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.
Robert Ward Johnson was an American planter and lawyer who served as the senior Confederate States senator for Arkansas, a seat that he was elected to in 1861. He previously served as a delegate from Arkansas to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862.
Richard Keith Call was an American attorney, politician, and slave owner who served as the 3rd and 5th territorial governor of Florida. Before that, he was elected to the Florida Territorial Council and as a delegate to the U.S. Congress from Florida. In the mid-1830s, he developed two plantations in Leon County, Florida, one of which was several thousand acres in size. In 1860 he held more than 120 slaves and was the third-largest slaveholder in the county. He was also a Southern Unionist opposed to Florida's secession during the American Civil War.
Col. James Madison Sr. was a prominent Virginia planter and politician who served as a colonel in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War. He inherited Mount Pleasant, later known as Montpelier, a large tobacco plantation in Orange County, Virginia and, with the acquisition of more property, had 5,000 acres and became the largest landowner in the county. He was the father of James Madison Jr., the 4th president of the United States, who inherited what he called Montpelier, and Lieutenant General William Taylor Madison, and great-grandfather of Confederate Brigadier General James Edwin Slaughter.
Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.
The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state, until the end of the Civil War. In 1830, enslaved African Americans represented 24 percent of Kentucky's population, a share that had declined to 19.5 percent by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. Most enslaved people were concentrated in the cities of Louisville and Lexington and in the hemp- and tobacco-producing Bluegrass Region and Jackson Purchase. Other enslaved people lived in the Ohio River counties, where they were most often used in skilled trades or as house servants. Relatively few people were held in slavery in the mountainous regions of eastern and southeastern Kentucky; they served primarily as artisans and service workers in towns.
In the United States, Southern Unionists were white Southerners living in the Confederate States of America opposed to secession. Many fought for the Union during the Civil War. These people are also referred to as Southern Loyalists, Union Loyalists, or Lincoln's Loyalists. Pro-Confederates in the South derided them as "Tories". During Reconstruction, these terms were replaced by "scalawag", which covered all Southern whites who supported the Republican Party.
James Byeram Owens was a slaveowner and American politician who served as a Deputy from Florida to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862. He mounted legal arguments in defense of secession based on an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and Southern arguments in favor of states' rights, with the intention of protecting the practice and institution of slavery.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again. According to Time on the Cross - The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Drs. Fogel and Engerman, who used scientific methods, the cruelty of slavery has been exaggerated by historians.
Joseph Emory Davis was an American lawyer who became one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi in the antebellum era; he owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who owned more than 300 slaves. He was the elder brother of Jefferson Davis and acted as his surrogate father for several years. The younger Davis became a politician, U.S. Senator, and later President of the Confederacy.
Stephen Duncan was an American planter and banker in Mississippi. He was born and studied medicine in Pennsylvania, but moved to Natchez District, Mississippi Territory in 1808 and became the wealthiest cotton planter and the second-largest slave owner in the United States with over 2,200 slaves. He owned 15 cotton and sugar plantations, served as President of the Bank of Mississippi, and held major investments in railroads and lumber.
The Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book is a best-selling and pioneering guide to farm accounting in the antebellum cotton-producing regions of the United States. It was first published in 1847 or 1848 by Thomas Affleck (1812–1868), a Scottish immigrant and owner of the Glenblythe Plantation in Gay Hill, Washington County, Texas. The book contains a detailed system, including blank tables to be filled in, that allowed plantation owners to track the efficiency of their production. It also includes essays on various aspects of plantation management, such as the proper care and discipline of slaves.
Mount Holly was a historic Southern plantation in Foote, Mississippi. Built in 1855, it was visited by many prominent guests, including Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It was later acquired by ancestors of famed Civil War novelist Shelby Foote, who wrote a novel about it. It burned down on June 17, 2015.
The Junius R. Ward House is a historic house and former Southern plantation in Erwin, Mississippi.
Sally Ward Lawrence Hunt Armstrong Downs, also known as Sallie Ward, was a "Southern belle." Born into the Southern aristocracy of Kentucky in the Antebellum South, she married four times. After a failed marriage into the Boston Brahmin elite, she married three more times and became a socialite in New Orleans and Louisville, Kentucky. She was one of the first women in the United States to wear cosmetics, and she wore daring outfits. She embodied "an old Kentucky way of life."
Lycurgus Johnson (1818–1876) was an American cotton planter and large slaveholder in the Arkansas Delta during the antebellum years. Born to the powerful political and planter Johnson family in Scott County, Kentucky, he became the owner and developer of the Lakeport Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas. It bordered the west bank of the Mississippi River.
Kate Stone, was an American diarist and community leader. She was the daughter of a wealthy cotton farmer and slaveholder in the Southern United States. She is remembered in American history and literature for her diary, Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1865, edited by John Q. Anderson, which she kept during the time of the American Civil War, printed in 1955, which she kept continuously from May 1861 to November 1865; shorter supplements date from 1867 and 1868. Stone died in 1907.
Sarah Johnson was an African American woman who was born into slavery at Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate in Fairfax, Virginia. She worked as a domestic, cleaning and caring for the residence. During the process, she became an informal historian of all of the mansion's furnishings. After the end of the Civil War, she was hired by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, ultimately becoming a council member of the organization. She bought four acres of Mount Vernon land to establish a small farm. The book Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon (2008) tells the story of her life within the complex community of people who inhabited Mount Vernon.
