Slavery in the United States
Slavery in the United States lasted from the country's founding in 1776 until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on the 6th of December, 1865. For nearly a century, the legal enslavement of human beings sat at the center of American economic life, political power, and social order. By the time the Civil War ended, the South held four million enslaved people. That number had grown, decade by decade, through a system of extraordinary violence and forced reproduction, even after the international slave trade was banned. How did an institution so morally catastrophic persist for so long? What forces kept it alive, and what finally broke it? The answers run through the Constitution's most compromised clauses, a domestic trade that dwarfed the transatlantic one, and a pseudoscience designed to make bondage seem like nature's plan.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, slavery produced some of the most contested debates in American history. The words "slave" and "slavery" never appeared in the final document, yet several of its provisions were built entirely around the institution. The Three-Fifths Compromise, negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation and federal taxation. Southern delegates had argued for full counting; Northern delegates argued for none. The compromise handed the South inflated power in Congress and in the Electoral College without giving the enslaved any rights whatsoever. The Fugitive Slave Clause, found in Article IV, barred any state from freeing an enslaved person who had fled there from another state. That provision was later given teeth by the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Section 9 of Article I blocked Congress from prohibiting the importation of slaves for twenty years after ratification, meaning the international trade could not legally be touched until the 1st of January 1808. Historian James Oliver Horton observed that in the 72 years between the elections of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, a slaveholder occupied the presidency for 50 of those years. Most Supreme Court justices appointed in that era were themselves slave owners. The Three-Fifths Clause did not merely count bodies; it structured the politics of an entire nation for generations.
In a famous 1837 speech to the Senate, John C. Calhoun declared that slavery was "instead of an evil, a good -- a positive good." That rhetorical shift marked a turning point. Earlier generations of Southern leaders had often called slavery a "necessary evil," as Thomas Jefferson did in an 1820 letter to John Holmes, writing that with slavery, "We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife dated the 27th of December, 1856, called slavery "a moral and political evil" yet argued it was harder on white people than on the enslaved. By the 1850s, Southern writers George Fitzhugh and James Henry Hammond had dispensed with ambivalence entirely. In a Senate speech on the 4th of March, 1858, Hammond articulated his "Mudsill Theory," claiming that every civilized society required a laboring underclass and that the South's enslaved people filled that role better than Northern "wage slaves." Fitzhugh wrote that the enslaved "are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world." The pseudoscientific machinery reinforcing these claims was built by Samuel A. Cartwright, who invented diagnoses including drapetomania -- described as the mental illness of wanting to escape slavery -- and dysaesthesia aethiopica, which he called "rascality." Cartwright chaired a committee of the Medical Association of Louisiana to investigate what he termed "the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race." Their report was published in 1851 and reprinted in the widely circulated DeBow's Review. On the 21st of March, 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens gave his Cornerstone Speech, declaring that the Confederate government's foundation rested on "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." Stephens argued that the Founders had been wrong to consider slavery a violation of natural law. That speech named what the ideology had been building toward for decades.
After Congress banned the importation of enslaved people in 1808, the South did not simply reduce its demand for slave labor. It redirected it inward. Virginia and Maryland, whose tobacco farms were worn out and whose climate was unsuitable for cotton or sugar, became what one pro-slavery writer called "negro-raising" states. A newspaper from 1836 estimated Virginia was exporting around 40,000 enslaved people per year, generating an estimated $24,000,000 annually for the state. Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 enslaved people were taken across state lines. In the 1850s alone, more than 193,000 were transported. Historian Ira Berlin named this forced migration the "Second Middle Passage," saying it "reproduced many of the same horrors" as the Atlantic crossing. Slave traders transported two-thirds of the people who moved west; most were marched overland, though the Norfolk to New Orleans sea route was common. The firm of Franklin and Armfield was a leader in the trade. A child born enslaved in the Upper South in 1820 had a 30% chance of being sold south by 1860. Michael Tadman calculated that between 60 and 70 percent of inter-regional migrations were the product of sale, not of families moving with existing masters. Berlin described the internal slave trade as "the largest enterprise in the South outside the plantation itself." In the 1840s, Alabama and Mississippi each received approximately 100,000 enslaved people. The 1838 sale by Jesuits of 272 enslaved people from Maryland to Louisiana plantations, to benefit Georgetown University, is one documented example of what the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe called "selling South" -- an outcome enslaved people in the Upper South dreaded above almost everything else.
Historians in the twentieth century identified between 250 and 311 slave uprisings in United States and colonial history. Herbert Aptheker wrote that "there were few phases of ante-bellum Southern life and history that were not in some way influenced by the fear of, or the actual outbreak of, militant concerted slave action." Among the best documented is the 1831 rebellion led by Nat Turner, a literate enslaved man who claimed spiritual visions, in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner and his followers killed nearly sixty white inhabitants, most of them women and children, before the militia put down the uprising. Turner and seventeen other rebels were hanged, and Turner's body was flayed. In the aftermath, militias killed more than one hundred enslaved people who had taken no part in the rebellion. Planters whipped hundreds of others to suppress any further resistance. Virginia and other slave states responded by passing stricter laws controlling the movement of enslaved people and free Black people alike, and in 1835 North Carolina removed the right to vote from free people of color. Resistance also took individual forms. An examination of 1,200 runaway slave advertisements published in Tennessee found a striking range of skilled people: 25 blacksmiths, 18 carpenters, 13 shoemakers, as well as musicians, ministers, cotton mill engineers, iron furnace engineers, and a racehorse trainer, among many others. Their flight cost slaveholders not just labor but the pretense that enslaved people were content. During the War of 1812, thousands more escaped to British vessels in the Chesapeake Bay. Slaveholders who had reassured themselves about slave "contentment" were shocked, as the source notes, "by seeing that slaves would risk so much to be free." Four known mutinies occurred on vessels in the coastwise slave trade: the Decatur and Governor Strong in 1826, the Lafayette in 1829, and the Creole in 1841.
The most radical anti-slavery newspaper of the pre-Civil War era, The Liberator, invoked the Puritans and Puritan values more than a thousand times. William Lloyd Garrison, who began publishing after 1830, framed slaveholding as a personal sin and demanded immediate repentance and emancipation. Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery and became a writer and orator, emerged as one of the movement's most important figures. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin became an international bestseller and, along with its companion volume A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, built popular sentiment against slavery. It also provoked a wave of counter-narratives by Southern writers defending the institution. Abolition in the North, meanwhile, was real but uneven and slow. By 1804, all Northern states had passed laws ending slavery, but in many cases the abolition was gradual. Pennsylvania's last enslaved people were freed in 1847, Connecticut's in 1848. In 1845, the Supreme Court of New Jersey heard arguments for "the deliverance of four thousand persons from bondage." In the 1840 census, enslaved people were still present in states including New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. New Jersey and New Hampshire had not formally prohibited slavery until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 -- and New Jersey was among the last states to ratify it. The Thirteenth Amendment itself, ratified on the 6th of December, 1865, prohibited slavery "except as a punishment for crime" -- a clause that left involuntary servitude as punishment for crime legal, a provision that remains in effect.
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Common questions
When did slavery in the United States begin and end?
Slavery in the United States was practiced from 1526 during the early colonial period and persisted in the country from its founding in 1776 until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on the 6th of December, 1865. At its peak just before the Civil War, the enslaved population in the South had reached four million people.
What was the Three-Fifths Compromise in relation to slavery?
The Three-Fifths Compromise, negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, was written into Section 2 of Article I of the Constitution. It counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning congressional representation and federal taxation, inflating the political power of slaveholding states in Congress and the Electoral College without granting enslaved people any rights.
What was the domestic slave trade in the United States?
After Congress banned importation of enslaved people in 1808, the domestic slave trade became a massive internal forced migration. Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 enslaved people were taken across state lines, and historians estimate close to one million were moved in total. Historian Ira Berlin called this the "Second Middle Passage." Slave traders transported two-thirds of those who moved west.
What was Nat Turner's Rebellion?
Nat Turner's Rebellion occurred in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, a literate enslaved man who claimed spiritual visions, led a group that killed nearly sixty white inhabitants before being subdued by the militia. Turner and seventeen other rebels were hanged. In retaliation, militias killed more than one hundred enslaved people who had not participated in the uprising.
What was the Fugitive Slave Clause in the United States Constitution?
The Fugitive Slave Clause, found in Article IV of the Constitution, prohibited any state from freeing an enslaved person who had fled there from another state and required that such people be returned to those claiming ownership. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 gave the clause legal effect in federal law.
Who argued that slavery was a positive good, and how did they justify it?
Senator John C. Calhoun declared slavery "a positive good" in a famous 1837 Senate speech, arguing that every civilized society required a laboring underclass. Writers James Henry Hammond and George Fitzhugh built on this view, with Hammond presenting his "Mudsill Theory" in a Senate speech on the 4th of March, 1858. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens articulated the ideology's logical end in his Cornerstone Speech on the 21st of March, 1861, declaring the Confederacy was founded on the premise that Black people were not equal to white people.
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- 240BookThe Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery And The Making Of American CapitalismEdward E. Baptist — Basic Books — 2016
- 241BookSlavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic DevelopmentUniversity of Pennsylvania Press — 2016
- 242BookRiver of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton KingdomWalter Johnson — Harvard University Press — 2013
- 243BookThe Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860Calvin Schermerhorn — Yale University Press — 2015
- 244In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantationMatthew Desmond — August 14, 2019
- 245JournalSlavery and the Rise of the Nineteenth-Century American EconomyGavin Wright — 2022
- 246JournalSlavery and Anglo-American capitalism revisitedGavin Wright — 2020
- 247JournalCapitalism and SlaveryJohn J. Clegg — 2015
- 248Cotton, Slavery, and the New History of CapitalismAlan L. Olmstead et al. — Columbia University — 12 September 2016
- 249NewsShackles and DollarsMarc Parry — 2016-12-08
- 250JournalWhat Fraction of Antebellum US National Product did the Enslaved Produce?Paul W. Rhode — 2023
- 251BookFateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and ReconstructionAllen C. Guelzo — Oxford University Press — 2012
- 252JournalJim Crow and Black Economic Progress After SlaveryLukas Althoff et al. — 2024
- 254NewsEnslavers dominated Southern politics long after the Civil War endedLondon School of Economics
- 255BookKing Cotton: A Historical and Statistical Review, 1790 to 1908James Lawrence Watkins — J. L. Watkins & Sons — 1908
- 256BookTime on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro SlaveryFogel & Engerman — W.W. Norton and Company — 1974
- 257JournalEconomic History, Historical Analysis, and the 'New History of Capitalism'Eric Hilt — June 2017
- 258JournalCotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalismAlan L. Olmstead et al. — January 2018
- 259JournalThe Structure of Slave prices in New OrleansL. J. Kotlikoff — October 1979
- 260BookThe Wanderer: the last American slave ship and the conspiracy that set its sailsErik Calonius — Saint Martin's Press — 2006
- 261JournalThe Economic Revolution in the American SouthGavin Wright — Summer 1987
- 262BookThe Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth CenturyGavin Wright — W. W. Norton & Company — 1978
- 263BookDemocracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged, Volumes I and IIAlexise de Tocqueville — Bantam Books — 2004
- 264JournalAmerican Incomes Before and After the RevolutionPeter H. Lindert et al. — 2013
- 265JournalAmerican Incomes 1774–1860Peter H. Lindert et al. — September 2012
- 266JournalReversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income DistributionDaron Acemoğlu et al. — 2002
- 267BookThe Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old SouthClement Eaton — Harper & Row — 1964
- 268BookEthnic America: A HistoryThomas Sowell — Basic Books — 1981
- 269BookRace and Slavery in the Western HemisphereRoger Anstey — Princeton University Press — 1975
- 270BookSister Circle: Black Women and WorkAdrienne Davis — Rutgers University Press — 2002
- 271JournalFrom '20. and odd' to 10 million: the growth of the slave population in the United StatesJ. David Hacker — Informa UK Limited — 2020-05-13
- 272BookThe River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early AmericaWalter C. Rucker — LSU Press — 2006
- 273JournalThe Cartography of Slavery and the Authority of StatisticsSusan Schulten — 2010
- 276BookThe Civil War Era and Reconstruction: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural and Economic HistoryMary Ellen Snodgrass — Routledge — 2015
- 277ThesisA Peculiar Place for the Peculiar Institution: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early Territorial UtahNathaniel R. Ricks — Brigham Young University — 2007
- 278BookMormonism: A Historical EncyclopediaW. Paul Reeve et al. — Bloomsbury Academic — 2010
- 279BookBlacks in Utah History: An Unknown LegacyRonald G. Coleman
- 280Slavery in Gold Rush days: New discoveries prompt exhibition, re-examination of state's involvementJason B. Johnson — 2007-01-27
- 281NewsMormons Created And Then Abandoned San BernardinoMark Gutglueck — San Bernardino County Sentinel
- 282JournalFree Soil, Unfree LaborM. Magliari — University of California Press — August 2004
- 283NorCal Native Writes Of California GenocideThe Jefferson Exchange Team — Info is in the podcast
- 285BookThe Congressional Globe, Part 2United States. Congress — Blair & Rives — 1857
- 287The number of people in the average U.S. household is going up for the first time in over 160 yearsRichard Fry — October 2019
- 288BookGeneral Lee's Army: From Victory to CollapseJoseph Glatthaar — Free Press — 2009
- 290JournalBoundaries and Opportunities: Comparing Slave Family Formation in the Antebellum SouthDamian Alan Pargas — 2008
- 291BookThe Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North WonEdward H. Bonekemper III — Regnery Publishing — 2015