By it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South. An escaped enslaved man named Peter showing his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 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. Land owners 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 raped enslaved women, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters.
Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families; most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.
Rebellions among enslaved people did occur—notably ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in —but few were successful. In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement. 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 s.
This practice, known as the Underground Railroad , gained real momentum in the s. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Although estimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40, to , enslaved people reach freedom.
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. In , 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.
In , 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. In , two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery.
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. In the South, where the enslavement of Black people was widely embraced, resistance to ending slavery persisted for another century following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in Today, years after the Emancipation Proclamation, very little has been done to address the legacy of slavery and its meaning in contemporary life.
In many communities like Montgomery, Alabama—which by was the capital of the domestic slave trade in Alabama—there is little understanding of the slave trade, slavery, or the longstanding effort to sustain the racial hierarchy that slavery created. This animated short film by acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple, with narration by Bryan Stevenson, illustrates how the elaborate mythology of racial difference that was created to justify and sustain enslavement evolved after abolition.
It evolved. The most enduring evil of enslavement is the narrative of racial inferiority that defined Black people as less human than white people. He inherited enslaved black people; he fathered enslaved black children; and he relied on enslaved black people for his livelihood and comfort. He openly speculated that black people were inferior to white people and continually advocated for their removal from the country.
In the wake of the Revolutionary War, African-Americans took their cause to statehouses and courthouses, where they vigorously fought for their freedom and the abolition of slavery.
Elizabeth Freeman, better known as Mum Bett, an enslaved woman in Massachusetts whose husband died fighting during the Revolutionary War, was one such visionary. After the ruling, Bett changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman to signify her new status. Her precedent-setting case helped to effectively bring an end to slavery in Massachusetts.
Black people, both free and enslaved, relied on their faith to hold onto their humanity under the most inhumane circumstances. In , the Rev. Richard Allen and other black congregants walked out of services at St. Allen, an abolitionist who was born enslaved, had moved to Philadelphia after purchasing his freedom. There he joined St.
It quickly became clear that integration went only so far: He was directed to preach a separate service designated for black parishioners. Dismayed that black people were still treated as inferiors in what was meant to be a holy space, Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and started the Mother Bethel A.
Allen and his successors connected the community, pursued social justice and helped guide black congregants as they transitioned to freedom. The national dialogue surrounding slavery and freedom continued as the demand for enslaved laborers increased.
In , Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin, which made it possible to clean cotton faster and get products to the market more quickly. Cotton was king, as the saying went, and the country became a global economic force. But the land for cultivating it was eventually exhausted, and the nation would have to expand to keep up with consumer demand. Soon after this deal, the United States abolished the international slave trade, creating a labor shortage. Under these circumstances, the domestic slave trade increased as an estimated one million enslaved people were sent to the Deep South to work in cotton, sugar and rice fields.
Peter Williams Jr. The law, of course, did not end slavery, and it was often violated. As demand for cotton grew and the nation expanded, slavery became more systemic, codified and regulated — as did the lives of all enslaved people. They were hired out to increase their worth, sold to pay off debts and bequeathed to the next generation.
Slavery affected everyone, from textile workers, bankers and ship builders in the North; to the elite planter class, working-class slave catchers and slave dealers in the South; to the yeoman farmers and poor white people who could not compete against free labor. Additionally, in the s, President Andrew Jackson implemented his plan for Indian removal, ripping another group of people from their ancestral lands in the name of wealth.
As slavery spread across the country, opposition — both moral and economic — gained momentum. Interracial abolition efforts grew in force as enslaved people, free black people and some white citizens fought for the end of slavery and a more inclusive definition of freedom.
The enslaver Thomas Gleaves eventually acquired Rhoda. She remained enslaved by them until the Emancipation Proclamation in Afterward, Rhoda is believed to have married a man and had eight children with him. When she died, the Gleaves family ran an obituary in The Nashville Banner that showed the family still could not see the inhumanity of slavery. Gleaves and has lived with the family all her life.
She was one of the old-time darkies that are responsible for the making of so many of their young masters. Typically, enslaved people were shown holding white children or in the background of a family photo, the emphasis placed on their servitude. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations.
At its peak, the paper circulated in 11 states and internationally. The renowned abolitionist and scholar Frederick Douglass used his newspapers to call for and to secure social justice. Sally was able to remain with her children, at least for a short time, but most enslaved women had to endure their children being forcibly taken from them.
Laws throughout the country ensured that a child born to an enslaved woman was also the property of the enslaver to do with as he saw fit, whether to make the child work or to sell the child for profit. Many enslaved women were also regularly raped, and there were no laws to protect them; white men could do what they wanted without reproach, including selling the offspring — their offspring — that resulted from these assaults.
Many white women also served as enslavers; there was no alliance of sisterhood among slave mistresses and the black mothers and daughters they claimed as property.
Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let your motto be resistance! In , Nat Turner, along with about 70 enslaved and free black people, led a revolt in Southampton County, Va.
Turner, a preacher who had frequent, powerful visions, planned his uprising for months, putting it into effect following a solar eclipse, which he interpreted as a sign from God.
He and his recruits freed enslaved people and killed white men, women and children, sparing only a number of poor white people.
They killed nearly 60 people over two days, before being overtaken by the state militia. Turner went into hiding, but he was found and hanged a few months later. It is those large assemblies of Negroes causes the mischief.
In , Col. Henry W. While overseers were employed on plantation sites as a means of control, slave patrols — which patrolled plantations, streets, woods and public areas — were thought to serve the larger community.
While slave patrols tried to enforce laws that limited the movement of the enslaved community, black people still found ways around them. In , Congress passed a new Fugitive Slave Act, which required that all citizens aid in the capturing of fugitive enslaved black people. Lack of compliance was considered breaking the law.
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