THIS IS A PART OF THE HISTORY OF WORLD SLAVERY
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray. ' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
-Desmond Tutu
ABOUT THE BLOGGER: The blogger, RABI ROY, is an average Indian citizen and an experienced data collector.
The New World: The "New World" is a term that is applied to the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas. The term gained prominence in the early 16th century, during Europe's Age of Discovery, shortly after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci concluded that America represented a new continent, and subsequently published his findings in a pamphlet he titled Mundus Novus. This realization expanded the geographical horizon of classical European geographers, who had thought the world consisted of Africa, Europe, and Asia, collectively now referred to as the Old World, or Afro-Eurasia. The Americas were also referred to as the fourth part of the world...read in detail
Slavery: Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person (a slaver), while treated as property. Slavery typically involves the enslaved person being made to perform some form of work while also having their location dictated by the slaver. Historically, when people were enslaved, it was often because they were indebted, or broke the law, or suffered a military defeat, and the duration of their enslavement was either for life or for a fixed period of time after which freedom was granted. Individuals, then, usually became slaves involuntarily, due to force or coercion, although there was also voluntary slavery to pay a debt or obtain money for some purpose. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization, and legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in all countries of the world, except as a punishment for crime. In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labor and forced labor that most slaves endure. In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labor, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In the industrialized countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in the non-industrialized countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers...read in detail
TIMELINE OF SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAN CONTINENTS
(Information regarding black slavery is only included here.)
1492-1865
1492: Spain colonizes the island of Hispaniola after the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Two hundred years later Spain cedes the western half (Haiti) to France. Plantations worked by slaves of African origin produce sugar, rum and coffee that enrich France.1501: African Slaves in the New World: Spanish settlers bring slaves from Africa to Santo Domingo (now the capital of the Dominican Republic).
1502: Juan de Córdoba of Seville becomes the first merchant who has been identified to send an African slave to the New World. Córdoba, like other merchants, is permitted by the Spanish authorities to send only one slave. Others send two or three.
22 January 1510: the start of the systematic transportation of African slaves to the New World: King Ferdinand of Spain authorizes a shipment of 50 African slaves to be sent to Santo Domingo.
1516: the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, authorizes slave-raiding expeditions to Central America. One group of slaves aboard a Spanish caravel rebelled and killed the Spanish crew before sailing home - the first successful slave rebellion recorded in the New World.
1516: in his book Utopia, Sir Thomas More argues that his ideal society would have slaves but they would not be 'non-combatant prisoners-of-war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets.' Rather, they would be local convicts or 'condemned criminals from other countries, who are acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing.' (Trans. Paul Turner, Penguin, 1965)
18 August 1518: in a significant escalation of the slave trade, Charles V grants his Flemish courtier Lorenzo de Gorrevod permission to import 4000 African slaves into New Spain. From this point onwards thousands of slaves are sent to the New World each year.
1522: Slave Revolt: A major slave rebellion breaks out on the island of Hispaniola, which now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This is the first significant uprising of African slaves. After this, slave resistance becomes widespread and uprisings common.
1524: 300 African slaves were taken to Cuba to work in the gold mines.
1526: As far as is known Hieronymous Seiler and Heinrich Ehinger of Konstanz become the first Germans to have become involved in the slave trade.
1527: Earliest records of sugar production in Jamaica, later a major sugar-producing region of the British Empire. Sugar production is rapidly expanding throughout the Caribbean region at this time - with the mills almost exclusively worked by African slaves.
November 1528: a slave called Esteban (or Estevanico) becomes the first African slave to step foot in what is now the United States of America. He was one of only four survivors of Pánfilo de Narváez's failed expedition to Florida. He and the other three took eight years to walk to the Spanish colony in Mexico. After their return in 1536, the group's leader, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, published an account of their journey through modern Texas and Mexico (1542).
1530: Juan de la Barrera, a Seville merchant, begins transporting slaves directly from Africa to the New World (before this, slaves had normally passed through Europe first). His lead is quickly followed by other slave traders.
30 May 1539: Hernando de Soto, following reports from Cabeza de Vaca, lands on the coast of Florida. Of about 1200 men in his expedition, around 50 were African slaves. After exploring modern Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the expedition ended in disaster.
1546: Jacques Francis, an enslaved African salvage diver, probably originally from Mauretania, arrives in Portsmouth as part of a team hired to salvage guns from the wreck of the stricken Mary Rose.
February 1548: Jacques Francis became the first known African to give evidence in an English court of law when his Venetian master, Peter Paulo Corsi, is accused of theft by a consortium of Italian merchants based in Southampton. Francis gave evidence in Portuguese through a translator.
1555: The Portuguese sailor Fernão de Oliveira, in Arte de Guerra no mar (The Art of War at Sea), denounces the slave trade as an 'evil trade'. The book anticipates many of the arguments made by abolitionists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
July 1555: a small group of Africans from Shama (modern Ghana) described as slaves are brought to London by John Lok, a London merchant hoping to break into the African trade.
1556: The Italian city of Genoa tries to prevent trading in slaves - not for any humanitarian reasons - but only in an attempt to reduce the number of Africans in the city.
1556: Domingo de Soto, in De justicia et de jure libri X (Ten Books on Justice and Law), argues that it is wrong to keep in slavery any person who was born free.
1562: Britain Joins Slave Trade: John Hawkins of Plymouth, the first Briton to take part in the slave trade, makes a huge profit hauling human cargo from Africa to Hispaniola. Hawkins was about to have obtained African slaves - approximately 300 of them in Sierra Leone - for sale in the West Indies. He traded the slaves illegally with Spanish colonies, but the trip was profitable and others followed. These contributed to increasing tensions between England and Spain.
1569: a Sevillian Dominican, Tomás de Mercado, publishes Tratos y contratos de mercaderes (Practices and Contracts of Merchants), which attacks the way the slave trade is conducted.
1571: The Parlement of Bordeaux sets all slaves - "blacks and moors" - in the town free, declaring slavery illegal in France.
1581: Slaves in Florida: Spanish residents in St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement in Florida, imported African slaves.
1612: The first commercial tobacco crop is raised in Jamestown, Virginia.
1619: Twenty slaves in Virginia: Africans brought to Jamestown are the first slaves imported into Britain’s North American colonies. Like indentured servants, they were probably freed after a fixed period of service.
1626:The Dutch West India Company imports 11 black male slaves into the New Netherlands.
1636: Colonial North America's slave trade begins when the first American slave carrier, Desire, is built and launched in Massachusetts.
1640: John Punch, a runaway black servant, is sentenced to servitude for life. His two white companions are given extended terms of servitude. Punch is the first documented slave for life.
1640: New Netherlands law forbids residents from harboring or feeding runaway slaves.
1641: The D'Angelo marriage is the first recorded marriage between blacks in New Amsterdam.
1641: Massachusetts is the first colony to legalize slavery.
1643: The New England Confederation of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven adopts a fugitive slave law.*
1650: Connecticut legalizes slavery.
1652: Rhode Island passes laws restricting slavery and forbidding enslavement for more than 10 years.
1652: Massachusetts requires all black and Indian servants to receive military training.
1654: A Virginia court grants blacks the right to hold slaves.
1657: Virginia passes a fugitive slave law.*
1660: Charles II, King of England, orders the Council of Foreign Plantations to devise strategies for converting slaves and servants to Christianity.
1662: Hereditary Slavery: Virginia law decrees that children of black mothers “shall be bond or free according to the condition of the mother.”
1662: Massachusetts reverses a ruling dating back to 1652, which allowed blacks to train in arms. New York, Connecticut, and New Hampshire pass similar laws restricting the bearing of arms.
1663: In Gloucester County, Virginia the first documented slave rebellion in the colonies takes place.
1663: Maryland legalizes slavery.
1663: Charles II, King of England, gives the Carolinas to proprietors. Until the 1680s, most settlers in the region are small landowners from Barbados.
1664: New York and New Jersey legalize slavery.
1664: Maryland is the first colony to take legal action against marriages between white women and black men.
1664:The State of Maryland mandates lifelong servitude for all black slaves. New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Virginia all pass similar laws.
1666: Maryland passes a fugitive slave law.*
1667: Virginia declares that Christian baptism will not alter a person's status as a slave.
1668: New Jersey passes a fugitive slave law.*
1670: The State of Virginia prohibits free blacks and Indians from keeping Christian (i.e. white) servants.
1674: New York declares that blacks who convert to Christianity after their enslavement will not be freed.
1676: In Virginia, black slaves and black and white indentured servants band together to participate in Bacon's Rebellion.
1680: The State of Virginia forbids blacks and slaves from bearing arms, prohibits blacks from congregating in large numbers, and mandates harsh punishment for slaves who assault Christians or attempt escape.
1682: Virginia declares that all imported black servants are slaves for life.
1684: New York makes it illegal for slaves to sell goods.
1688: The Pennsylvania Quakers pass the first formal antislavery resolution.
1691: Virginia passes the first anti-miscegenation law, forbidding marriages between whites and blacks or whites and Native Americans.
1691: Virginia prohibits the manumission of slaves within its borders. Manumitted slaves are forced to leave the colony.
1691: South Carolina passes the first comprehensive slave codes. 1694: Rice cultivation is introduced into Carolina. Slave importation increases dramatically.
1696: The Royal African Trade Company loses its monopoly and New England colonists enter the slave trade.
1700: Pennsylvania legalizes slavery.
1702: New York passes An Act for Regulating Slaves. Among the prohibitions of this act are meetings of more than three slaves, trading by slaves, and testimony by slaves in court.
1703: Massachusetts requires those masters who liberate slaves to provide a bond of 50 pounds or more in the event that the freedman becomes a public charge.
1703: Connecticut assigns the punishment of whipping to any slaves who disturb the peace or assault whites.
1703: Rhode Island makes it illegal for blacks and Indians to walk at night without passes.
1705: Slaves as Property Describing slaves as real estate, Virginia lawmakers allow owners to bequeath their slaves. The same law allowed masters to “kill and destroy” runaways.
1705: The Virginia Slave Code codifies slave status, declaring all non-Christian servants entering the colony to be slaves. It defines all slaves as real estate, acquits masters who kill slaves as punishment forbids slaves and frees colored people from physically assaulting white persons, and denies slaves the right to bear arms or move abroad without written permission.
1705: New York declares that punishment by execution will be applied to certain runaway slaves.
1705: Massachusetts makes marriage and sexual relations between blacks and whites illegal.
1706: New York declares blacks, Indians, and slaves who kill white people to be subject to the death penalty.
1706: Connecticut requires that Indians, mulattos, and black servants gain permission from their masters to engage in trade.
1708: The Southern colonies require militia captains to enlist and train one slave for every white soldier.
1708: Rhode Island requires that slaves be accompanied by their masters when visiting the homes of free persons.
1708: Blacks outnumber whites in South Carolina.
1710; New York forbids blacks, Indians, and mulattos from walking at night without lighted lanterns.
1711: Pennsylvania prohibits the importation of blacks and Indians.
1711: Rhode Island prohibits the clandestine importation of black and Indian slaves.
1712: Pennsylvania prohibits the importation of slaves.
1712: Slave Revolt: New York Slaves in New York City kill whites during an uprising, later squelched by the militia. Nineteen rebels are executed.
1712: New York declares it illegal for blacks, Indians, and slaves to murder other blacks, Indians, and slaves.
1712: New York forbids freed blacks, Indians, and mulatto slaves from owning real estate and holding property.
1712: In Charleston, South Carolina slaves are forbidden from hiring themselves out.
1715: Rhode Island legalizes slavery.
1715: Maryland declares all slaves entering the province and their descendants to be slaves for life.
1717: New York enacts a fugitive slave law.*
1723: Virginia abolishes manumissions (?).
1724: French Louisiana prohibits slaves from marrying without the permission of their owners.
1730-50: The number of male and female slaves imported to the North American British colonies balances out for the first time.
1731: The Spanish reverse a 1730 decision and declare that slaves fleeing to Florida from Carolina will not be sold or returned.
1732: Slaves aboard the ship of New Hampshire Captain John Major kill both captain and crew, seizing the vessel and its cargo.
1733P: Quaker Elihu Coleman's A Testimony against That Anti-Christian Practice of MAKING SLAVES OF MEN is published.
1735: Under English law, Georgia prohibits the importation and use of black slaves.
1735: Georgia petitions Britain for the legalization of slavery.
1735: Louis XV, King of France, declares that when an enslaved woman gives birth to the child of a free man, neither mother nor child can be sold. Further, after a certain time, the mother and child will be freed.
1738: Georgia's trustees permit the importation of black slaves.
1738: Spanish Florida promises freedom and land to runaway slaves.
1739: Slaves in Stono, South Carolina rebel, sacking and burning an armory and killing whites. Some 75 slaves in South Carolina steal weapons and fled toward freedom in Florida (then under Spanish rule). Crushed by the South Carolina militia, the revolt results in the deaths of 40 blacks and 20 white. The colonial militia puts an end to the rebellion before slaves are able to reach freedom in Florida.
1740: South Carolina passes the comprehensive Negro Act, making it illegal for slaves to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money, and learn to read English. Owners are permitted to kill rebellious slaves if necessary.
1740: Georgia and Carolina attempt to invade Florida in retaliation for the territory's policy toward runaways.
1749: Georgia repeals its prohibition and permits the importation of black slaves.
1751: George II repeals the 1705 act, making slaves real estate in Virginia.
1758: Pennsylvania Quakers forbid their members from owning slaves or participating in the slave trade.
1760: New Jersey prohibits the enlistment of slaves in the militia without their master's permission.
1767: The Virginia House of Burgess boycotts the British slave trade in protest of the Townsend Acts. Georgia and the Carolinas follow suit.
1770: Escaped slave, Crispus Attucks, is killed by British forces in Boston, Massachusetts. He is one of the first colonists to die in the war for independence.
1772: James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw writes the first autobiographical slave narrative.
1774: The First Continental Congress bans trade with Britain and vows to discontinue the slave trade after the 1st of December.
1774: Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Georgia prohibit the importation of slaves.
1774: Virginia takes action against slave importation.
1775: The slave population in the colonies is nearly 500,000. In Virginia, the ratio of free colonists to slaves is nearly 1:1. In South Carolina, it is approximately 1:2.
1775: Georgia takes action against slave importation.
1775: Abolitionist Society: Anthony Benezet of Philadelphia founds the world’s first abolitionist society. Benjamin Franklin becomes its president in 1787.
***
1775: In April, the first battles of the Revolutionary war are waged between the British and Colonial armies at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. Black Minutemen participate in the fighting.
1775: In July, George Washington announces a ban on the enlistment of free blacks and slaves in the colonial army. By the end of the year, they reversed the ban, ordering the Continental Army to accept the service of free blacks.
1775: In November, Virginia Governor John Murray, Lord Dunmore, issues a proclamation announcing that any slave fighting on the side of the British will be liberated.
1776: In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, members of the Continental Congress sign the Declaration of Independence.
1776: In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, forbids its members from holding slaves.
1776: Delaware prohibits the importation of African slaves.
1777: ABOLITION OF SLAVERY: Vermont is the first of the thirteen colonies to abolish slavery and enfranchise all adult males.
1777 New York enfranchises all free propertied men regardless of color or prior servitude.
1778 Rhode Island forbids the removal of slaves from the state.
1778 Virginia prohibits the importation of slaves.
1780 Delaware makes it illegal to enslave imported Africans.
1780 Pennsylvania begins gradual emancipation.
1780 A freedom clause in the Massachusetts constitution is interpreted as an abolishment of slavery. Massachusetts enfranchises all men regardless of race.
1783 American Revolution Ends Britain and the infant United States sign the Peace of Paris treaty.
1784 Abolition Effort Congress narrowly defeats Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to ban slavery in new territories after 1800.
1790 First United States Census: Nearly 700,000 slaves live and toil in a nation of 3.9 million people.
1793 Fugitive Slave Act*: The United States outlaws any efforts to impede the capture of runaway slaves.
1794 Cotton Gin Eli Whitney patents his device for pulling seeds from cotton. The invention turns cotton into the cash crop of the American South—and creates a huge demand for slave labor.
1801 Former slave Toussaint Louverture leads a successful revolt and abolishes slavery in Haiti.
1804 Haiti becomes independent under former slave Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who is assassinated in 1806.
1808 United States Bans Slave Trade Importing African slaves is outlawed, but smuggling continues.
1820 Missouri Compromise: Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state. Slavery is forbidden in any subsequent territories north of latitude.
1822 Slave Revolt: South Carolina Freed slaves. Denmark Vesey attempts a rebellion in Charleston. Thirty-five participants in the ill-fated uprising are hanged.
1831 Slave Revolt: Virginia Slave preacher Nat Turner leads a two-day uprising against whites, killing about 60. Militiamen crush the revolt then spend two months searching for Turner, who is eventually caught and hanged. Enraged Southerners impose harsher restrictions on their slaves.
1835 Censorship Southern states expel abolitionists and forbid the mailing of antislavery propaganda.
1847 Frederick Douglass’s Newspaper: Escaped slave Frederick Douglass** begins publishing the North Star in Rochester, New York.
1849 Harriet Tubman Escapes. After fleeing slavery, Tubman returns south at least 15 times to help rescue several hundred others.
1850 Compromise of 185: In exchange for California’s entering the Union as a free state, northern congressmen accept a harsher Fugitive Slave Act*.
1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin*** Published: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about the horrors of slavery sells 300,000 copies within a year of publication.
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act: Setting aside the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress allows these two new territories to choose whether to allow slavery. Violent clashes erupt.
1857 Dred Scott Decision: The United States Supreme Court decides, that blacks can never be
citizens and that Congress has no authority to outlaw slavery in any territory.
1860 Abraham Lincoln of Illinois becomes the first Republican to win the United States Presidency.
1861-65 The United States Civil War**** Four years of brutal conflict claim 623,000 lives.
1863 Emancipation Proclamation*****: President Abraham Lincoln decrees that all slaves in Rebel territory are free on January 1, 1863.
1865 Slavery Abolished: The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws slavery.
*The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers. The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slaver and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Bill", after the dogs that were used to track down fugitives from slavery. The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery and is considered one of the causes of the Civil War. It is arguably the most hated and openly violated piece of federal legislation in the nation's
history...for more detail
**Frederick Douglass (c. February 1817 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a
national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. Douglass wrote three autobiographies, notably describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass was an active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers events both during and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage and held several public offices. Without his permission, Douglass became the first African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass believed in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders", criticized Douglass' willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."...for more detail
***Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist,
featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies were sold in Great Britain. Eight power presses, running incessantly, could barely keep up with the demand. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day". The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, he declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that "the long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change." The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned "mammy"; the "pickaninny" stereotype of black children; and the "Uncle Tom", or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool"...for more detail
****The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865) was a civil war in the United States fought between northern and Pacific states ("the Union" or "the North") and southern states that voted to secede and form the Confederate States of America ("the Confederacy" or "the South"). The
a central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into newly acquired land after the Mexican-American War. On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, four million of the 32 million Americans (nearly 13%) were black slaves, mostly in the South. The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century; decades of political unrest over slavery led up to the war. Disunion came after Abraham Lincoln won the November 1860 presidential election on an anti-slavery expansion platform. An initial seven Southern slave states declared their secession from the country to form the Confederacy. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed and both sides prepared for war. Fighting broke out in April 1861 when the Confederate army attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, just over a month after Lincoln's inauguration. An additional four slave states joined the Confederacy in the following two months. The Confederacy grew to control at least a majority of territory in eleven states (out of the 34 U.S. states in February 1861) and asserted claims to two more. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene, but none did. The Confederate States of America were never diplomatically recognized as a joint entity by the government of the United States, nor by that of any foreign country. The states that remained loyal to the federal government were known as the Union. Large volunteer and conscription armies were raised; four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the war's Western Theater, the Union made significant permanent gains, though, in the Eastern Theater, the conflict was inconclusive. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy by summer 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, leading to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his march to the sea. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Grant at Appomattox Court House, after abandoning Petersburg. Confederate generals throughout the Southern states followed suit, the last surrender on land occurring on June 23. At the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished upon ratification of the thirteenth amendment, and four million enslaved Black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The Civil War is one of the most studied and written about episodes in U.S. history, and remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of particular interest is the persisting myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The American Civil War was among the earliest industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, iron-clad ships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. In total the war left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilians, as well as President Lincoln who was assassinated just five days after Lee's surrender. The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history and accounted for more American military deaths than all other wars combined until the Vietnam War. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts...for more detail
*****The Emancipation Proclamation: President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
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The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, during the Civil War. The Proclamation read:
That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
On January 1, 1863, the Proclamation changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, either by running away across Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, the person was permanently free. Ultimately, the Union victory brought the proclamation into effect in all of the former Confederacy.
The proclamation was directed to all of the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States. It proclaimed the freedom of enslaved people in the ten states in rebellion. Even though it excluded areas, not in rebellion, it still applied to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. Around 25,000 to 75,000 were immediately emancipated in those regions of the Confederacy where the US Army was already in place. It could not be enforced in the areas still in rebellion, but as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the liberation of more than three and a half million enslaved people in those regions. Prior to the Proclamation, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, escaped enslaved persons were either returned to their masters or held in camps as contraband for later return. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners and their sympathizers, who saw it as the beginning of a race war. It energized abolitionists and undermined those Europeans that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy. The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and enslaved; it led many to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom, and to join the Union Army. The Emancipation Proclamation became a historic document because it "would redefine the Civil War, turning it from a struggle to preserve the Union to one focused on ending slavery, and set a decisive course for how the nation would be reshaped after that historic conflict."
The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln also insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state laws (which occurred during the war in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana); Lincoln encouraged border states to adopt abolition (which occurred during the war in Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia) and pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. The amendment made chattel slavery and involuntary servitude illegal...for more detail
Slavery in Africa
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa in ancient times, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade and Atlantic slave trade (which started in the 16th century began, many of the pre-existing local African slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. Slavery in contemporary Africa is still practised despite it being illegal. In the relevant literature African slavery is categorized into indigenous slavery and export slavery, depending on whether or not slaves were traded beyond the continent.[5] Slavery in historical Africa was practised in many different forms: Debt slavery, the enslavement of war captives, military slavery, slavery for prostitution, and criminal slavery were all practised in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa. Plantation slavery also occurred, primarily on the eastern coast of Africa and in parts of West Africa. The importance of domestic plantation slavery increased during the 19th century, due to the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.[9] Many African states dependent on the international slave trade reoriented their economies towards legitimate commerce worked by slave labor...for more detail
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"The slaves in Africa, I suppose, are nearly in the proportion of three to one to the freemen. They claim no reward for their services except food and clothing and are treated with kindness or severity, according to the good or bad disposition of their masters. Custom, however, has established certain rules with regard to the treatment of slaves, which it is thought dishonorable to violate. Thus the domestic slaves, or such as are born in a man’s own house, are treated with more lenity than those who are purchased with money. ... But these restrictions on the power of the master extend not to the care of prisoners taken in war, nor to that of slaves purchased with money. All these unfortunate beings are considered as strangers and foreigners, who have no right to the protection of the law, and maybe treated with severity, or sold to a stranger, according to the pleasure of their owners."
Travels in the Interior of Africa, Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa v. II, Chapter XXII – War and Slavery.
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