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Historians and experts examine the American system of racialized slavery and the hypocrisy it relied on to function.

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When Did Slavery Start in America?

In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

After the American Revolution, many colonists-particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy-began to link the oppression of enslaved Africans to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery's abolition.

Did you know? One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former enslaved man who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

But after the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, when it valued each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress. The Constitution's drafters also guaranteed the right to repossess any "person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton.

By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War. Though the Union victory freed the nation's four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after emancipation and beyond.

Cotton Gin

In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt.

Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand.

But in 1793, a young Yankee schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years, the South transitioned from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region's dependence on enslaved labor.

Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region's businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, most of the northern states abolished slavery or started the process to abolish slavery, but the institution of slavery remained vital to the South.

Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.

Living Conditions of Enslaved People

Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many masters owned fewer than 50 enslaved people.

Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted.

Many masters raped enslaved women, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved (from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters.

Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families. Most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.

Slave Rebellions

Rebellions among enslaved people did occur-notably, ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822-but few were successful.

The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner's group, which eventually numbered around 75 Black men, murdered some 55 white people in two days before armed resistance from local white people and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them.

Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner's rebellion as evidence that Black people were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them. And fears of similar insurrections led many southern states to further strengthen their slave codes in order to limit the education, movement and assembly of enslaved people.

Abolitionist Movement

In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by free Black people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious "free-labor" argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Free Black people and other antislavery northerners had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s.

Conductors like Harriet Tubmanguided escapees on their journey North, and " stationmasters" included such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Althoughestimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 enslaved people reach freedom.

The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North. It also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen's determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.

Missouri Compromise

America's explosive growth-and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century-would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion.

In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government's right to restrict slavery over Missouri's application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri's southern border were to be free soil.

Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was only temporarily able to help quell the forces of sectionalism.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War.

Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out-with considerable bloodshed-in the new state of Kansas.

Outrage in the North over the Kansas-Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court (involving an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

In 1859, two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery.

John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia-in which the abolitionist and 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown's sons raided and occupied a federal arsenal-resulted in the deaths of 10 people and Brown's hanging.

The insurrection exposed the growing national rift over slavery: Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists but was vilified as a mass murderer in the South.

Civil War

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War began.

Though Lincoln's anti-slavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation.

Abolition became a goal only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many people who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South.

When Did Slavery End?

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that "slaves within any State, or designated part of a State...in rebellion,...shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation didn't officially end all slavery in America-that would happen with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War's end in 1865-some 186,000 Black soldiers would join the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.

The Legacy of Slavery

The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples' status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

Previously enslaved men and women received the rights of citizenship and the "equal protection" of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment, but these provisions of the Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive Black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of Black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy-including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)-had triumphed in the South by 1877.

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which achieved the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.

America's First Memorial to its 4,400 Lynching Victims

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U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition | HISTORY

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Slavery in America was the legal institution of enslaving human beings, mainly Africans and African Americans. Slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 and became the main cause behind the country's bloody Civil War. Slavery officially ended in America with the passage of the 13th Amendment following the Civil War's end in 1865.

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The Five Greatest Slave Rebellions in the United States | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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The top five slave rebellions in the United States are described by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in this blog post.

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1. Henry "Box" Brown

After his wife and children were sold and shipped away to another state in 1848, Virginia-born Henry Brown resolved to escape slavery by any means necessary. With the help of a free black and a white shopkeeper, he hatched a desperate plan to ship himself from Richmond to Philadelphia in a wooden crate. On March 23, 1849, Brown wedged himself into a three by two foot box labeled "dry goods" and settled in for a long journey via wagon, steamboat and railroad to the home of abolitionist James Miller McKim. He only had a few biscuits and some water as supplies, and during one leg of the trip, his crate was placed upside down on the deck of a steamship. Brown was left sitting on his head for 90 minutes, his eyes "swelling as if they would burst from their sockets." He nearly passed out before two unsuspecting passengers flipped the box over to use it as a seat.

Brown arrived safely in Philadelphia after 27 grueling hours inside the cramped confines of the box. His incredible story made him a minor celebrity in New England, but he was soon forced to flee the country after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. "Box" Brown later spent several years in Great Britain hosting a stage act that documented his escape. He eventually returned to the United States in 1875 and worked as a magician. As part of each show, he would climb into the same wooden crate that had once carried him to freedom.

2. Frederick Douglass

In September 1838, 20-year-old slave Frederick Douglass fled his job as a Baltimore ship's caulker and boarded a train bound for the North. The young bondsman was disguised in a sailor's uniform provided by his future wife, Anna Murray, and carried a free sailor's protection pass loaned to him by an accomplice. He desperately hoped the papers would be enough to lead him to freedom, but there was a major obstacle: he bore hardly any resemblance to the man listed in the documents. When the conductor came to collect tickets and check the black passengers' papers, Douglass was nearly overcome with trepidation. "My whole future depended upon the decision of this conductor," he later wrote. Luckily for Douglass, the man only gave the phony sailors' pass a cursory glance before moving on to the next passenger.

Douglass would endure even more close calls as he made his way north by train and ferry. He encountered an old acquaintance on a riverboat, and was nearly spotted by a ship captain he had once worked for. After several tense hours, he arrived in New York, where he hid in the home of an anti-slavery activist and rendezvoused with Murray. The couple later moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Douglass established himself as one of the nation's leading abolitionists. He remained a fugitive slave under the law until 1846, when supporters helped him purchase his freedom from his former master.

3. Robert Smalls

Robert Smalls' incredible flight to freedom began in 1862, when he was working as a wheelman aboard the Confederate steamer CSS Planter in Charleston, South Carolina. When the Planter's white crew took an unauthorized shore leave in the early hours of May 13, Smalls and several accomplices sprang into action. After commandeering the ship, the slaves picked up their families at a rendezvous point and steamed into Charleston Harbor with Smalls at the helm disguised in the captain's coat and hat. Smalls knew both the ship and the mine-infested harbor like the back of his hand, and he was able to give the proper signals to win safe passage by Fort Sumter. Once out of the Confederate guns' firing range, he poured on the speed and made a mad dash for the Union blockade. Arriving under the white flag of surrender, the crew of runaways joyously offered up their ship to first U.S. Navy vessel they encountered. "Good morning, sir!" Smalls shouted to the astonished captain. "I have brought you some of the old United States' guns, sir!"

Smalls and his fellow escapees were hailed as heroes in the North, and their courage and cunning were held up as evidence that blacks could make good soldiers. Smalls later helped recruit as many as 5,000 blacks for the Union war effort, and served as the pilot and then later the captain of the Planter after it was refitted as a U.S. Navy vessel. After the war, he returned to South Carolina, bought his former master's house and went on to serve several terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

4. Harriet Jacobs

For Harriet Jacobs, escaping slavery meant hiding for several years in a prison of her own devising. Born a slave in North Carolina, Jacobs spent her teenage years living in fear of a cruel master who refused to let her marry and made repeated and increasingly brutal sexual advances toward her. When the harassment continued even after Jacobs had two children by another man, she resolved to make a break for freedom. In 1835, she fled her plantation and briefly hid in some friends' houses. Knowing her chances of making it to the North were slim, she eventually holed up in a small attic crawlspace in her grandmother's home. The rat-infested room was tiny-only nine feet long and seven feet wide, with a sloping ceiling that never reached higher than three feet-and Jacobs later wrote that it offered "no admission for either light or air." Nevertheless, she would spend an astonishing seven years living in the coffin-like space, watching her children play in the yard through a small peephole and only leaving for brief periods of nighttime exercise.

Jacobs finally made her escape to the North in 1842, after a friend helped her secure passage on a boat bound for Philadelphia. From there, she proceeded by train to New York and reunited with family members. She spent the next few years working in New York and Boston, but remained wary of being captured by her former master until friends helped arrange her purchase and manumission. Jacobs later became an influential abolitionist and published a searing account of her ordeal called "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."

5. William and Ellen Craft

For sheer creativity and daring, few slave escapes can match the 1848 getaway masterminded by William and Ellen Craft. The two had married in Macon, Georgia, in 1846, but were held in slavery by different masters. Terrified of being separated, they devised an ingenious plan to flee the Deep South for Philadelphia. The light-skinned Ellen cut her hair short, dressed herself in men's clothing and wrapped her head in bandages to pose as an injured white man. William, meanwhile, assumed the role of her loyal black manservant. On December 21, 1848, the Crafts donned their disguises and boarded a train to begin the long journey North. The scheme seemed doomed from the very start after Ellen found herself sitting next to a close friend of her master, but her elaborate costume prevented her from being recognized.

The Crafts spent the next several days traveling by train and steamer through the South, lodging in fine hotels and rubbing elbows with upper class whites to maintain their cover. Since she could not read or write, Ellen placed her arm in a sling to avoid signing tickets and papers, but her ruse was nearly found out when a Charleston steamer clerk refused to sell the pair their tickets without a signature. Luckily for the Crafts, the captain of their previous ship happened to pass by and agreed to sign for her. The Crafts arrived in Philadelphia on Christmas Day and were sheltered by abolitionists before continuing on to Boston. Fearing slave hunters, the couple later set sail for England, where they wrote a popular account of their escape and raised a family.

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After his wife and children were sold and shipped away to another state in 1848, Virginia-born Henry Brown resolved to escape slavery by any means necessary. With the help of a free black and a white shopkeeper, he hatched a desperate plan to ship himself from Richmond to Philadelphia in a wooden crate.

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This is a list of famous slaves. Many of these slaves are famous because they managed to fight back and escape.

Aesop. 6th century BC. A legendary figure from ancient Greece. He was reportedly a slave who won his freedom by his intelligence and cleverness. He wrote Aesop's tales, a collection of stories and fables.

Moses Moses was born among the people of Israel enslaved in Egypt. It was Moses who led the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea. He is considered a prophet of Judaism and Christianity.

Spartacus (c. 109-71 BC). Spartacus was a gladiator slave. He led a major slave uprising against the Roman Empire, in what was known as the Servile Revolt, he died in 71 BC.

Saint Patrick (387-c.460) was abducted from Wales and taken to Ireland as a slave. After a few years, he escaped from slavery and became a fervent Christian missionary. Saint Patrick is credited with helping Christianity to spread throughout Ireland and is the patron saint of Ireland.

Denmark Vesey (c.1767-1822) was an African American slave, and later a freeman from South Carolina. After gaining his freedom, he planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States. But details of rebellion were leaked and he was executed.

Sally Hemings (1773-1835) A mixed-race slave of Thomas Jefferson. She had six children of uncertain parenthood.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights campaigner. In 1851, gave a famous extemporaneous speech "Ain't I a woman?" which supported equal rights for blacks and women.

Dred Scott (c.1799-1858) was a slave who attempted to sue for his freedom in the court case Scott v. Sandford (1857). He lost the case, but the outrage at the decision deepened divisions between northern and southern states before the civil war.

John Brown (1800-1859) While not actually a slave, John Brown's actions made a big impact on the history of slavery in the US. A fervent white abolitionist who believed in armed insurrection against the institution of slavery. In 1859, he led an armed uprising in Harpers Ferry, Virginia aiming to free slaves and end the practice. He was executed for his attempted uprising. It was a factor in precipitating the American civil war.

William Harvey Carney (1840-1908) Born into slavery in Virginia, he escaped through the underground network. He fought in the American Civil War and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) A former slave, Douglass became a leading figurehead in the anti-slavery movement. One of the most prominent African American leaders of the Nineteenth Century. His autobiography of life as a slave, and his speeches denouncing slavery were influential in changing public opinion.

Sam Sharpe (1801-1832) was a slave for most of his life but was allowed to be educated. In 1831, he led a Christmas rebellion in Jamaica against slavery. Although the rebellion was defeated, it contributed to the 1833 abolition of slavery across the British Empire.

Nat Turner (1800 - 1831) African-American born into slavery. Turner led slaves and free blacks in an uprising against slavery. For two days, they killed slave owners and took matters into their own hands. He was later captured and executed.

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) The first black African slave to write about his experience as a slave. His book 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano ' played a pivotal role in turning public opinion in Britain against slavery.

Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) Former slave who escaped and gained his freedom. His writings about his experiences provided a vivid first-hand account of the cruelty of slavery and also the humanity and personalities of former slaves.

Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915) Born into slavery, he was freed in 1865 at the end of the American civil war. He became a noted author, orator, and adviser to the presidents of Roosevelt and Taft. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, he was often considered the de facto leader of African-Americans. He advocated an incremental approach to improving education and life prospects of black Americans. He wrote about his experiences "Up from Slavery" (1901)

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. "Famous Slaves", Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net, 01/12/2013. Updated 25 July 2018.

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Famous African-Americans A list of inspirational black men and women. Including Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Desmond Tutu, Mohammad Ali, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.

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This is a list of famous slaves. Many of these slaves are famous because they managed to fight back and escape. Aesop. 6th century BC. A legendary figure from ancient Greece. He was reportedly a slave who won his freedom by his intelligence and cleverness. He wrote Aesop's tales, a collection of stories and fables.