of the United States, often broadly celebrating African-American culture.
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.
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 his or her owner.
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, 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.
Slavery in New Jersey began in the early 17th century, when Dutch colonists trafficked African slaves for labor to develop the colony of New Netherland. After England took control of the colony in 1664, its colonists continued the importation of slaves from Africa. They also imported "seasoned" slaves from their colonies in the West Indies and enslaved Native Americans from the Carolinas.
The New-York Manumission Society was an American organization founded in 1785 by U.S. Founding Father John Jay, among others, to promote the gradual abolition of slavery and manumission of slaves of African descent within the state of New York. The organization was made up entirely of white men, most of whom were wealthy and held influential positions in society. Throughout its history, which ended in 1849 after the abolition of slavery in New York, the society battled against the slave trade, and for the eventual emancipation of all the slaves in the state. It founded the African Free School for the poor and orphaned children of slaves and free people of color.
The history of slavery in Texas began slowly at first during the first few phases in Texas' history. Texas was a colonial territory, then part of Mexico, later Republic in 1836, and U.S. state in 1845. The use of slavery expanded in the mid-nineteenth century as White American settlers, primarily from the Southeastern United States, crossed the Sabine River and brought enslaved people with them. Slavery was present in Spanish America and Mexico prior to the arrival of American settlers, but it was not highly developed, and the Spanish did not rely on it for labor during their years in Spanish Texas.
Slavery was practiced in Massachusetts bay by Native Americans before European settlement, and continued until its abolition in the 1700s. Although slavery in the United States is typically associated with the Caribbean and the Antebellum American South, enslaved people existed to a lesser extent in New England: historians estimate that between 1755 and 1764, the Massachusetts enslaved population was approximately 2.2 percent of the total population; the slave population was generally concentrated in the industrial and coastal towns. Unlike in the American South, enslaved people in Massachusetts had legal rights, including the ability to file legal suits in court.
Slavery in what became the U.S. state of Illinois existed for more than a century. Illinois did not become a state until 1818, but earlier regional systems of government had already established slavery. France introduced African slavery to the Illinois Country in the early eighteenth century. French and other inhabitants of Illinois continued the practice of owning slaves throughout the Illinois Country's period of British rule (1763–1783), as well as after its transfer to the new United States in 1783 as Illinois County, Virginia. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) banned slavery in Illinois and the rest of the Northwest Territory. Nonetheless, slavery remained a contentious issue, through the period when Illinois was part of the Indiana Territory and the Illinois Territory and some slaves remained in bondage after statehood until their gradual emancipation by the Illinois Supreme Court. Thus the history of slavery in Illinois covers several sometimes overlapping periods: French ; British ; Virginia ; United States Northwest Territory (1787–1800), Indiana Territory (1800–1809), Illinois Territory (1809–1818) and the State of Illinois.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery for non-criminals through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Gradual emancipation was a legal mechanism used by some 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.
From the late-18th to the mid-19th century, various states of the United States of America 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 slavery was established in North America in the 16th century under Spanish colonization, British colonization, French colonization, and Dutch colonization.
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