American chattel slavery was a unique institution that emerged in the English colonies in America in the seventeenth century. Enslaved peoples were held involuntarily as property by slave owners who c
Charles Carleton Coffin would be haunted by the sight for the rest of his life. Behind the iron gate of the “MART,” Coffin found a long hall lined with benches down one wall, a platform on
Slavery existed in the United States even before the United States existed as a nation, but slavery had not always divided northern and southern states from each other. How the United States transform
Narratives by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era are essential to the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history and literature, especial
Histories of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade typically focus on those enslaved in the North American colonies and often overlook its Southern counterpart. However, those enslaved in North America durin
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans crossed the Atlantic to the Americas in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Used on plantations throughout the United States, Latin Am
The first African immigrants to the North American colonies arrived in Virginia in 1619. The status of these newcomers differed little from that of the white indentured servants who far outnumbered th
Commercial lithographer Henry S. Graham printed this choropleth map showing the distribution of the slave population in September 1861. The map shows in graphic terms the density of the slave populati
One hundred fifty years ago this December, the U.S. completed its long process of abolishing slavery. Why did the nation endure nine long decades as a “house divided against itself”? The answer li
African peoples were captured and transported to the Americas to work. Most European colonial economies in the Americas from the 16th through the 19th century were dependent on enslaved African labor
Texas was the last frontier of slavery in the United States. In fewer than fifty years, from 1821 to 1865, the “Peculiar Institution,” as Southerners called it, spread over the eastern two
When the District of Columbia was established in 1800, the laws of Maryland, including its slave laws, remained in force. Additional laws on slavery and free blacks were then made by the District, and
