Usuario:Rafa sanz/Esclavitud en Estados Unidos

Introducción

Slave sale in Easton, Maryland

La historia de la esclavitud en Estados Unidos (1619-1865) comenzó poco después del asentamientos de cristobal colon Colonización británica de América en Virginia, y se prolongó hasta la entrada en vigor de la Decimotercera Enmienda a la Constitución. Antes del establecimiento de la esclavitud a gran escala, existía un sistema de trabajo no voluntario conocido como servidumbre bajo contrato (indentured servitude), con una duración de entre cuatro y siete años, tanto para negros como para blancos. En 1662, un fallo judicial apoyó la esclavitud las colonias, que afectaba en su mayoría a africanos y descendientes de africanos, y en cierta medida a los pueblos originarios.^{[cita requerida]} A finales del siglo XVII, la esclavitud era mucho más común en las colonias del sur que en las del norte.

Desde los años 1640 y hasta 1865, las personas de ascendencia africana fueron legalmente esclavizadas en lo que en la actualidad es Estados Unidos, fundamentalmente por blancos de origen europeo, pero ocasionalmente por indígenas y negros libres. En términos cuantitativos, la mayoría de las relaciones de esclavitud tenían lugar en los Estados del sur; allí, aproximadamente una familia de cuatro poseía esclavos antes de la Guerra Civil estadounidense​ El noventa y cinco por ciento de la población negra vivía en el sur, donde constituían un tercio de la población, mientras que en el norte sólo eran el uno por ciento.​

El crecimiento económico de Estados Unidos en la primera mitad del siglo XIX fue impulsado fuertemente por la explotación como esclavos de personas negras.​​ Pero la victoria de los unionistas en la Guerra Civil supuso la abolición del sistema de trabajo esclavo y las enormes plantaciones de algodón del sur perdieron mucha de su rentabilidad. La economia industrial del norte, que había crecido rápidamente antes y durante la guerra, experimentó un gran avance y dejó atrás a la agrícola del sur. Empresarios de los estados del norte llegaron a controlar muchos aspectos de la vida de la nación, incluyendo ámbitos políticos y sociales. La aristocracia hacendada del sur desapareció y el veloz desarrollo económico que siguió a la Guerra Civil estableció los cimientos para la moderna economía de los Estados Unidos.

Aproximadamente doce millones de africanos fueron llevados al continente americano entre los siglos XVII y XIX:​​ de ellos, un 5.4% (645.000) a lo que hoy es Estados Unidos.​ La población esclava en los Estados Unidos había alcanzado los 4 millones según el censo de 1860.

--81.61.214.181 (discusión) 16:36 22 abr 2013 (UTC) Antecedentes: época colonial --81.61.214.181 (discusión) 16:36 22 abr 2013 (UTC) El Imperio Británico empleó en muchas ocasiones mano de obra esclava para la explotación de los recursos naturales en sus colonias. El primer registro de esclavitud africana en América del Norte data de 1619.​ En agosto, veinte negros fueron comprados a un barco holandés a cambio de comida​; aunque otras fuentes afirman que el barco era portugués y se dirigía desde Luanda, en Angola, hacia Veracruz.​ Ese mismo año de 1619, noventa mujeres jóvenes fueron transportadas a Virginia. La compañía de Virginia les puso el precio de ciento veinte libras de tabaco.​

Además de los esclavos africanos, muchos europeos empobrecidos llegaban a las Trece Colonias británicas en régimen de servidumbre bajo contrato.​ Los ciudadanos blancos de Jamestown, de origen británico, decidieron tratar a los primeros africanos en la colonia de Virginia como siervos bajo contrato. Como ocurría con los siervos europeos, eran liberados pasado un plazo determinado; sus antiguos amos les cedían el uso de parcelas de tierra. Al menos uno de estos siervos, Anthony Johnson, llegó a convertirse en terrateniente e incluso a poseer esclavos.​ No obstante, generalmente, los siervos bajo contratos eran liberados cuando llegaba el momento, pero era muy improbable que medraran económicamente. Las mejores tierras del sureste de Virginia estaban ya en 1650 bajo el control de familias hacendadas, por lo que los antiguos siervos, sin posibilidad de acceder a las mismas, constituían una subclase social. La Rebelión de Bacon demostró que los obreros y granjeros empobrecidos podían constituir un elemento peligroso para los terratenientes ricos. Al adoptar la esclavitud como único sistema de trabajo no voluntario, se aseguraba que los nuevos trabajadores y granjeros blancos que llegaran a las colonias serían sólo aquellos que pudieran inmigrar y mantenerse por sí mismos.

La transición de la servidumbre bajo contrato a la esclavitud racial se produjo de manera gradual. En la historia temprana de Virginia no se encuentran leyes que regulen la esclavitud. No obstante, en 1640 los tribunales habían dictado al menos una sentencia que declaraba la esclavitud de un siervo negro. En 1655, un tribunal del condado de Northampton falló contra John Casor, declarándolo esclavo de por vida.​ Dado que las personas de origen africano no eran ciudadanos ingleses por nacimiento, no se les aplicaba necesariamente la Common Law.

The Old Plantation c. 1785-1795. Acuarela de finales del s. XVIII que muestra a esclavos bailando, con un banjo y un tambor, en una plantación de Carolina del Sur.

Los códigos de esclavitud de Virginia de 1705 aclararon el estatus de los esclavos. Durante el periodo colonial británico, la esclavitud existió en todas las colonias. En el norte, los esclavos eran fundamentalmente sirvientes domésticos. En el sur, en un primer momento, los esclavos trabajaron en granjas y plantaciones de indigo, arroz y tabaco; el algodón no se convirtió en un cultivo mayoritario hasta los años 1790.​ En Carolina del Sur, en 1720, en torno al 65 por ciento de la población eran personas esclavas.​ Eran los terratenientes y granjeros ricos, que destinaban a la exportación parte de su producción, los que poseían esclavos. Los que realizaban una agricultura de subsistencia muy raramente los poseían.

Algunas de las colonias británicas intentaron abolir el comercio internacional de esclavos, temiento que la importación de más africanos podía resultar perjudicial. Los proyectos de ley que Virginia desarrolló en dicho sentido fueron vetados por el Consejo Privado del Reino Unido. Rhode Island prohibió la importación de esclavos en 1774. Todos los estados, excepto Georgia, había prohibido o limitado el comercio de esclavos africanos antes de 1786; Georgia lo hizo en 1798. No obstante, algunas de estas normas fueron revisadas o abrogadas con posterioridad.​

De 1776 a 1850

Expansión al Oeste y desplazamiento de esclavos

A medida que la nación se extendía hacia el oeste, también lo hacían el cultivo del algodón​ y la institución de la esclavitud. El historiador Peter Kolchin escribió que "al romper las familias existentes y obligar a los esclavos a trasladarse lejos de todos y todo lo que conocían", esta migración forzosa "replicó (aunque fuera a pequeña escala) muchos de los horrores" del comercio de esclavos en el Atlántico.​ El historiador Ira Berlin denominó este movimiento como el Segundo Middle Passage​. Lo consideró como el "acontecimiento fundamental" en la vida de un esclavo entre la Revolución estadounidense y la Guerra Civil y afirmó que, ya fueran efectivamente desarraigados o vivieran con el temor de que ellos y sus familias fueras desplazados de manera forzada, "la deportación masiva traumatizó a los negros, tanto a los esclavos como a los libres.​

Aunque no existen estadísticas completas, se estima que en torno a un millón de esclavos fueros desplazados hacia el oeste entre 1790 y 1860. Muchos de ellos fueron trasladados desde Maryland, Virginia y las Carolinas. En un principio, las zonas de destino eran Kentucky y Tennessee pero, desde 1810, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Luisiana y Texas fueron los principales receptores. En los años 1830, casi 300.000 fueron transportados: Alabama y Mississippi recibieron, cada uno, 100.000. Cada década entre 1810 y 1860 al menos 100.000 esclavos fueron desplazados de sus estados de origen. En la década anterior a la Guerra Civil, la cifra ascendió a 250.000. Michael Tadman, en su libro Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South, publicado en 1989, indica que entre el 60 y el 70 por ciento de las migraciones interregionales se debieron al comercio de esclavos. In 1820 a child in the Upper South had a 30% chance to be sold South by 1860.​

Los comerciantes de esclavos intervinieron en la mayoría de desplazamientos de esclavos hacia el oeste, ya que sólo una minoría se trasladó junto a sus familias y su amo. Los comerciantes no tenían intereses en adquirir o trasmitir familias de esclavos completas, aunque sí se trasportaba un número igual de hombres y mujeres para asegurar una "self-reproducing labor force". Berlin wrote, "The internal slave trade became the largest enterprise in the South outside the plantation itself, and probably the most advanced in its employment of modern transportation, finance, and publicity." The slave trade industry developed its own unique language with terms such as "prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and fancy girls" coming into common use.​ The expansion of the interstate slave trade contributed to the "economic revival of once depressed seaboard states" as demand accelerated the value of the slaves that were subject to sale.​

Some traders moved their "chattels" by sea, with Norfolk to New Orleans being the most common route, but most slaves were forced to walk. Regular migration routes were established and were served by a network of slave pens, yards, and warehouses needed as temporary housing for the slaves. As the trek advanced, some slaves were sold and new ones purchased. Berlin concluded, "In all, the slave trade, with its hubs and regional centers, its spurs and circuits, reached into every cranny of southern society. Few southerners, black or white, were untouched."​

The death rate for the slaves on these marches was nowhere near that experienced by captives in the days of the Atlantic slave trade, but they were still higher than the normal death rate. Berlin summarizes the experience:

… the Second Middle Passage was extraordinarily lonely, debilitating, and dispiriting. Capturing the mournful character of one southward marching coffle, an observer characterized it as "a procession of men, women, and children resembling that of a funeral." Indeed, with men and women dying on the march or being sold and resold, slaves became not merely commodified but cut off from nearly every human attachment…. Murder and mayhem made the Second Middle Passage almost as dangerous for traders as it was for slaves, which was why the men were chained tightly and guarded closely. … The coffles that marched slaves southward – like the slave ships that carried their ancestors westward – became mobile fortresses, and under such circumstances, flight was more common than revolt. Slaves found it easier – and far less perilous – to slip into the night and follow the North Star to the fabled land of freedom than to confront their heavily armed overlords.​

Once the trip was ended, slaves faced a life on the frontier significantly different from their experiences back east. Clearing trees and starting crops on virgin fields was harsh and backbreaking work. A combination of inadequate nutrition, bad water, and exhaustion from both the journey and the work weakened the newly arrived slaves and produced casualties. The preferred locations of the new plantations in river bottoms with mosquitoes and other environmental challenges threatened the survival of slaves, who had acquired only limited immunities in their previous homes. The death rate was such that, in the first few years of hewing a plantation out of the wilderness, some planters preferred whenever possible to use rented slaves rather than their own.​

The harsh conditions on the frontier increased slave resistance and led to much more reliance on violence by the masters and overseers. Many of the slaves were new to cotton fields and unaccustomed to the "sunrise-to-sunset gang labor" required by their new life. Slaves were driven much harder than when they were involved in growing tobacco or wheat back east. Slaves also had less time and opportunity to boost the quality of their lifestyle by raising their own livestock or tending vegetable gardens, for either their own consumption or trade, as they could back home.​

In Louisiana it was sugar, rather than cotton, that was the main crop. Between 1810 and 1830 the number of slaves increased from under 10,000 to over 42,000. New Orleans became nationally important as a slave port, and by the 1840s had the largest slave market in the country. Dealing with sugar cane was even more physically demanding that growing cotton, and the preference was for young males who represented two-thirds of the slave purchases. The largely young, unmarried male slave force made the reliance on violence by the masters “especially savage.”​

Trato a los esclavos

El historiador Kenneth M. Stampp describe el papel de la coerción en la esclavitud y afirma que, sin el poder para castigar, que el Estado confería al amo, la esclavitud no podría haber existido; y que, por comparación, todas las otras técnicas de control tuvieron una importancia secundaria. Stampp cita las palabras de un dueño esclavista de Arkansas, afirmando que se trataban de una opinión mayoritaria: que era imposible tratar de persuadir a un negro para que trabajara, sino que debía obligársele y hacerle entender que si no realizaba convenientemente su tarea sería castigado.​ Sin embargo, Stanley L. Engerman y el Premio Nobel de Economía Robert Fogel consideran que Stampp sobreestimó la crueldad empleada y que la violencia contra los esclavos se usó para obtener un objetivo, el máximo rendimiento económico al menor coste. Considerada un recurso más para la producción, los esclavistas habrían tendido a su optimización y no a la crueldad.​ Además, para estos autores, los incentivos al trabajo eran empleados también con éxito, no sólo la violencia.​

Por su parte, el historiador David Brion Davis, ganador de un Premio Pulitzer, y el marxista Eugene Genovese, describen el trato a los esclavos como severo e inhumano. Durante su actividad laboral y fuera de ella, su vida era regida por una violencia autorizada por la ley.

Peter, un esclavo de Mississippi, en 1863. Las cicatrices se deben a la paliza recibida de su capataz, que fue absuelto. El esclavo tardó dos meses en recuperarse.

En las grandes plantaciones, los capataces estaban autorizados a azotar y castigar brutalmente a los esclavos desobedientes. Los Códigos de Esclavos autorizaban e incluso requerían el uso de la violencia y fueron objeto de denuncia por parte de los abolicionistas por su brutalidad. Tanto los esclavos como los negros libres se regían por los llamados Códigos Negros, y sus movimientos estaban controlados por patrullas esclavistas, reclutadas de entre la población blanca y que tenían permiso para aplicar castigos sumarios contra los fugitivos, en ocasiones mutilándolos o matándolos. Algunos esclavos tomaron represalias, matando a amos y capataces, quemando graneros, matando caballos o disminuyendo voluntariamente el rendimiento en su trabajo.​

Además de los malos tratos y muertes, los esclavos se encontraban bajo el riesgo constante de perder a miembros de sus familias si sus dueños decidían venderlos para obtener un beneficio, pagar deudas o como castigo. No obstante, Robert Fogel afirma, controvertidamente, que la creencia de que la crianza y comercio de esclavos destruyeron la familia negra es un mito. Según él, la familia era la unidad básica de organización social en el sistema esclavista: mantener la estabilidad de las familias esclavas era favorable para los intereses económicos de los terratenientes, y muchos de ellos así lo hicieron. En muchas ventas de esclavos se vendían o bien familias enteras o bien individuos a cuya edad hubiera sido normal abandonar la familia.​

Genovese afirma que al ser los esclavos, jurídicamente, propiedad de sus dueños, no era infrecuente que las mujeres negras esclavas fueran violadas por sus amos o los familiares o amigos de estos. Los niños que pudieran nacer de esas violaciones eran también esclavos, ya que adquirían el estatus de su madre, a no ser que fueran liberados por el amo. Nell Irwin Painter y otros historiadores han documentado estos hechos; existen además testimonios directos, como los diarios de Mary Chesnut y Fanny Kemble, casadas con personas de la clase alta esclavista, y relatos de antiguos esclavos recopilados por la Works Progress Administration, que dejan constancia de los abusos de hombres blancos, amos y capataces, sobre las esclavas.

Ruinas de viviendas de esclavos en la Plantación Kingsley, en Jacksonville (Florida). Cada casa comprendía dos habitaciones de 2'5 x 3 metros.

Según Genovese, se alimentaba, vestía, alojaba a los esclavos y se les proporcionaba atención médica de manera muy limitada. Por el contrario, Fogel y Engerman afirman que, a lo largo de su vida, un empleado de granja esclavo acababa por recibir en torno al 90 por ciento de la renta que había producido.​ Era común pagar pequeñas cantidades durante las Navidades y algunos amos permitían a sus esclavos conservar sus beneficios y las ganancias del juego: el esclavo Denmark Vesey ganó la lotería y pudo comprar su libertad.​

En muchas familias, el trato a los esclavos dependía del color de la piel. Los de piel más oscura trabajaban en el campo, mientras que los de piel relativamente más clara lo hacían como sirvientes domésticos y tenían mejores vestidos, comida y alojamiento que los anteriores.​ No siempre se trataba simplemente de una diferenciación por el color de la piel: a veces, se empleaban los esclavos de piel más clara como sirvientes domésticos porque eran parientes. Por ejemplo, muchos de los esclavos que servían en la casa del Presidente Thomas Jefferson eran hijos de su suegro y una mujer esclava, y habían sido aportados al matrimonio por la mujer de Jefferson. Se acepta generalmente que, tras la muerte de su esposa, Thomas Jefferson mantuvo relaciones sexuales y tuvo descendencia con Sally Hemings, una joven esclava que era medio hermana de su mujer. Dicha filiación, en lo que respecta a Eston Hemings Jefferson, ha sido apoyada por estudios de ADN.​

Fogel afirma que las condiciones materiales de vida de los esclavos eran mejores, relativamente, que la de los trabajadores industriales libres. No eran buenas de acuerdo con los estándares modernos, pero de hecho no lo eran para ningún trabajador, libre o esclavo, durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX. En una encuesta realizada en 1995 por Robert Whaples, el 58 por ciento de los historiadores y el 42 por ciento de los economistas afirmaron su desacuerdo con la idea de que las condiciones de los esclavos eran mejor que la de los trabajadores libres.​

Los esclavos se consideraban desprovistos de personalidad jurídica, excepto si cometían delitos. Un tribunal de Alabama afirmó que los esclavos eran seres racionales y capaces de delinquir; y, respecto a los actos criminales, se les consideraba personas ante el Derecho. Pero, por su condición de esclavos, no podrían realizar actos civiles y, en lo que al Derecho civil concernía, eran cosas y no personas.​

Misdemeanor of women

During the early 1600s African women as well as men were brought into the United States for slavery. While working on plantations and farms, women and men had equal labor-intensive work. However, much of the hard labor was taken care of by men or by women who were past the child-bearing stage. Some of the labor-intensive jobs given to women were: cooking for the Master's household as well as the slaves themselves, sewing, midwifery, pruning fields, and many other labor-intensive occupations.

In 1837, an Antislavery Convention of American Women met in New York City with both black and white women participating. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had first met at the convention and realized the need for a separate women's rights movement. At the London gathering Stanton also met other women delegates such as Emily Winslow, Abby Southwick, Elizabeth Neal, Mary Grew, Abby Kimber, as well as many other women. However, During the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society, which Stanton and Winslow attended, the hosts refused to seat the women delegates. This resulted in a convention of their own to form a "society to advocate the rights of women" (Sklar). Eight years later at Seneca Falls, New York, Stanton and Winslow launched the women's rights movement, becoming one of the most diverse and social forces in American life. Furthermore, the fact that the movement came at the end of the Civil War and just before World War I was a definite surprise.​

Movimiento abolicionista

A partir de los años 1750, y especialmente durante la Revolución estadounidense, se extendió la opinión de que la esclavitud era un mal social, que afectaba al país en general y también a los blancos, y debía tender a su abolición. Todos los estados del Norte aprobaron leyes de emancipación entre 1780 y 1804. Muchas de ellas preveían un proceso gradual y un estatus especial para los libertos; en 1860 se registraban aún una docena de "aprendices permanentes" en Nueva Jersey.​

La Constitución de Massachusetts de 1780 declaró que todos los hombres "nacían libres e iguales": el esclavo Quork Walker reclamó judicialmente su libertad apoyándose en ello y los tribunales le dieron la razón, aboliéndose así la esclavitud en Massachusetts.

A lo largo de la primera mitad del siglo XIX, creció el movimiento abolicionista en Estados Unidos y entró en conflicto con el fuerte apoyo al sistema esclavista por parte de los habitantes blancos sureños que se beneficiaban ampliamente del mismo. Éstos comenzaron a refererirse a la esclavitud, eufemísticamente, como la "institución peculiar" del Sur, con la intención de diferenciarla de otras formas de trabajo forzado y mostrándola como un bien positivo. El líder político proesclavista John C. Calhoun, en un discurso pronunciado en el Senado, afirmó que en todas las sociedades una parte de la comunidad vivía del trabajo del resto; y que sólo bajo la esclavitud el trabajador era ciudado cuando dejaba de ser útil para el trabajo.​

La Sociedad Americana de Colonización, relacionada con el gobierno de Estados Unidos, diseñó y llevó a la práctica un importante programa de transporte de ex-esclavos y negros libres que, voluntariamente, optaron por volver a África, hacia la colonia estadounidense de Liberia.

Rebelión en el Amistad. Los esclavos amotinados matan al Capitán Ferrer. Julio de 1839

Desde 1830, un movimiento religioso encabezado por William Lloyd Garrison declaró que la esclavitud era pecado y exigió a los amos que se arrepintieran e iniciaran un proceso de emanicipación. Este movimiento fue muy controvertido y uno de los factores que originó la Guerra Civil estadounidense. Aunque fueron pocos los abolicionistas que, como John Brown, defendieron el uso de la fuerza armada para apoyar levantamientos de esclavos, se produjeron revueltas entre las que cabe destacar la Revuelta de Nueva York, de 1712; la Rebelión Stono en Carolina del Sur, de 1739; una nueva insurrección en Nueva York en 1741; la encabezada por Gabriel Posser en Virginia en 1800; la dirigida por Charles Deslandes en Luisiana en 1811; por George Boxley en Virginia, en 1815 o Denmark Vesey en Carolina del Sur en 1822. Otras dos, muy importantes, fueron la encabezada por Nat Turner en 1831 en Virginia o el motín en el barco español Amistad, en 1839, que llevó a un pronunciamiento de la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos que declaró ilegal el transporte de los amotinados desde África a través del Atlántico para su venta como esclavos y que por lo tanto, legalmente, no eran esclavos sino libres.

Primer número de The Liberator.

Escena de La cabaña del tío Tom, de una serie para linterna mágica de 1885.

El movimiento abolicionista también abogó por usar el Derecho para erradicar la esclavitud, y propagó sus ideas a través de conferencias, periódicos y obras literarias. Algunos líderes influyentes del movimiento fueron William Lloyd Garrison, editor del periódico The Liberator; Harriet Beecher Stowe, autor de la novela La cabaña del tío Tom; Frederick Douglass, el orador antiesclavista más importante del país, y además antiguo esclavo, famoso por su libro Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass; y Harriet Tubman, que ayudó a 350 esclavos a escapar del sur y se hizo conocido como "conductor" del Ferrocarril Subterráneo.

Tensiones crecientes

El valor económico de la esclavitud en las plantaciones creció enormemente en 1793 con la invención de la máquina desmotadora por Eli Whitney, un aparato que podía separar las fibras de algodón de las cápsulas y de las semillas, a veces pegajosas. El invento revolucionó la ya creciente industria del algodón al permitir incrementar The economic value of plantation slavery was magnified in 1793 with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, a device designed to separate cotton fibers from seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. The invention revolutionized the cotton-growing industry by increasing the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day by fiftyfold. The result was explosive growth in the cotton industry and greatly increased demand for slave labor in the South.​

At the same time, the northern states banned slavery, though as Alexis de Toqueville pointed out in Democracy in America (1835), the prohibition did not always mean that the slaves were freed. Toqueville noted that as Northern states provided for gradual emancipation, they generally outlawed the sale of slaves within the state. This meant that the only way to sell slaves before they were freed was to move them South. Toqueville does not provide any documentation that such transfers actually occurred to any great extent.​ In fact, the emancipation of slaves in the North led to the growth in the population of northern free blacks from several hundred in the 1770s to nearly 50,000 by 1810.​

Just as demand for slaves was increasing, supply was restricted. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves until 1808. On January 1 1808, Congress acted to ban further imports. Any new slaves would have to be descendants of ones who were currently in the U.S. However, the internal U.S. slave trade, and the involvement in the international slave trade or the outfitting of ships for that trade by U.S. citizens, were not banned. Though there were certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became more or less self-sustaining.

With changes to agriculture in the Virginia and Carolina Tidewater, planters had excess slave labor. They began to sell enslaved African Americans to traders who took them to markets for the expanding plantations in the Deep South: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. This internal slave trade and forced migration of enslaved African Americans continued for another half-century. The scale of the internal slave trade contributed to the wealth of the Deep South. In 1840 New Orleans, which had the largest slave market and important shipping, was the third largest city in the country and the wealthiest.

Because of the three-fifths compromise in the U.S. Constitution, slaveholders exerted their power through the Federal Government and the resulting Federal fugitive slave laws. Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River and other parts of the Mason-Dixon Line dividing North from South, to the North via the Underground Railroad. The physical presence of African Americans in Cincinnati, Oberlin, and other Northern towns agitated some white Northerners, though others helped hide former slaves from their former owners, and others helped them reach freedom in Canadá. After 1854, Republicans fumed that the Slave Power, especially the pro-slavery Democratic Party, controlled two or three branches of the Federal government.

Because the Midwestern states decided in the 1820s not to allow slavery, and because most Northeastern states became free states through local emancipation, a Northern block of free states solidified into one contiguous geographic area. The dividing line was the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon line (between slave-state Maryland and free-state Pennsylvania).

North and South grew further apart in 1845 with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves. The Southern Baptist Convention has since renounced this interpretation. This split was triggered by the opposition of northern Baptists to slavery, and in particular, by the 1844 statement of the Home Mission Society declaring that a person could not be a missionary and still keep slaves as property. The Methodist and Presbyterian churches likewise divided north and south, so that by the late 1850s only the Democratic Party was a national institution, and it split in the 1860 election.

Distribution of slaves in 1820

Census Year	# Slaves	# Free blacks	Total black	% free blacks	Total US population	% black of total
1790	697,681	59,527	757,208	7.9%	3,929,214	19%
1800	893,602	108,435	1,002,037	10.8%	5,308,483	19%
1810	1,191,362	186,446	1,377,808	13.5%	7,239,881	19%
1820	1,538,022	233,634	1,771,656	13.2%	9,638,453	18%
1830	2,009,043	319,599	2,328,642	13.7%	12,860,702	18%
1840	2,487,355	386,293	2,873,648	13.4%	17,063,353	17%
1850	3,204,313	434,495	3,638,808	11.9%	23,191,876	16%
1860	3,953,760	488,070	4,441,830	11.0%	31,443,321	14%
1870	0	4,880,009	4,880,009	100%	38,558,371	13%
Source: http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0056/tab01.xls

Nat Turner, anti-literacy laws

In 1831, a bloody slave rebellion took place in Southampton County, Virginia. A slave named Nat Turner who was able to read and write and had "visions", led what became known as Nat Turner's Rebellion or the Southampton Insurrection. On a crusade with the goal of freeing himself and others, Turner and his followers killed approximately fifty men, women and children, but were eventually subdued by the white militia.

Nat Turner was hanged and skinned. His fellow freedom fighters were also hanged. In addition to killing Turner and his fellow insurrectionists, more than a hundred innocent slaves who had nothing to do with the rebellion were also murdered by the white militia. All across the South, harsh new laws were enacted in the aftermath of the 1831 Turner Rebellion to curtail the already limited rights of African Americans. Typical was the Virginia law against educating slaves, free blacks and children of whites and blacks. These laws were often defied by individuals, among whom was noted future Confederate General Stonewall Jackson.

1850s to the Civil War

Bleeding Kansas

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854, the border wars broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state was left to the inhabitants. The abolitionist John Brown was active in the rebellion and killing in "Bleeding Kansas" as were many white Southerners. At the same time, fears that the Slave Power was seizing full control of the national government swept anti-slavery Republicans into office.

Dred Scott

Dred Scott was a 62-year-old slave who sued for his freedom on the ground that he had lived in a territory where slavery was forbidden. The territory was the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase, from which slavery was excluded under the terms of the Missouri Compromise. In a sweeping decision that set the United States on course for Civil War, the Supreme Court denied Scott his freedom. The court ruled that Dred Scott was not a citizen who had a right to sue in the Federal courts, and that Congress had no constitutional power to pass the Missouri Compromise.

The 1857 Dred Scott decision, decided 6-3, held that a slave did not become free when taken into a free state; Congress could not bar slavery from a territory, and blacks could not be citizens. This decision, seen as unjust by many Republicans including Abraham Lincoln, was also seen as proof that the Slave Power had seized control of the Supreme Court. The decision, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, barred slaves and their descendants from citizenship. The decision enraged abolitionists and encouraged slave owners.​

1860 presidential election

The divisions became fully exposed with the 1860 presidential election. The electorate split four ways. One party (the Southern Democrats) endorsed slavery. One (the Republicans) denounced it. One (the Northern Democrats) said democracy required the people themselves to decide on slavery locally. The fourth (Constitutional Union Party) said the survival of the Union was at stake, and everything else should be compromised.

Lincoln, the Republican, won with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of electoral votes. Lincoln, however, did not appear on the ballots of ten southern states: thus his election necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. Many slave owners in the South feared that the real intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in states where it already existed, and that the sudden emancipation of 4 million slaves would be problematic for the slave owners and for the economy that drew its greatest profits from the labor of people who were not paid.

They also argued that banning slavery in new states would upset what they saw as a delicate balance of free states and slave states. They feared that ending this balance could lead to the domination of the industrial North with its preference for high tariffs on imported goods. The combination of these factors led the South to secede from the Union, and thus began the American Civil War. Northern leaders like Lincoln had viewed the slavery interests as a threat politically, and with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new southern nation, the Confederate States of America, with control over the Mississippi River and the West, as politically and militarily unacceptable.

War and emancipation

The consequent American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of chattel slavery in America. Not long after the war broke out, through a legal maneuver credited to Union General Benjamin F. Butler, a lawyer by profession, slaves who came into Union "possession" were considered "contraband of war" and therefore, he ruled that they were not subject to return to Confederate owners as they had been before the war. Soon word spread, and many slaves sought refuge in Union territory, desiring to be declared "contraband." Many of the "contrabands" joined the Union Army as workers or troops, forming entire regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). Others went to refugee camps such as the Grand Contraband Camp near Fort Monroe or fled to northern cities. General Butler's interpretation was reinforced when Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which declared that any property used by the Confederate military, including slaves, could be confiscated by Union forces.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1 1863 was a powerful move that promised freedom for slaves in the Confederacy as soon as the Union armies reached them, and authorized the enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army. However, the Emancipation proclaimation did not free slaves in the Union-allied slave-holding states that bordered the Confederacy. Since the Confederate States did not recognize the authority of President Lincoln, and the proclamation did not apply in the border states, at first the proclamation freed only a few slaves that had escaped behind Union lines. Still, the proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal that was implemented as the Union took territory from the Confederacy. According to the Census of 1860, this policy would free nearly four million slaves, or over 12% of the total population of the United States.

Simon Legree and Uncle Tom: A scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin, history's most famous abolitionist novel

The Arizona Organic Act abolished slavery on February 24 1863 in the newly formed Arizona Territory. Tennessee and all of the border states (except Kentucky) abolished slavery by early 1865. Some slaves were freed by the operation of the Emancipation Proclamation as Union armies marched across the South. Emancipation as a reality came to the remaining southern slaves after the surrender of all Confederate troops in spring 1865. There still were over 250,000 slaves in Texas. They were freed as soon as word arrived of the collapse of the Confederacy, with the decisive day being June 19 1865. Juneteenth is celebrated in Texas, Oklahoma and some other areas and commemorates the date when the news finally reached the last slaves at Galveston, Texas.

Legally, the last 40,000 or so slaves were freed in Kentucky​ by the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865.

Reconstruction to present

During Reconstruction, it was a serious question whether slavery had been permanently abolished or whether some form of semi-slavery would appear after the Union armies left.

Sharecropping

An 1867 federal law prohibited a descendant form of slavery known as sharecropping or debt bondage, which still existed in the New Mexico Territory as a legacy of Spanish imperial rule. Between 1903 and 1944, the Supreme Court ruled on several cases involving debt bondage of black Americans, declaring these arrangements unconstitutional. In actual practice, however, sharecropping arrangements often resulted in peonage for both black and white farmers in the South.

Educational issues

The anti-literacy laws after 1832 undoubtedly contributed greatly to the widespread illiteracy facing the freedmen and other African Americans after the Civil War and Emancipation 35 years later. After Emancipation, the unfairness of such laws helped draw attention to the problem of illiteracy as one of the great challenges confronting these people as they sought to join the free enterprise system and support themselves during Reconstruction and thereafter.

Consequently, many religious organizations, former Union Army officers and soldiers, and wealthy philanthropists were inspired to create and fund educational efforts specifically for the betterment of African Americans in the South. They helped create normal schools to generate teachers, such as those which eventually became Hampton University and Tuskegee University. Stimulated by the work of educators such as Dr. Booker T. Washington, by the first third of the 20th century, over 5,000 local schools had been built for blacks in the South with using private matching funds provided by individuals such as Henry H. Rogers, Andrew Carnegie, and most notably, Julius Rosenwald, each of whom had arisen from modest roots to become wealthy.

Apologies

On February 24 2007 the Virginia General Assembly passed House Joint Resolution Number 728 acknowledging "with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans and the exploitation of Native Americans, and call for reconciliation among all Virginians."​ With the passing of this resolution, Virginia becomes the first of the 50 United States to acknowledge through the state's governing body their state's negative involvement in slavery. The passing of this resolution came on the heels of the 400th anniversary celebration of the city of Jamestown, Virginia, which was one of the first slave ports of the American colonies.

Arguments used to justify slavery

In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". It was feared that emancipation would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter that with slavery:

We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.​

Robert E. Lee wrote in 1856:

There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.​

Slavery as "a positive good"

However, as the abolition agitation increased and the planting system expanded, apologies for slavery became fainter and fainter in the South. Then apologies were superseded by claims that slavery was a beneficial scheme of labor control. John C. Calhoun, in a famous speech in the Senate in 1837, declared that slavery was "instead of an evil, a good—a positive good." Calhoun supported his view with the following reasoning: in every civilized society one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age, is better off than the free laborers of Europe; and under the slave system conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantages of slavery in this respect, he concluded, "will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers."​

Native Americans

Enslavement of Native Americans

During the 17th century, Indian slavery, the enslavement of Native Americans by European colonists, was common. Many of these Native slaves were exported to off-shore colonies, especially the "sugar islands" of the Caribbean. Historian Alan Gallay estimates that from 1670-1715, British slave traders sold between 24,000 and 51,000 Native Americans from what is now the southern part of the U.S.​

Slavery of Native Americans was organized in colonial and Mexican California through Franciscan missions, theoretically entitled to ten years of Native labor, but in practice maintaining them in perpetual servitude, until their charge was revoked in the mid-1830s. Following the 1847-1848 invasion by U.S. troops, Native Californians were enslaved in the new state from statehood in 1850 to 1867.​ Slavery required the posting of a bond by the slave holder and enslavement occurred through raids and a four-month servitude imposed as a punishment for Indian "vagrancy".​

Slavery among Native Americans

The Haida and Tlingit Indians who lived along the Southeast Alaska's coast were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war. Among some Pacific Northwest tribes, about a quarter of the population were slaves.​​ Other slave-owning tribes of North America were, for example, Comanche of Texas, Creek of Georgia, the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the coast from what is now Alaska to California, the Pawnee, and Klamath.​

After 1800, the Cherokees and some other tribes started buying and using black slaves, a practice they continued after being relocated to Indian Territory in the 1830s.​

The nature of slavery in Cherokee society often mirrored that of white slave-owning society. The law barred intermarriage of Cherokees and blacks, whether slave or free. Blacks who aided slaves were punished with one hundred lashes on the back. In Cherokee society, blacks were barred from holding office, bearing arms, and owning property, and it was illegal to teach blacks to read and write.​​

By contrast, the Seminoles welcomed into their nation African Americans who had escaped slavery (Black Seminoles).

Free black people and slavery

Some slaveholders were black or had some black ancestry. In 1830 there were 3,775 such slaveholders in the South with 80% of them located in Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Half of these lived in cities rather than the countryside with most in the two cities of New Orleans and Charleston. Only a few were “substantial planters”, and, of those that were, most were of mixed race.​ Historians John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger wrote:

A large majority of profit-oriented free black slaveholders resided in the Lower South. For the most part, they were persons of mixed racial origin, often women who cohabited or were mistresses of white men, or mulatto men … . Provided land and slaves by whites, they owned farms and plantations, worked their hands in the rice, cotton, and sugar fields, and like their white contemporaries were troubled with runaways.​

Historian Ira Berlin wrote:

In slave societies, nearly everyone – free and slave – aspired to enter the slaveholding class, and upon occasion some former slaves rose into slaveholders’ ranks. Their acceptance was grudging, as they carried the stigma of bondage in their lineage and, in the case of American slavery, color in their skin.​

Free blacks were perceived “as a continual symbolic threat to slaveholders, challenging the idea that ‘black’ and ‘slave’ were synonymous.” Free blacks were seen as potential allies of fugitive slaves and “slaveholders bore witness to their fear and loathing of free blacks in no uncertain terms.​ For free blacks, who had only a precarious hold on freedom, “slave ownership was not simply an economic convenience but indispensable evidence of the free blacks” determination to break with their slave past and their silent acceptance of – if not approval – of slavery.”​

Historian James Oakes notes that, “The evidence is overwhelming that the vast majority of black slaveholders were free men who purchased members of their families or who acted out of benevolence.”​ In the early part of the 19th century, southern states made it increasingly difficult for any slaveholders to free slaves, so often the purchasers of family members were left with no choice but to maintain, on paper, the master-slave relationship. In the 1850s “there were increasing efforts to restrict the right to hold bondsmen on the grounds that slaves should be kept ‘as far as possible under the control of white men only.”​

Historiography of American slavery

Historian Peter Kolchin, writing in 1993, noted that until recently historians of slavery concentrated more on the behavior of slaveholders than to slaves. Part of this is simply the fact that most slaveholders were literate and able to leave behind a written record of their perspective, while most slaves were illiterate and unable to create a written record. There were differences among scholars on whether slavery should be considered a benign or a “harshly exploitive” institution.​ Kolchin describes the state of historiography in the early 1900s as follows:

During the first half of the twentieth century, a major component of this approach was often simply racism, manifest in the belief that blacks were, at best, imitative of whites. Thus Ulrich B. Phillips, the era's most celebrated and influential expert on slavery, combined a sophisticated portrait of the white planters' life and behavior with crude passing generalizations about the life and behavior of their black slaves.​

Historians James Oliver Horton and Louise Horton described Phillips' mindset, methodology and influence:

His portrayal of blacks as passive, inferior people, whose African origins made them uncivilized, seemed to provide historical evidence for the theories of racial inferiority that supported racial segregation. Drawing evidence exclusively from plantation records, letters, southern newspapers, and other sources reflecting the slaveholder's point of view, Phillips depicted slave masters who provided for the welfare of their slaves and contended that true affection existed between master and slave.​

This racist attitude concerning slaves carried over into the historiography of the Dunning School of reconstruction history which also dominated in the early 20th century. Writing in 2005, historian Eric Foner states:

Their account of the era rested, as one member of the Dunning school put it, on the assumption of “negro incapacity.” Finding it impossible to believe that blacks could ever be independent actors on the stage of history, with their own aspirations and motivations, Dunning et. Al. portrayed African Americans either as “children”, ignorant dupes manipulated by unscrupulous whites, or as savages, their primal passions unleashed by the end of slavery.​

Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching a plateau in the 1950s, the historiography moved away from the “overt” racism of the Phillips era. However historians still emphasized the slave as an object – whereas Phillips presented the slave as the object of benign attention by the masters, historians such as Kenneth Stampp changed the emphasis to the mistreatment and abuse of the slave.​

In the culmination of the slave purely as victim, Historian Stanley M. Elkins in his 1959 work “Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life” compared United States slavery to the brutality of the Nazi concentration camps that totally destroyed the will of the slave, creating an “emasculated, docile Sambo” who identified totally with the master. Elkins' thesis immediately was challenged by historians, and gradually it became recognized that in addition to the effects of the master-slave relationship, slaves did not live in a “totally closed environment but rather in one that permitted the emergence of enormous variety and allowed slaves to pursue important relationships with persons other than their master, including those to be found in their families, churches and communities.” Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman in the 1970s, through their work “Time on the Cross”, presented the final attempt to salvage a version of the Sambo theory, picturing slaves as having internalized the Protestant work ethic of their masters.​ In picturing a more benign picture of slavery, they also argue in their 1974 book that the material conditions under which the slaves lived and worked compared favorably to those of free workers in the agriculture and industry of the time.

In the 1970s and 1980s historians made use of archaeological records, black folklore, and statistical data to describe a much more detailed and nuanced picture of slave life. Relying also on autobiographies of ex-slaves and former slave interviews conducted in the 1930s by the Federal Writers' Project, historians were able to describe slavery as the slaves experienced it. Far from being strictly a victim or the happy slave that plantation owners had created, slaves were seen as being both resilient and autonomous in many of their activities. Despite the efforts at autonomy and their efforts to make a life within slavery, current historians recognize the precariousness of the slave's situation. Slave children quickly learned that they were subject to the direction of both their parents and their owners. They saw their parents disciplined just as they came to realize that they also could be physically or verbally abused by their owners. Historians writing during this era include John Blasingame (“Slave Community”), Eugene Genovese (“Roll, Jordon, Roll”), Leslie Howard Owens (“This Species of Property”), and Herbert Gutman (“The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom”).​

See also

• Abraham Lincoln on slavery
• Cherokee freedmen controversy
• Cornerstone Speech
• Frances Anne Kemble
• History of slavery
• Hush harbor
• Partus
• Slave rebellion
• White guilt

Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Albert, Octavia V. Rogers. The House of Bondage Or Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves. Oxford University Press, 1991. Primary sources with commentary. ISBN 0-19-506784-3
  • The House of Bondage, or, Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves, Original and Life-Like complete text of original 1890 edition, along with cover & title page images, at website of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowlands, eds. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 5 vol Cambridge University Press, 1982. very large collection of primary sources regarding the end of slavery
• Blassingame, John W., ed. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies.Louisiana State University Press, 1977.
• A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) (Project Gutenberg: [1]), (Audio book at FreeAudio.org [2])
• "The Heroic Slave." Autographs for Freedom. Ed. Julia Griffiths Boston: Jewett and Company, 1853. 174-239. Available at the Documenting the American South website[3].
• Frederick Douglass My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) (Project Gutenberg: [4])
• Frederick Douglass Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)
• Frederick Douglass Collected Articles Of Frederick Douglass, A Slave (Project Gutenberg)
• Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies by Frederick Douglass, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Editor. (Omnibus of all three) ISBN 0-940450-79-8
• Rawick, George P., ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography . 19 vols. Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972. Collection of WPA interviews made in 1930s with ex-slaves

Historical studies

• Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves. (2003) ISBN 0-674-01061-2.
• Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-674-81092-9
• Berlin, Ira and Ronald Hoffman, eds. Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution University Press of Virginia, 1983. essays by scholars
• Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-19-502563-6.
• David, Paul A. and Temin, Peter. Slavery:The Progressive Institution? The Journal of Economic History. Vol. 34, No. 3 (September 1974)
• David Brion Davis. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (2006)
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. (1994 Edition by Alfred A Knopf, Inc) ISBN 0-679-43134-9
• Elkins, Stanley. Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. University of Chicago Press, 1976. ISBN 0-226-20477-4
• Fehrenbacher, Don E. Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective Oxford University Press, 1981
• Fogel, Robert W. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery W.W. Norton, 1989. Econometric approach
• Foner, Eric. Forever Free.(2005) ISBN 0-375-40259-4
• Franklin, John Hope and Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. (1999) ISBN 0-19-508449-7.
• Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade (2002).
• Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made Pantheon Books, 1974.
• Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South (1967)
• Genovese, Eugene D. and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (1983)
• Hahn, Steven. "The Greatest Slave Rebellion in Modern History: Southern Slaves in the American Civil War." Southern Spaces (2004)
• Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-19-502745-0
• Horton, James Oliver and Horton, Lois E. Slavery and the Making of America. (2005) ISBN 0-19-517903-X
• Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877 Hill and Wang, 1993. Survey
• Mason, Matthew. Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic. (2006) ISBN 13:978-0-8078-3049-9.
• Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia W.W. Norton, 1975.
• Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
• Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. (1982) ISBN 0-393-31705-6.
• Ransom, Roger L. Was It Really All That Great to Be a Slave? Agricultural History, Vol. 48, No. 4 (October 1974)
• Scarborough, William K. The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South (1984)
• Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) Survey
• Stampp, Kenneth M. "Interpreting the Slaveholders' World: a Review." Agricultural History 1970 44(4): 407-412. ISSN 0002-1482
• Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

References

• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007.
• Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007.

State and local studies

• Fields, Barbara J. Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century Yale University Press, 1985.
• Clayton E. Jewett and John O. Allen; Slavery in the South: A State-By-State History Greenwood Press, 2004
• Kulikoff, Alan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
• Minges, Patrick N.; Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855-1867 2003 deals with Indian slave owners.
• Mohr, Clarence L. On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia University of Georgia Press, 1986.
• Mooney, Chase C. Slavery in Tennessee Indiana University Press, 1957.
• Olwell, Robert. Masters, Slaves, & Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740-1790 Cornell University Press, 1998.
• Reidy, Joseph P. From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South, Central Georgia, 1800-1880 University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
• Ripley, C. Peter. Slaves and Freemen in Civil War Louisiana Louisiana State University Press, 1976.
• Rivers, Larry Eugene. Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation University Press of Florida, 2000.
• Sellers, James Benson; Slavery in Alabama University of Alabama Press, 1950
• Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi. 1933
• Takagi, Midori. Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond, Virginia, 1782-1865 University Press of Virginia, 1999.
• Taylor, Joe Gray. Negro Slavery in Louisiana. Louisiana Historical Society, 1963.
• Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion W.W. Norton & Company, 1974.

Historiography

• John B. Boles and Evelyn T. Nolen, eds., Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham (1987).
• Richard H. King, "Marxism and the Slave South", American Quarterly 29 (1977), 117-31. focus on Genovese
• Peter Kolchin, "American Historians and Antebellum Southern Slavery, 1959-1984", in William J. Cooper, Michael F. Holt, and John McCardell , eds., A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald (1985), 87-111
• James M. McPherson et al., Blacks in America: Bibliographical Essays (1971).
• Peter J. Parish; Slavery: History and Historians Westview Press. 1989
• Tulloch, Hugh. The Debate on the American Civil War Era (1999) ch 2-4

Further reading

Oral histories of ex-slaves

• Before Freedom When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves, Belinda Hurmence, John F. Blair, Publisher, 1989, trade paperback 125 pages, ISBN 0-89587-069-X
• Before Freedom: Forty-Eight Oral Histories of Former North & South Carolina Slaves, Belinda Hurmence, Mentor Books, 1990, mass market paperback, ISBN 0-451-62781-4
• God Struck Me Dead, Voices of Ex-Slaves, Clifton H. Johnson ISBN 0-8298-0945-7

Historical fiction

• Edward P. Jones. The Known World New York: Amistad, 2003. ISBN 0-06-055755-9, 2003 winner of the National Book Critic Circle for fiction and 2004 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

External links

• "John Brown's body and blood" by Ari Kelman: a review in the TLS, February 14th, 2007.
• Slavery and the Making of America - PBS - WNET, New York (4-Part Series)
• Timeline of Slavery in America
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
• Images of slavery drawn by Thomas Nast (has background music)
• History of Slavery in America a historical overview
• Teaching resources about Slavery and Abolition on blackhistory4schools.com
• Slavery in the United States from EH.NET by Jenny B. Wahl of Carleton College
• Map of 1820 showing free and slave territories.
• Classics on American Slavery collection of old documents available on-line through Dinsmore Documentation
• Slavery: A Dehumanizing Institution by Nell Irvin Painter, historian and author of Creating Black Americans
• New Georgia Encyclopedia (Slavery in Antebellum Georgia)
• WWW-VL: Online Books on Slavery in America
• University of North Carolina Press on finding freedom and liberty in BNA-Canada
• Account of an African Prince Sold into Slavery - Islamica Magazine