How We Can End Slavery

With 27 million people in slavery today, how can we ever
hope to eradicate this horror? In fact, this generation, after
5,000 years of human slavery, can bring it to an end.
The anti-slavery movement was the world's first human-
rights campaign. Growing not from politicians, but from
everyday people, it swept away legal slavery. In the early
20th century courageous campaigners, fighting both
financial interests and governments, brought an end to the
continuing slavery in places like the Congo.
Those heroes won great battles for us. Today we do not
have to win the legal argument—laws against slavery exist
in every country. In the past many national economies were
based on the profits of slavery, but now we do not have to
win an economic argument. If all slavery stopped today, no
industry or country would suffer economically; Only the
criminals who profit from slavery would be disadvantaged.
And today we do not have to win the moral argument;
almost everyone in the world agrees that slavery is wrong.
To bring people to freedom and to end slavery, three things
have to happen:
1. Public awareness has to grow, and there has to be public
agreement that it is time to end slavery once and for all.
This public commitment must be communicated to
politicians.
2. Money needs to be spent to eradicate slavery, but not
nearly as much as you might think. For the price of a
bomber or a battleship, the amount of slavery in the world
could be dramatically reduced.
3. Governments must enforce their own anti-slavery laws.
To make this happen every country has to understand that
they must take action or face serious pressure. We all know
about the United Nations weapons inspectors, who enforce
the Conventions against Weapons of Mass Destruction, but
where are the United Nations Slavery Inspectors? When the
same effort is put behind searching out and ending slavery,
there will be rapid change.
While the 27 million people enslaved today are the largest
number of slaves alive at any time in human history, they
are also the smallest proportion of the world population to
ever be held in slavery. No one wants to live in a world with
slavery. Today the slaveholders are weaker than they have
ever been, and there is universal agreement that slavery
must end. In South Asia whole villages come to freedom
when others help them form institutions such as small
credit unions, inform them of their rights, and show them
how to organize to fight for them. Slaves everywhere
outnumber their masters. When we all stand with the slaves,
their masters cannot keep them in bondage. It is true that
criminal mafias control some of the traffic in people, and
they will be difficult to root out. But slavery will end if
corruption is tackled, victims are treated with respect, and
those of us who are free decide to support all those who
help others to freedom.
Imagine that after 5,000 years of slavery we commit
ourselves to achieving its eradication in our lifetimes.
Imagine that your generation will be the one that is looked
back on in history as the generation that ended slavery.
Imagine that your children and your grandchildren will grow
up in a world where slavery is just seen as an ugly blot on
our history.
Imagine a world where every person is born in freedom and
lives in liberty.
All this is possible, just follow these three steps:
1. Learn! Become aware of how slavery touches your life.
For more information, visit www.freetheslaves.net , and read
"Disposable People." Then download our Teaching Pack.
2. Join! Work with others who want to live in a world
without slavery. Free the Slaves is one American
organization fighting slavery worldwide.
3. Act! Bring your strength and imagination to ending
slavery.

Road To Hell...

Just like slave trade days, migrants to Europe speak of 'road to hell'

File Photo: People wait after disembarking from tanker Maria Bottiglieriin carrying more than 110 Central African migrants, men and women, on April 15, 2015 in the port of Corigliano Calabro.
Just like the harrowing journey of captured Africans to slave plantations across the ocean centuries ago, the journey from the ‘points of no return’, West Africans now voluntarily seeking servitude in Europe are going through a similar experience.
The average asylum seeker’s journey from West Africa to Europe takes 22 months, 13 of them spent waiting in Libyan ports where neglect and abuse are rife, migrants have said, while many also die on the “road to hell” from Niger to the north African coast.
“The desert is full of graves,” said E.C., a 19-year-old migrant from Nigeria interviewed by MEDU, an Italian medical charity. “Smugglers are careless, as they know that none will be held responsible for those who die on this journey.”
People smugglers, charging thousands of dollars for passage, have sent more than 90,000 migrants by sea to Italy so far this year, the U.N. refugee agency says. Up to 900 died in a shipwreck in April, and about 200 died off Sicily last Thursday.
Less is known about the journey migrants make overland before reaching the ports of Libya, but the interviews conducted on Sicily tell a tale of violent abuse, stifling heat and a sometimes fatal lack of basic provisions.
The vast majority of the 100 migrants interviewed on Sicily had taken the “West African route” to Europe, starting in countries such as Nigeria, Gambia and Senegal before journeying thousands of miles to the south coast of the Mediterranean.
The toughest part of the West African route, according to those surveyed, was the Saharan “road to hell” between Agadez in Niger and central Libya, where extreme heat, thirst and reckless driving kill many before they reach the Mediterranean.
Migrants along this remote route were also victim of ill-treatment and brutality, identifying soldiers, police officers and bandits who, at various stages of the journey, inflicted violence on them while looking for money, with professional smugglers and middlemen also doling out abuse.
“I saw so many dead bodies, both of those who had fallen from the vehicle and of those who had died because of the lack of water to drink,” said E.C.
Asylum seekers said they had contacted at least two different smugglers, one to organize their trip from Agadez to Libya, another for the Mediterranean voyage.
Those who make it to Libya were also treated abysmally during their time spent captive there, on average 13 months but in many cases even longer. They then typically pay over 1,000 ($1,100) to make the often deadly journey across the sea.
“I saw 7 persons dying in front of me in that prison, because they did not have food and water,” said A.M., a Gambian. “If you are sick, you are not entitled to see a doctor, you can die and then they will throw your body outside.”
MEDU’s report, published on Monday, also criticised the obsession in some quarters with distinguishing between ‘deserving’ refugees and ‘opportunists’ migrating for economic reasons.
“The traditional dichotomy between refugees and economic migrants proves to be more an abstract concept than a classification able to adequately understand a complex reality,” MEDU said.
*Reported by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
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Slavery And The Slave Trade In Pre-Colonial Africa

Introduction
Slavery and the Slave Trade have been age old institutions and practices in almost every continent in the world. Orlando Patterson states:
There is nothing notably peculiar about the institution of slavery. It has existed from before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized.
There is no region on earth that has not at some time harboured the institution. Probably there is no group of people whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slave holders. Slavery was firmly established in all the great early centres of human civilization (Slavery and Social Death-A Comparative Study, U.S.A. 1982, p. vii).
The earliest known legal documents concerned not the sale of land, houses, animals, boats and such like, but the sale of slaves. In Mesopotamia for example, the sale of slaves was known from 2300 B.C. (A Slavery in Time and Space, J. Goody, in Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Ed. by J.L. Watson, Berkeley & Los Angeles 1980, p.18).
Scholars cannot agree on the reasons for the rise of slavery. Some believe that the need for labour, especially agriculture gave rise to slavery. Others believe that political reasons gave rise to slavery, and yet others postulate that commerce gave rise to slavery.
The general belief held by Historians and Anthropologists is that slavery was not important when Humankind depended on food gathering, hunting and fishing, i.e. the basic economy in the first stage of human evolution. Goody, however cautions that even among hunters and gatherers there were exceptional instances where slavery occurred, and he cites the example of the North West coast of America (Goody, Time & Space, p. 26).
From North to South, and from East to West, the African continentbecame intimately connected with slavery both as one of the principal areas in the world where slavery was common, and also as a major source of slaves for ancient civilization, the medieval world and all the continents of the modern period. The greatest African community in the Diaspora is believed to be in Brazil with a population of about 200 million, followed by the Caribbean and the U.S.A.
In North Africa slavery was practiced in the Sahara desert and its southern border lands, as well as in the region of modern Western Sahara, Morocco and Algeria among the Berbers. In the Central Sahara and in the sub desert areas further south, the Tuaregs practiced slavery. In North East Africa, the Ethiopians, Somalis, Egyptians and the people of the Sudan were all familiar with the institution of slavery. In West Africa slavery was known among many of the states and societies. For example among the Wolof and Serer of Senegambia, the Mende and Temne of Sierra Leone, the Vai of Liberia and Sierra Leone, and virtually all the states and societies in Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Mali, Nigeria etc. In Central Africa slavery was practiced in much of Bantu Africa for example among the Duala of Cameroon; the Bakongo, Bapende Luba and Lunda of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Congo and part of Angola, and the Lozi of Zambia. In East Africa the Buganda state, the Nyamwezi and the Chagga peoples practiced slavery. Along the coast, the Mrima Arabs, Omani Arabs and the Sawahilis practiced slavery. In Southern Africa the Cokwe of Angola, the Sena of Mozambique and the Ngoni people scattered across East, Central and Southern Africa were all familiar with the institution of slavery.
Two dimensions to Slavery and the Slave Trade There were two dimensions to slavery and the slave trade in pre-colonial Africa, an external and internal dimension. The external dimension involved trade across the Sahara, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Arabic and Indian Ocean worlds. This trade began in ancient times and continued into the modern period. Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome used African slaves. Medieval Europe and the Arabic and Islamic world, and the continent of Asia made use of African slaves. On the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean African slaves could be found working with slaves from Asia Minor, Greece, the Balkans, Eastern and Northern Europe.
In the early modern period the picture was very much the same. What I find interesting in the ancient, medieval and early modern period is the existence of not only black and white slaves working together but also the prevalence of three main forms of labour not limited to colour, i.e. slave labour, indentured labour and serfdom.
In 1453 the Ottoman capture of Constantinople halted the flow of white slaves from the Black Sea region and the Balkans. Mediterranean Europe was thus cut off from one of its traditional source of slaves.
Mediterranean Europe turned completely to Africa for slave labour (A History of World Societies, 3rd Ed., Mckay, Hill & Bucklar, U.S.A. 1992, p. 596).
The last phase of the external trade was that which involved the Oriental, Islamic and Atlantic worlds during the 15th to the 19th centuries. Suzanne Miers relates that the function of slavery in the Islamic world was both social and economic, and that the market was selective and sophisticated. The most highly prized were not Africans but the white slaves usually Circassian or Georgian girls. They were wanted as concubines in Harems as far apart as Zanzibar and Morocco in Africa, but they were expensive and the numbers small. In Arabia, Ethiopian men cost more than the black men of Africa because they were considered more refined and intelligent and less suited to heavy work.
The desert nomads and the employers of heavy labour, however, wanted hardy blacks. There was a market in Arabia for black slaves from as far afield as modern Malawi in Africa (Britain and the Ending of the Slave trade, S. Miers, London 1975, p. 56-58).
The internal trade was conducted within the African continent itself.
It involved trade between North Africa and West Africa on the one hand and East, Central and Southern Africa on the other hand. My country Ghana, formerly called the Gold Coast became important in the trade with other West African states and with North Africa because of its richness in gold. Daaku relates that the Akan of Ghana were drawn into the main stream of developments in the trade across the Sahara to North Africa because the Offin and the Pra river basins where they were concentrated in large numbers were rich in gold (Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast 1600-1720, K.Y. Daaku, Great Britain 1970, p. 3).
Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancient gold mining areas in Ghana were at Jinjini and Chemraso in modern Dormaa Ahenkro; Nsuhunu, Banda Nkwanta, Jenikrom, Awusu and Atuna in the modern Takyiman area and a number of Adanse villages and towns such as Kenyasi, Jameskrom and Jeda (Rediscovering Ghana=s Past, J. Anquandah, Great Britain, 1982, p.41).
Bono Manso and Begho in modern Brong Ahafo region became important centres for this trade from 1000 to 1750 A.D. The Mande Dyula were the professional merchants in this trade. The West African forest region supplied gold, kola nuts, ivory and slaves in this trade. Ghana though in the forest region was known to have supplied gold, kola nuts and ivory. The West African savannah region provided millet, sorghum, wheat, livestock, gum, shea butter, ivory, ostrich feathers, cloth, gold and slaves. The Sahara contributed salt, copper, tobacco and dates. From Europe and the Muslim world came textiles and garments made from wool, silk, brocade, velvet or satin; calicoes, metals such as brass, copper, silver, tin and lead. Other goods from the Mediterranean world were books, writing paper, cowries, tea, coffee, sugar, spices, jewellery, perfumes, bracelets, mirrors, carpets, beads etc. Ghana obtained slaves through this trade from the 1st to the 16th centuries A.D.
All the West African states along the Atlantic coast were linked by a southern trade route covering modern Senegal to modern Nigeria. Ghana, again because of its wealth in gold, exchanged gold for slaves, beads, cotton, cloth and palm oil from the Benin state in modern Nigeria.
From Dahomey and Ivory Coast, Ghana exchanged gold for the famous quaqua cloth. Shama on the Ghana coast was the entry point of trade.
When the first Europeans i.e. the Portuguese set foot on the shores of Ghana in 1471, they found in existence a brisk trade in slaves and other goods between Ghana and its coastal neighbours, it took part in the trade and for 100 years was the only European country trading directly with Ghana and its coastal neighbours. In 1479 Eustache de la Fosse stated that he bought slaves from the Grain Coast for sale at Shama. Pacheco Pereira reported that because the kingdom of Benin in modern Nigeria was usually at war with its neighbours it possessed many captives. The slaves were brought to Ghana and exchanged for gold (Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, D. Pacheco Pereira, translated and edited by G.H.T. Kimble, London 1937, p. 126).
In addition to slaves the Portuguese brought cotton cloths, panther skins, palm oil and some blue shells with red stripes called coris from Benin to exchange for gold.
The major means by which slaves were acquired in Africa There were five major means by which slaves were acquired in Africa for both internal use and external demand. These were warfare, market supply, raiding and kidnapping, tribute and pawning.
Prisoners of war were enslaved and they usually constituted the largest proportion of the total slave output. Warfare was rife among the savannah and forest states of West, East, Central and Southern Africa. The jihads of the 19th century, waged from Senegambia in the west to the Red Sea in the east resulted in the enslavement of thousands of people.
Many markets were established along the length and breadth of the continent and members of royalty as well as free individuals could go to any of these markets to purchase slaves. The famous markets were those established along the caravan routes. In North and West Africa all the markets along the trans-Saharan routes were important suppliers of slaves. In West Africa some of the popular markets were Salaga, Yendi, Bole and Wa in Ghana; Bonduku and Buna in Ivory Coast, and Ouagadougou in modern Burkina Faso. In the North Eastern part of the continent Egypt and the Sudan had slave markets.

Badagry: Home Of Historical Monuments

Badagry is a historic town home to many historical sites in Nigeria, especially during the slave trade days. It is the cradle of tourism, held by a lot of people from various walks of life, the Lagos State and Federal Government of Nigeria, in high esteem.
It is on record that for over a century, Badagry was the exporting point in Nigeria, especially for slaves that were being exported out of the country.
Till date when one visits some parts of the ancient town, starting from Ajara Badagry to other parts which include Ajido, Ere, Wawu and boundary town of Ikoga, that is the boundary between Lagos and Ogun State, what stares the visitor or tourist in the face are the historical monuments.
LEADERSHIP FRIDAY observed that the palaces of the Akran of Badagry, Wawu, Jengen, Mobee and the Baracoon of Seriki Williams Abass, which is the relics of the slave trade in Badagry town, are unbeatable tourist sites any day.
The Aquatic Jungle, which is another important tourist site in Badagry, passes for a tourist destination. The essential feature of the jungle is the abandoned aircraft on the site which is used to educate the children about the components and significance of aircrafts.
The same goes for a place in the Badagry marina known as the Point of No Return which serves as a relaxation spot for visitors and a mini jetty where speedboat drivers tout for curious tourists desiring to embark on a voyage across the lagoon.
The Point Of No Return if nothing at all, re-enacts the agony of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that occurred over 400 years ago on the island of Badagry.
Talking about his town, Mr. Whesu Hodewu, a native of Badagry, said one notable feature of Badagry is that it is a very peaceful place and it is a town of many ethnic groups and religions.
He said oral and written history, passed to them by their fore-fathers, recorded that about four centuries ago, dispirited men, women and children plied the slave route now dubbed Point of no Return to an unknown fate.
According to him,” We were told that these slaves spend days, weeks, and months in the Brazilian Slave Baracoon, which is a cell or jail of sorts that was built by slave masters in Badagry and also situated along the Marina. They were conveyed across the lagoon to an indefinite destination where their fates were finally sealed. “
He explained that the Baracoon, that had no ventilation, harbours a minimum of 40 slaves who are confined to the solitude conditions until the next shipment that takes them to the plantations in the West.
“We were told that the slaves walked the journey, as they were being led, to the Point of No Return where middlemen waited to ferry them by canoe to the middle of the sea where the slave raiders, who would be the final buyers in Europe and the Americas, will further transport them to other parts of the world by ship,” Hodewu said.
On the graves that festooned a spot known as the Attenuation Well, he explained that the slaves were forced to drink from the well on getting to this spot and were immediately debriefed.
“History has it that a sip of water from this well normally made them think less of their homeland and made them less aggressive and submissive to their slave master who ferries them into the plantations in Europe and America.
Another Badagry indigene, Bamgbose Layode, explained that the Seriki Ifaremi Abass Williams National Museum, also known as the Brazilian Baracoon, which is a tourism hub in the Badagry province, was established by Seriki Abass who he said was given the name Abass by a Dhaomian who was initially captured, sold, gained freedom.
According to him, the slave camp served as transit point for captured slaves before they were sold to the slave masters, especially the Portuguese.
His legacy, he further pointed out, has endured till date due to his linguistic ingenuity demonstrated in his ability to communicate in these languages coupled with his local language (Yoruba).
This feat, according to him, endeared him to the slave masters who brought him back to Nigeria to assist them in the slave business before usurping power from the aborigines and dominating the area because of his influence and wealth.
“He acquired so much wealth and power and became the paramount ruler of the community in 1895. He married 28 wives and had 144 children.”
There is also the Badagry Heritage Museum that attracts tourists’ attention in Badagry .It was officially opened in 2002 by former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The Museum presently occupies the historic building that was the first administrative office block in Nigeria. It was said to have been constructed in 1863, about 30 years after the abolition of the Slave Trade. It was used as the office of the District Officer from 1865 (when Henry F. Pilkington Esq., the first District Officer, assumed duty) until the departure of the last District Officer, G.B. Ollivant, who was posted in 1958.
It traces the story of Badagry’s association with slavery and takes the visitor through the horrifying history of the Slave Trade.
It chronicles the history of slave trade, starting with the capture of the slaves through to their ordeals in the hands of local chiefs and the European slave merchants; it ends with the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the slaves.
The nine galleries within the museum show case the stages, starting with Introduction, Capture, Facilitators, Equipment, Resistance and Punishment, Industry, Integration, Abolitionists and Badagry.
Amid deliberate efforts to wipe out centuries of torture and inhumanity, in the years following the abolition of slavery in 1833, historians testify that a lot of the infrastructure and equipment which supported the slave trade was destroyed.
As a result, the slave port was demolished along with the Portuguese fort. What followed was the closure of slave markets and many objects that re-enact the ordeals of the slaves like chains and shackles were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Lagos State government, in its effort to preserve the legacy of the past, has continued to strive to bequeath a robust history to the future generation and its efforts are being complimented by the Nigerian Cultural Commission.
Artefacts that look like trade documents, sketches, photos, sculptures and other salvaged historical records that documented Badagry’s unpleasant past are preserved in the museum’s nine galleries.
The good news about the ancient town of Badagry is the resolve of stakeholders to develop the tourism potentials embedded in the ancient town.
One of the plans to fast track the development of the historic town could be seen in the proposal by both the Lagos State and Federal Government to build a seaport in the Badagry axis.
Aware of the need to preserve the historic sites, they assured all that the project would not tamper with historic sites in the ancient town.
Throwing light on the proposed seaport, the state commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, assured that the project’s design would preserve slave routes and other historic sites.
He explained that the Atlantic shore, known as ‘Point Of No Return’, from where slaves were transported abroad and other historic heritages would be protected.
Hamzat said, “The slave trade took place along that axis, that is, the point of no return. We are trying to ensure that in building the port, that heritage is preserved, saying the execution of the project would also depend on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to be carried out.
According to him, the design can be altered at any stage into the construction of the seaport if it jeopardises the EIA, pointing out that the bulk of the funds required for the project will come from the private sector.
He said the Federal Government has 20 per cent share of the project and 15 per cent share belongs to the state government.  In line with the present political dispensation in the country, realizing such project will not only disabuse the minds of many Badagry indigenes who feel they are marginalized in terms of infrastructural development, it will make the axis an economic hub.

THE ERA OF SLAVERY IN NIGERIA (I)

The Era Of Slavery In Nigeria (I)
From the outset, relations between Europe and Africa were strictly economic. Portuguese merchants traded with Nigerians from trading posts they set up along the coast. They exchanged items like brass and copper bracelets for such products as pepper, cloth, beads and slaves – all part of an existing internal Nigerian trade. Domestic slavery was common in Nigeria and well before European slave buyers arrived, there was trading in humans. Africans were captured or bought by Arabs and exported across the Sahara Desert to the Mediterranean and Near East.
In 1492, Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus discovered for Europe a ‘New World’. The finding proved disastrous not only for the ‘discovered’ people but also for Africans. It marked the beginning of a triangular trade between Africa, Europe and the ‘New World’. European slave ships, mainly British and French, took people from Africa to the ‘New World’. They were initially taken to the West Indies to supplement local Indians decimated by the Spanish Conquistadors. The slave trade grew from a trickle to a flood, particularly from the 17th Century onwards.
Portugal’s monopoly in the obnoxious trade was broken in the 16th Century when England, followed by France and other European nations, entered the trade. The English led in the business of transporting young Africans from their homeland to work in mines in the Americas.
At the initial stage of the trade, parties of Europeans captured Nigerians in raids on communities in the coastal areas. But this soon gave way to buying slaves from Nigerian rulers and traders. The vast majority of slaves taken out of Nigeria were sold by Nigerian rulers, traders and a military aristocracy who all grew wealthy from the business. Most slaves were acquired through wars or by kidnapping. Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave, described in his memoirs published in 1789 how African rulers carried out raids to capture slaves. “When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them and tempts him with his wares. It is not extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields to the temptation with as little firmness, and accepts the price of his fellow creature’s liberty with as little reluctance, as the enlightened merchant. Accordingly, he falls upon his neighbours, and a desperate battle ensues. If he prevails and takes prisoners, he gratifies his avarice by selling them,” Olaudah wrote.
European slave buyers made the greater profit from the despicable trade, but their Nigerian partners also prospered. Many grew strong and fat on profits made from selling their brethren. Tinubu Square, the commercial centre of present-day Lagos and home to Nigeria’s Central Bank headquarter, is named after a major 19th Century slave trader, Madam Tinubu.
Nigeria’s rulers, traders and military aristocracy protected their interest in the slave trade. They discouraged Europeans from leaving the coastal areas to venture into the interior of the continent.

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

INTRODUCTION

Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence. “Jim Crow” laws at the local and state levels barred them from classrooms and bathrooms, from theaters and train cars, from juries and legislatures. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that formed the basis for state-sanctioned discrimination, drawing national and international attention to African Americans’ plight. In the turbulent decade and a half that followed, civil rights activists used nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to bring about change, and the federal government made legislative headway with initiatives such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Many leaders from within the African American community and beyond rose to prominence during the Civil Rights era, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Andrew Goodman and others. They risked—and sometimes lost—their lives in the name of freedom and equality.

The Origin of Slavery in America

In 1619, the Dutch introduced the first captured Africans to America, planting the seeds of a slavery system that evolved into a nightmare of abuse and cuelty that would ultimately divide the nation.

The Legacy of slavery

The 13th Amendment, adopted late in 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed blacks’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period (1865-77). Former slaves received the rights of citizenship and the “equal protection” of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment (1868) and the right to vote in the 15th (1870), but the provisions of Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for former slaves to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy–including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan–had triumphed in the South by 1877. Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era would lead to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which would achieve the greatest political and social gains for blacks since Reconstruction.

CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War (1861-65) began. Though Lincoln’s antislavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation. Abolition became a war aim only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many African Americans who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South. Five days after the bloody Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

By freeing some 3 million black slaves in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. Some 186,000 black soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives. The total number of dead at war’s end was 620,000 (out of a population of some 35 million), making it the costliest conflict in American history.

WESTERN EXPANSION AND DEBATE OVER SLAVERY IN AMERICA

America’s explosive growth–and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century–would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion. In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government’s right to restrict slavery over Missouri’s application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri’s southern border were to be free soil. 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 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of territory won during the Mexican 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 much bloodshed) in the new state of Kansas. Outrage in the North over the Kansas-Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party. In 1857, the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (involving a slave 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. The abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 aroused sectional tensions even further: Executed for his crimes, Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists and a vile murderer in the South.

Rise of the Abolition Movement

From the 1830s to the 1860s, a movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength in the northern United States, led by free blacks such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852). While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious “free-labor” argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Free blacks and other antislavery northerners had begun helping fugitive slaves escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s and although estimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 slaves reach freedom. The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North; it also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen’s determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.

Slaves and Slaveholders

Slaves in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most slaves lived on large farms or small plantations; many masters owned less than 50 slaves. Slave owners sought to make their slaves completely dependent on them, and a system of restrictive codes governed life among slaves. They were prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement was restricted. Many masters took sexual liberties with slave women, and rewarded obedient slave behavior with favors, while rebellious slaves were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among slaves (from privileged house slaves and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters. Slave marriages had no legal basis, but slaves did marry and raise large families; most slave owners encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not hesitate to divide slave families by sale or removal.

Slave revolts did occur within the system (notably ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822), but few were successful. The slave revolt that most terrified white slaveholders was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner’s group, which eventually numbered around 75 blacks, murdered some 60 whites in two days before armed resistance from local whites and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them. Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner’s rebellion as evidence that blacks were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them, and fears of similar insurrections led many southern states to further strengthen their slave codes in order to limit the education, movement and assembly of slaves. In the North, the increased repression of southern blacks would only fan the flames of the growing abolition movement.

Importance of Cotton Gin

In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt. Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was unfortunately limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand. In 1793, a young Yankee schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years the South would transition from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region’s dependence on slave labor.

Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region’s businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, all of the northern states abolished slavery, but the so-called “peculiar institution” remained absolutely vital to the South. Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing-producing states of the South.

Foundations of Slavery in America

In the early 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants (who were mostly poorer Europeans). After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women...

In the 17th and 18th centuries, black slaves worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast. After the American Revolution (1775-83), many colonists (particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy) began to link the oppression of black slaves to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery’s abolition. After the war’s end, however, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution, counting each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor” (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

ORIGIN OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South’s economy. By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation’s 4 million slaves, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the tumultuous years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.