Slavery in North America Collection

Historical Note

The enslavement of persons, primarily brought involuntarily from Africa, to perform forced labor in the United States started when the future states were colonies of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain. By the end of the Seventeenth Century many colonies had passed legislation legalizing slavery, many of them specifying "Africans" or "Negroes" as the enslaved persons. The earliest document in this collection, from 1752, dates from the time when Virginia, the place where the document was likely drafted, was a British colony.

The practice of enslaving people continued through the American Revolution. After the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War in September 1783, business owners and farmers in the newly decolonized United States looked for ways to start or re-start their businesses and livelihoods after eight years of war. A document from this collection demonstrates how the buying and selling of human beings was regarded as a type of business or mercantile trade. Many farmers and managers of large-scale agricultural operations used slave labor in their businesses, especially in plantation economies. As the population and economy of the United States grew, the use of forced labor by enslaved persons grew as well.

By the beginning of the Nineteenth-Century, some northern states had taken steps toward the abolition of slavery in those states and by 1808 all states except South Carolina had officially (though not necessarily in practice) banned the import of slaves. Slavery continued and grew through domestic slave trade, especially in New Orleans which, though part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, did not become a state until 1812.

The enslavement of people grew in significance as an issue that divided the early states. As activists and politicians in northern states nurtured abolitionist movements and advocated federal protections from enslavement, business people and farmers, often in the mid-Atlantic and southern states, engaged in business and economic models which relied more and more on the forced labor of enslaved persons. Starting in February 1861 the states split along ideological and geographical lines and the Confederate States of America (1861-1865) was formed. Several of the documents in this collection were created in the Confederacy.

In April of 1861 the American Civil War between the United States and Confederate states started. Lasting just over four years, the Civil War (1861-1865) ended as officials of the Confederacy, starting with General Lee in Virginia, surrendered to the Union forces of the United States. During the Civil War the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 with the intent to free all enslaved persons in the Confederacy. This was followed by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of January 1865 which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. After the surrender of the Confederate states, slavery was universally prohibited in the reunited nation.