slavery

Examples of slavery in the following topics:

• Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement

  • Slavery, including chattel slavery, was a legal institution in the US from the colonial period until the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution (1865).
  • Throughout this period many people worked to end slavery.
  • Abolitionists used several arguments against slavery.
  • Support for slavery remained the strongest in the southern states where slavery was an important economic institution for cotton and other agricultural industries strongest in the South.
  • Describe the history of slavery in the United States and early efforts at abolition

• The 13th Amendment

  • The Thirteenth Amendment completed the abolition of slavery in the United States, which had begun with President Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
  • Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment completed the abolition of slavery in the United States.

• Abolitionism and the Women's Rights Movement

  • Two of the most influential were the anti-slavery or abolitionist movement, and the women's rights movement.
  • For example only two women attended the Agents' Convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836.
  • Women began to form their own abolition groups, organizing events such as the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women held in 1837.
  • This convention brought 200 women to New York City, where they called for the immediate abolition of slavery in the US.
  • The delegates argued for an end to slavery based on the often brutal conditions of slavery, as well as the ways in which slavery violated christian principals and basic human right to equality.

• The Constitutional Convention

  • Among the most controversial issues confronting the delegates was that of slavery.
  • Slavery was widespread in the states at the time of the Convention.
  • Whether slavery was to be regulated under the new Constitution was a matter of such intense conflict between the North and South that several Southern states refused to join the Union if slavery were not to be allowed.
  • Whether slavery was to be regulated under the new Constitution was a matter of such intense conflict between the North and South that several Southern states refused to join the Union if slavery were not to be allowed.
  • Delegates opposed to slavery were forced to yield in their demands that slavery practiced within the confines of the new nation be completely outlawed.

• Federalism and the Civil War: The Dred Scott Decision and Nullification

  • The Dred Scott Decision questioned the authority of the federal government over individual states in dealing with the issue of slavery.
  • Emerson took him to Fort Armstrong, Illinois, which prohibited slavery in its 1819 constitution.
  • In 1836, Scott was relocated to Fort Snelling, Wisconsin, where slavery was prohibited under the Wisconsin Enabling Act.
  • The Dred Scott decision represented a culmination of what was considered a push to expand slavery.
  • It strengthened Northern slavery opposition, divided the Democratic Party on sectional lines, encouraged secessionist elements among Southern supporters of slavery to make bolder demands, and strengthened the Republican Party.

• The Civil War Amendments

  • The Civil War Amendments protected equality for emancipated slaves by banning slavery, defining citizenship, and ensuring voting rights.
  • While the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) officially ended slavery within the U.S., many citizens were concerned that the rights granted by war-time legislation would be overturned.
  • The three amendments prohibited slavery, granted citizenship rights to all people born or naturalized in the U.S. regardless of race, and prohibited governments from infringing on voting rights based on race or past servitude.
  • This amendment explicitly banned slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States.

• The Republican Party

  • Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period 1860-1932.
  • Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soldiers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Southern Democratic Party.
  • The main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas.
  • The Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil.

• The Constitutional Right to Petition the Government

  • The first significant exercise and defense of the right to petition within the U.S. was to advocate the end of slavery by petitioning Congress in the mid 1830s, including 130,000 such requests in 1837 and 1838.
  • In 1836, the House of Representatives adopted a gag rule that would table all such anti-slavery petitions.

• The Modern Era of Political Parties

  • Founded in 1854 by Northern anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party rose to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican to campaign on the Northern principles of anti-slavery.

• The 15th Amendment

  • The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (for example, slavery).