Slavery to Abolition

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Slavery to Abolition
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Black People in Virginia

• 1619 first African in Virginia
• 1625 23 black indentured servants in VA,
  working with white indentured servants
• 1650 300 blacks
• 1682 slaves and servants differentiated
• 1700 about 1,000 brought to VA yearly
• 1705 Slave Codes

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1700s

• Transformation from servants to slaves
• Major growth in slave population, especially in
  1720s and 1730s
• Britain - the major slave trading country
• By 1781, 575,000 slaves in US of total population
  of 3.5 million

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Early 1800s

• 1804 slavery abolished in northern states
• Commerce in north depended heavily on institution
  of slavery
• 1808 legal ban on importation of slaves

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1830

• 12.8 million Americans
• 2 million slaves
• Held by 25 of white southerners
• 88 of slave owners had 20 or fewer
• 319,000 free people of color, half in south

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Slave Rebellions

• Resistance inspired by slave revolts in Haiti
• 1800 Gabriel Prosser marched on Richmond with a
  force of 1,000, but was betrayed
• 1822 Denmark Vesey organized a failed rebellion
  in Charleston involving some 9,000.
• 1831 Nat Turner and conspirators killed 60 in
  Virginia before seized

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Underground Railroad

• Thousands of slaves escaped from south during
  1800s before Civil War
• Abolitionists, including free blacks and whites
  assisted in creating sustaining Underground
  Railroad

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Harriet Tubman
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Harriet Tubman

• Key Underground Railroad figure
• In 1849 escaped from slavery in Maryland
• Returned 19 times to bring back more than 300
• Bounty for her capture exceeded 40,000
• Created a home for the elderly in New York after
  emancipation

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Abolition Activities

• 1830 rise of underground railway
• 1831 The Liberator W.L. Garrison
• 1833 American Anti-Slavery Society
• 1851 Publication of Uncle Toms Cabin (300,000
  sold)
• 1854 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass
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Frederick Douglass

• Escaped slavery in 1838
• Joined abolitionists on lecture circuit as
  compelling speaker
• Published North Star 1847-1863
• Active in Underground Railroad in Rochester