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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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Meet Dred Scott for Black History Month: featured Cartoon for Kids with Dred Scott (Black History)

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Dred Scott v. Sandford | Homework Help from the Bill of Rights Institute

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Douglass, the Republican Party and the Kansas Nebraska Act

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Douglass, the Republican Party and the Kansas Nebraska Act

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How one piece of legislation divided a nation - Ben Labaree, Jr.

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You may think that things are heated in Washington today, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had members of Congress so angry they pulled out their weapons -- and formed the Republican Party. The issues? Slavery and states' rights, which led the divided nation straight into the Civil War.

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Interactive Map Comparing North and South 

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Interactive Map Comparing North and South 

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Children will examine the life of Harriet Tubman and identify the character traits that made her a hero.

Social Studies Focus:

history, American heroes

key details, use vocabulary

Page 4 Skill:

key details

Vocabulary:

enslaved, illegal, clever, disguises, inspired

RI.2.1, RI.2.4, L.2.6, RI.2.10, SL.2.3

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Children will examine the life of Harriet Tubman and identify the character traits that made her a hero. Social Studies Focus: history, American heroes key details, use vocabulary Page 4 Skill: key details Vocabulary: enslaved, illegal, clever, disguises, inspired RI.2.1, RI.2.4, L.2.6, RI.2.10, SL.2.3

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Article and Graphs Comparing North and South

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Article and Graphs Comparing North and South

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A radical activist who calls for an immediate end to slavery, political and legal equality for African Americans, and denounces colonization schemes.

The time period before the Civil War.

A group of united southern states that formed the Confederate States of America, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. These states voted to secede from the United States between 1860 and 1861.

A system for selecting individuals from a group for military service.

A system under which people are treated as property, to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.

A system under which people are treated as property, to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.

One who flees or tries to escape slavery.

Kings County, New York originally consisted of six colonial towns: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, and New Utrecht. During the 19th Century, as Brooklyn transformed from town to city, it absorbed some of the other towns.

Legal process for enslaved Africans to purchase their own freedom or be emancipated by slaveholder.

Arrangements made between people of a community to assist each other.

A technique used to sway people's opinions, adopt a certain behavior, or perform a particular action.

The act of formally withdrawing from a political federation.

Abstinence from alcohol and the belief that it is wrong to drink.

A network of people and secret escape routes used by fugitives of slavery.

The name given to the group of states that were opposed to the secession of the Confederate states in the South. The Union states included California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The name given to the segregated troops of African-American men who fought in the Civil War.

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A radical activist who calls for an immediate end to slavery, political and legal equality for African Americans, and denounces colonization schemes. The time period before the Civil War. A group of united southern states that formed the Confederate States of America, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

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Read more about Brooklyn Abolitionists

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Henry Ward Beecher was the son of Reverend Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. A graduate of Amherst College and Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, Beecher became the inaugural pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights. The church was founded in 1847 by a group of Brooklyn Heights residents who held anti-slavery views.

By the 1850s, Beecher had gained a national reputation for his commitment to abolitionism, theatrical preaching style, and ability to fundraise for anti-slavery causes. He assisted in the emancipation of a number of young women and his congregation raised money for the purchase of rifles, called "Beecher's Bibles," intended to arm anti-slavery protestors in Kansas. In the lead-up the Civil War, Beecher edited the anti-slavery newspaper the Independent. At the end of the War, he was invited to speak at the raising of the flag at Fort Sumter based on his national reputation. His later life was overshadowed by the Beecher-Tilton scandal in which he was accused of infidelity.

Peter Croger birthed Brooklyn's anti-slavery movement. He was born in New York and moved to Brooklyn sometime before 1810. With his brother Benjamin, he established the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society in 1810, a mutual aid society for African Americans. In 1815, he opened a school at his home on James Street to educate people of African descent during gradual emancipation. He was a church trustee and founder of Brooklyn's AME Church. Peter Croger and his family later moved to Pearl Street, where his neighbors included his brother Benjamin Croger and Weeksville land investor Sylvanus Smith. Peter Croger died in 1848.

Benjamin Croger was born in New York in 1789 and moved to Brooklyn sometime before 1810. He was a pioneer and birthed Brooklyn's anti-slavery movement. He and his brother Peter helped to found the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society, a mutual aid society and Brooklyn's AME Church. They led Brooklyn's first wave of anti-slavery activism during gradual emancipation. Benjamin Croger was also a temperance advocate and led the Brooklyn Temperance Association. Like many Brooklynites, the Crogers signed anti-slavery petitions to Congress.

ca. 1817, Virginia - August 9, 1883, Brooklyn, NY
Businesswoman, Abolitionist, Downtown Brooklyn resident.

James Gloucester was the son of John Gloucester, the founder of the first Black Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. In 1847, James became the founding pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church, in Brooklyn. He also served as principal of the African School in Carsville and supported Lewis Tappan's American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

James married Elizabeth Gloucester in 1838 and moved to Brooklyn in the late 1840s. The couple were close friends and colleagues with Frederick Douglass and John Brown, and offered financial support for Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. After Elizabeth died in 1883, James became a physician and moved to Long Island.

Elizabeth Gloucester was born in Virginia and moved to Philadelphia at age 6. She married Presbyterian minister James Gloucester and the couple moved to Brooklyn. Elizabeth was heavily involved in fundraising for Siloam Presbyterian Church, and the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York. During the Civil War and in its aftermath, she led fundraising efforts for freedmen and Union soldiers through the Ladies National Union Fair and the American Freedmen's Friend Society.

Elizabeth was an astute businesswoman and owned several rental properties in Brooklyn as well as a boarding house on Remsen Street. When she died, on August 8, 1883, many prominent figures in Brooklyn and Manhattan, both black and white, attended her funeral. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle stated that she was one of the richest women in the country, worth around $2.25 million in today's money.

Publisher, Brooklyn resident.
William Harned spent his early years in Philadelphia's Quaker community, where he was active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Around 1840, he moved to New York to work for the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. By 1847, Harned was a Brooklyn resident. He lived on Smith Street, then at 130 Bridge Street, and finally, Duffield Street.

In 1850, Harned published a pamphlet protesting the Fugitive Slave Law and the unjust arrest of New Yorker James Hamlet. He also served as treasurer for the New York State Vigilance Committee and assistant treasurer for the American Missionary Association. He worked closely with abolitionists Lewis Tappan and James Pennington.

Willis Hodges followed his brother William to New York and then Williamsburg. Dissatisfied with the occupations available to African American men in antebellum New York, the two brothers opened their own temperance grocery store at William's home on South 8th Street. Willis then bought a lot on South 7th Street, where he built his own home.

He co-founded the newspaper the Ram's Horn with Manhattanite Thomas Van Rensellaer. He was introduced to John Brown through the newspaper and a decade-long friendship ensued. Together, the Hodges brothers established an African school in Williamsburg (later Colored School #3) and were early supporters of Lincoln's Republican Party. During Reconstruction, Willis was active in Virginia politics and educational initiatives.

Simeon Jocelyn led an African American congregational church in New Haven, CT before moving to Brooklyn. By the mid-1840s, he settled in Williamsburg, where he served as pastor of First Congregational Church. He attended the first annual black convention in Philadelphia in 1831, along with his white abolitionist colleagues, Arthur Tappan and William Lloyd Garrison. In 1846, he founded the American Missionary Association (AMA), along with Lewis Tappan and James Pennington. The AMA was created in response to the sensational Amistad trial. When Africans attempted to resist their enslavement by attempting to overthrow the Spanish crew on board the schooner Amistad, they crashed into Long Island. With abolitionist support, the Africans eventually returned to Sierra Leone. In the 1850 census, Jocelyn was listed as an engraver, living with his wife Harriet and six children. His brother Nathaniel was also an engraver and created portraits of the Amistad freedom fighters including Joseph Cinque.

Jocelyn's funeral service was held at the New New-England Congregational Church on South 9th Street, Williamsburg. African American men and women attended his funeral. New York abolitionist Charles Ray called Jocelyn "one of the bravest advocates of the anti-slavery cause."

North Carolina-born Junius Morel moved to Brooklyn from Philadelphia where became a journalist, lecturer, political activist, and prominent citizen of Weeksville. For more than 30 years, he served as principal of the black school there, called Colored School No. 2.

A prolific writer, Morel reported for The North Star, The Christian Recorder and other local and national abolitionist journals. He was a key Brooklyn member of the Committee of Thirteen, a New York organization dedicated to aiding freedom seekers and thwarting the colonization movement. Morel's wife, Caroline Richards, was an abolitionist and activist in the local Underground Railroad. After Caroline died in 1838, Morel married a woman named Sarah (born in 1835). Sarah Morel worked with Elizabeth Gloucester and Mary Wilson to raise funds for various organizations that supported African Americans living in New York.

James W. C. Pennington was born James Pembroke, enslaved in Maryland in 1807. By 1829, he had changed his name and settled in Brooklyn. Pennington worked at the home of Adrian Van Sinderen, president of the Brooklyn Colonization Society, while he studied at the Sabbath school in Newtown, Long Island. His education inspired a lifelong commitment to political activism and a religious awakening that led to a life in the church. He recorded these insights in his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith.

Pennington attended several of the National Black Conventions in the early 1830s and spoke at the 1831 anti-colonization protest in Brooklyn. He became central to the anti-slavery movement, gaining an international reputation for his work with the American Missionary Association and his public speaking engagements.

Pennington attended classes at Yale Divinity School but was denied admission due to discrimination. In 1848, he returned to New York and became pastor of Shiloh Presbyterian Church, Manhattan. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 1849. As a civil rights activist in Brooklyn he tackled racial discrimination on the city's public transportation.

During the Civil War he advocated for the inclusion of African American soldiers in the Union Army and was an outspoken opponent of emigration. He died in Jacksonville, FL while doing missionary work.

Described as a "hog driver" from Brooklyn according to the City Directory, Sylvanus Smith was one of the original land investors in Weeksville. He became a trustee for Colored School No. 1 in what is now Downtown Brooklyn and for the Citizens' Union Cemetery, in Weeksville.

His daughter Susan Smith McKinney Steward became the first female African-American doctor in New York. Another daughter, Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet (b. 31 Aug, 1831 - d. 17 Sep. 1911) worked as an educator and women's suffrage activist.

Maria Stewart was a pioneering activist in Boston, a colleague of David Walker and William Lloyd Garrison, and contributor to the Liberator. She was the first American woman to lecture in public on political themes and publish her work (Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart, 1835). Between 1832 and 1833, Stewart delivered at least four public lectures in Boston. She gave her first speech at the Boston Afric-Female Intelligence Society. The recurrent themes in her speeches were community organization, self-determination, and equal rights. But she left New England disillusioned and arrived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she taught at the African School. There is very little written evidence of her life in Williamsburg other than a notice in the Williamsburg Gazette stating that she was the lead educator at one of the school exhibitions. She died in 1879 in Washington, D.C. where she had relocated after the Civil War.

May 23, 1788, Northampton, MA - June 21, 1873, Brooklyn, NY May 22, 1786, Northampton, MA - July 23, 1865, Brooklyn, NY Evangelical Reformers, Businessmen. Brooklyn Heights residents.
The Tappan Brothers were New England reformers spurred to action by an evangelical impulse. Like a number of merchants, they worked in Manhattan but lived in Brooklyn Heights. They originally favored colonization, and Arthur paid for a man named Abdul Rahman to travel to Liberia. But they modified their views after Rahman died and they saw waves of anti-colonization protests among African Americans. They began to call for an immediate end to slavery.

The brothers were executive officers of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AA-SS) and directed numerous anti-slavery petition drives. They financed the abolitionist newspaper the Emancipator and Oberlin College. In 1840, they broke with Garrison and the AA-SS over the issue of women serving on its Executive Committee and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

Lewis founded Chatham Street Chapel in Manhattan, which had a mixed congregation. The church and his home in Manhattan were attacked during the Anti-Abolition Riots in 1834. Years later, Lewis moved to Brooklyn Heights and remained a resident there until his death. With fellow Brooklyn abolitionists Simeon Jocelyn James Pennington, he assisted the Amistad captives during their sensational trial. Lewis prayed at Siloam Presbyterian Church under Amos Freeman and then Plymouth Church under Henry Ward Beecher.

His wife and children were also involved in the anti-slavery movement. His daughter Julianna served as an officer in the Ladies New York Anti-Slavery Society and attended the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. His second wife Sarah was integral in helping fugitive Ann Maria Weems escape to Canada. Lewis Tappan died in Brooklyn Heights in 1873.

July 10, 1786 - June 29, 1862 July 10, 1789 - March 10, 1874
The Truesdells were prominent abolitionists in New England before moving to Brooklyn, where they lived on Duffield St. in what is now Downtown Brooklyn (1851-1863). Harriet Truesdell served on the organizing committee of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women that convened in Philadelphia in 1838. She was also the treasurer of the Providence Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. Thomas Truesdell was a founding member of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society and a colleague of Lewis Tappan.

The Truesdells were friends with William Lloyd Garrison. The couple attended the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York in 1840 when the abolitionists split. Garrison stayed with the couple in Brooklyn after the meeting ended and before he left for the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

William J. Wilson was born in New Jersey but dedicated his life's work to the city of Brooklyn. He was the longest serving educator at the African School in Downtown Brooklyn (later Colored School #1), a strong advocate of investing in the city, and an anti-slavery activist. As a national correspondent for the Frederick Douglass' Paper, writing under the pseudonym "Ethiop," he examined life, culture, race, and politics in Brooklyn and reported from the black state and national conventions that met annually during the antebellum decades. His tone and style were typified by irreverence, humor and satire. He was a member of the Committee of Thirteen, a vigilance committee also opposed to emigration. The organization formed some time after 1850 and attracted other Brooklynites Junius C. Morel, John N. Still, and a number of other anti-slavery activists from New York. Towards the end of his life, Wilson died in poverty and relative obscurity.

Mary (née Marshall) married William on November 2, 1837 in New York. She owned her own crockery and clothing store on Atlantic and worked closely with Elizabeth Gloucester fundraising for the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan. The Wilsons were active at Siloam Presbyterian Church where they were church elders. In 1863, William, Mary and their daughter Ann moved to Washington, D.C. where they taught in various freedmen schools.

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Henry Ward Beecher was the son of Reverend Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. A graduate of Amherst College and Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, Beecher became the inaugural pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights.

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Still kept meticulous records of the many escapes slaves who passed through the Philadelphia "station." After the Civil War, Still published the secret notes he'd kept in diaries during those years.

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Revelations - Alvin Ailey - Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

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This page describes the Causes and Effects of the Civil War and Provides Detailed Accounts of All Events

Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin Election Poster

Causes of the Civil War

According to the deal thought of by Henry Clay, if the southern states agreed to the admission of Maine as a free state, Missouri would be admitted as a slave state. In addition, all lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30′ N latitude would be free.

Effects of the Civil War

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This page describes the Causes and Effects of the Civil War and Provides Detailed Accounts of All Events Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin Election Poster Causes of the Civil War According to the deal thought of by Henry Clay, if the southern states agreed to the admission of Maine as a free state, Missouri would be admitted as a slave state.

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Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine. Read Aloud by Mrs. Stults For more information and classroom activities visit my website at : http://henrysfreedomboxliteracywebsite.weebly.com

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How Descendants of a Slave and a Supreme Court Justice Righted a 160-Year-Old Wrong

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A descendant of Dred Scott accepted a public apology from the family of the Supreme Court justice who declared that slaves were not citizens

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History is best understood by examining the documents and reading the words of those involved in the events one is studying. When these documents, photographs and other items were actually written at the time of the event, they are known as primary sources.

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Sound Smart about the Compromise of 1850

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Sound Smart about the Compromise of 1850

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Compromise of 1850 Exclusive Videos & Features - HISTORY.com

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Check out exclusive Compromise of 1850 videos and features. Browse the latest Compromise of 1850 videos and more on HISTORY.com.

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Abraham Lincoln | 60-Second Presidents | PBS

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Henry Clay - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

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 as indentured servants and labor 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 era to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after emancipation.

When Did Slavery Start?

Hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 African slaves ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portugese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista.

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million enslaved people were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.
READ MORE: The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. It Just Surfaced
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, counting each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any "person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

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 unfortunately 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 would transition from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region's dependence on enslaved labor.
READ MORE: 40 Years a Slave: The Extraordinary Tale of an African Prince Stolen from His Kingdom
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, all of the northern states abolished slavery, but the institution of slavery remained absolutely 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 U.S. 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.

Library of Congress

READ MORE: The Shocking Photo of 'Whipped Peter' That Made Slavery's Brutality Impossible to Deny
History of Slavery

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.

Enslavers 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 was restricted.

Many masters took sexual liberties with 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 slave owners encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.
READ MORE: Enslaved Couples Faced Wrenching Separations, or Even Choosing Family Over Freedom
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
WATCH: 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 able to help quell the forces of sectionalism only temporarily.

Kansas-Nebraska Act
WATCH: 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.

Stock Montage/Getty Images

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.
READ MORE: How Many U.S. Presidents Owned Slaves?
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
WATCH: The Civil War and Its Legacy
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 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 would lead to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which would achieve the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.
PHOTOS: See America's First Memorial to its 4,400 Lynching Victims

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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 as indentured servants and labor in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton.

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Former Slaves talk about their experience

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Former Slaves talk about their experience

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Quotes used in the audio presentation of the Slavery's Echoes exhibit are available below for downloading as MP3 files. Transcripts of these quotes also are available for downloading. Please give credit to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Missouri State Museum.

Introduction used at the door

Sarah Graves, Nodaway County, Mo.

Parson Allen, Harrison County, Mo.
John Barker, Sedalia, Mo.
Eliza Overton, Farmington, Mo.
Charlie Richardson, Warrensburg, Mo.
Bill Simms, Osceola, Mo.

Richard Bruner, Saline County, Mo.
Delicia Patterson, Boonville, Mo.
Peter Corn, Ste. Genevieve County, Mo.

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Audio Quotes from Former Missouri Slaves

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Quotes used in the audio presentation of the Slavery's Echoes exhibit are available below for downloading as MP3 files. Transcripts of these quotes also are available for downloading. Please give credit to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Missouri State Museum.