African American Studies: Slavery and Abolition

A movement culminating in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed first to end the slave trade, and then to abolish the institution of slavery and emancipate slaves. MORE

Sometimes called ‘the War Between the States’ or ‘the Second American Revolution’, a conflict in the USA which resolved two great issues: the nature of the Federal Union and the relative power of the states and the central government; and the existence of black slavery. MORE

A trade in Africa which started in ancient times. Slaves were sent across the Sahara and were traded in the Mediterranean by Phoenicians; Graeco-Roman traders in the Red Sea and beyond traded slaves from E Africa to Egypt and the Middle East. MORE

US Supreme Court decision of 1857 which denied ‘blacks’ (African Americans) US citizenship and made slavery legal in all US territories. MORE

In U.S. history, the executive order abolishing slavery in the Confederate States of America. MORE

Bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. MORE

Secret order of Southern sympathizers in the North during the Civil War. Its members were known as Copperheads. MORE

From Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
American minstrel shows consisted of white entertainers who painted their faces black with burnt cork, then in front of large, raucous audiences, parodied the dance, song, and dialect of southern slaves. They played instruments that were associated with plantation music, including fiddles, banjos, tambourines, and the jawbones of animals. MORE

Institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services. MORE

From Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
No book published in the United States during the nineteenth century had as great an impact on American politics and society as the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (1852), written by the New England abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in the decade preceding the U.S. Civil War. MORE

In U.S. history, loosely organized system for helping fugitive slaves escape to Canada or to areas of safety in free states. It was run by local groups of Northern abolitionists, both white and free blacks. MORE

He spent his boyhood in Ohio. Before he became prominent in the 1850s, his life had been a succession of business failures in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. MORE

Although he was born a slave in Maryland in 1818, in 1895 he died a free man who not only had bought his own freedom with the money he earned from his publications and public speaking tours but also had risen to the highest position an African American had ever held in the U.S. government. MORE

American abolitionist leader who founded and published The Liberator (1831-1865), an antislavery journal. MORE

16th president of the United States MORE

American writer whose antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) had great political influence and advanced the cause of abolition. MORE

US antislavery and women's-suffrage campaigner. A former slave, she ran away and became involved with religious groups. MORE

US abolitionist. Born a slave in Maryland, she escaped to Philadelphia (where slavery was outlawed) in 1849. She helped set up the Underground Railroad, a secret network of sympathizers to help slaves escape to the North and Canada. MORE