Abolition of slavery (British Empire 1833, USA 1865, Brazil 1888)

Things happened, and the rest is history

1. 01

   The Haitian Revolution

   Event

   What happened

   In August 1791 enslaved people rise in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the richest sugar and coffee colony in the world. In 1793 French commissioners proclaim freedom for the enslaved there, and in February 1794 the National Convention in Paris abolishes slavery in all French colonies. Toussaint Louverture rises to lead the revolution, and in 1804 Jean-Jacques Dessalines declares the independent state of Haiti.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Haiti became the first state founded by formerly enslaved people. Napoleon restored slavery in most French colonies in 1802, but he failed to retake Saint-Domingue. The revolution alarmed slaveholders across the Americas and also gave hope to the enslaved and to antislavery campaigners. France did not abolish slavery in all its colonies again until 1848. In 1825 France recognised Haiti only in return for a large indemnity, which burdened the new state for generations.

   Sources

   1. BookJames, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. London: Secker and Warburg, 1938.
   2. BookDubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
2. 02

   The Somerset case and the British abolition of the slave trade

   Event

   What happened

   In 1772 Lord Mansfield rules in Somerset v Stewart that James Somerset, an enslaved man brought to England from Virginia, cannot be forcibly removed from the country. In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade is founded in London, and Parliament hears years of evidence and petitions. In 1807 Parliament passes the Slave Trade Act, which makes the trade in enslaved people illegal across the British Empire.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The ruling in Somerset was narrow, but it was widely taken to mean that slavery had no basis in English law. The 1807 act ended British ships' part in the Atlantic trade, though slavery itself continued in the colonies. Britain then sent the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron to suppress the trade, and pressed other states to follow. Historians still debate how far moral campaigning, economic change and slave resistance each contributed to the 1807 act.

   Sources

   1. BookHochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
   2. BookBrown, Christopher Leslie. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
3. 03

   The Demerara and Jamaica uprisings

   Event

   What happened

   In August 1823 thousands of enslaved people on plantations in Demerara, in British Guiana, stop work and rise, hoping that their freedom has been granted from London. The revolt is crushed within days, and the missionary John Smith is convicted and dies in prison. In December 1831 the Baptist War begins in Jamaica, a general strike and rising involving tens of thousands, and it too is put down with many executions.

   ↓ The rest is history

   News of the executions and of John Smith's death reached Britain and strengthened public support for ending slavery. Historians generally agree that these risings, along with the earlier Barbados rising of 1816, helped convince many in Britain that slavery could not be kept in place peacefully. The Reform Act of 1832 and the election that followed also brought in a Parliament more open to abolition. The Slavery Abolition Act followed in 1833.

   Sources

   1. BookCraton, Michael. Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
   2. BookReckord, Mary. Missionary Activity in Jamaica before Emancipation. Kingston: University of the West Indies, 1968.
4. 04

   The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833

   Event

   What happened

   In August 1833 the British Parliament passes the Slavery Abolition Act, which ends slavery in most of the empire from 1 August 1834. Enslaved children under six are freed, but adults are bound as apprentices to their former owners for several years. Parliament sets aside twenty million pounds to compensate the owners, and nothing for the enslaved.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The apprenticeship system was widely abused, and it was ended early, in 1838, after protests in the colonies and at home. The compensation was a huge sum, and the records of who received it have been made public by University College London in the Legacies of British Slavery project. Freed people in the Caribbean often tried to leave the plantations, and planters turned to indentured workers from India and elsewhere. Slavery in territories held by the East India Company was dealt with differently, and later, by the Indian Slavery Act of 1843.

   Sources

   1. PrimarySlavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73). Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 28 August 1833.
   2. BookDraper, Nicholas. The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
   3. BookHolt, Thomas C. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
5. 05

   The Missouri Compromise and the growth of the antislavery movement in the United States

   Event

   What happened

   In 1820 Congress passes the Missouri Compromise, admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and banning slavery in most of the remaining Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator in Boston, demanding immediate abolition. In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act requires citizens in free states to help return people who have escaped, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin follows in 1852.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The question of whether slavery would spread into new territories became the central political fight of the United States. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 undid the Missouri line and helped bring about the Republican Party. The election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the extension of slavery, in November 1860 led seven Southern states to declare secession before he took office. The Civil War began in April 1861, and historians broadly agree that slavery was its central cause.

   Sources

   1. BookMcPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
   2. PrimaryThe Liberator. Weekly newspaper edited by William Lloyd Garrison, Boston, 1831-1865.
6. 06

   The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment

   Event

   What happened

   On 1 January 1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring free the enslaved people in areas still in rebellion. It also allows Black men to join the Union army and navy, and about 180,000 serve in the army. In January 1865 Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, and it is ratified by enough states on 6 December 1865.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The proclamation did not free everyone, since it did not apply to the border states loyal to the Union or to some occupied areas. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery throughout the United States, except as punishment for crime, a clause later used to justify forced convict labour. Freed people received no general grant of land, and Reconstruction was cut short in 1877. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments followed in 1868 and 1870, but segregation and disenfranchisement spread in the South.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryEmancipation Proclamation. Executive proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, 1 January 1863. National Archives, Washington, DC.
   2. BookFoner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
   3. BookFoner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
7. 07

   Spanish American emancipation and Cuban abolition

   Event

   What happened

   During the wars of independence from Spain, several new states move against slavery, including a law of free birth passed in Gran Colombia in 1821 and a full abolition in Mexico in 1829. Chile, Argentina and others pass similar measures, and most Spanish American states abolish slavery by the 1850s. Cuba and Puerto Rico remain Spanish colonies, and slavery lasts there. Spain passes a law of gradual emancipation in 1870, and the Cuban patronato is ended in 1886.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Cuba had a booming sugar economy built on slave labour, and it brought in large numbers of enslaved Africans well into the 1860s. The Ten Years' War in Cuba, from 1868 to 1878, saw rebels free enslaved people who joined them, which added pressure for reform. Slavery in Cuba ended by royal decree in October 1886, leaving Brazil as the only country in the Americas where it was still legal.

   Sources

   1. BookScott, Rebecca J. Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
   2. BookAndrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
8. 08

   Brazil's Golden Law of 1888

   Event

   What happened

   Brazil bans the import of enslaved Africans in 1850, under British pressure. The Law of Free Birth follows in 1871, and the Sexagenarian Law, freeing those over sixty, in 1885. In the late 1880s many enslaved people leave plantations, especially in São Paulo, and the army refuses to hunt them down. On 13 May 1888 Princess Isabel, acting as regent, signs the Lei Áurea, ending slavery without compensation to owners.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Brazil had received more enslaved Africans than any other country, roughly four to five million. The law freed several hundred thousand people, a small share of the population by then, since many had already been freed or had escaped. No land or support was provided to the freed. Many planters turned against the monarchy, and the Republic was proclaimed in November 1889. Racial inequality in Brazil has remained a lasting legacy.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryLei Áurea (Law no. 3,353). Imperial law abolishing slavery in Brazil, signed 13 May 1888.
   2. BookConrad, Robert Edgar. The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
   3. BookToplin, Robert Brent. The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil. New York: Atheneum, 1972.
9. 09

   Lincoln the Great Emancipator

   Popular belief

   The legend

   Abraham Lincoln is often said to have single-handedly freed the slaves, setting out from the start of the war to end slavery with one stroke of the pen on the Emancipation Proclamation.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Lincoln hated slavery, but at the start of the war he said his aim was to save the Union. His early policy was to stop slavery spreading, and he at times backed compensated and gradual emancipation and colonisation abroad. Enslaved people themselves forced the issue by escaping to Union lines in large numbers, and Congress passed confiscation acts before the proclamation. Lincoln made emancipation a war aim in 1862, and he pressed for the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Freedom was won by many hands, including Black soldiers, abolitionists and Congress.

   Sources

   1. BookFoner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
   2. BookBerlin, Ira, et al., eds. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
10. 10

    Britain abolished slavery out of pure goodness

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common telling holds that Britain ended the slave trade and slavery out of moral conviction alone, led by William Wilberforce, and then spent the century policing the seas for the good of humanity.

    ↓ The rest is history

    Moral and religious campaigning was real and powerful, and Wilberforce was one of its leaders. Yet the movement also included Black writers such as Olaudah Equiano, women's petitions and mass public support, and the enslaved themselves resisted. Britain had been the largest carrier of enslaved people in the eighteenth century, and slave owners received compensation of twenty million pounds in 1833. Historians have debated the economic arguments since Eric Williams published Capitalism and Slavery in 1944, and views still differ on how much each factor mattered.

    Sources

    1. BookWilliams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.
    2. BookDrescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
11. 11

    The Underground Railroad

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Many people picture the Underground Railroad as a vast network of secret tunnels and railway lines, in which white abolitionists guided thousands of enslaved people to freedom in the North, with quilts used as secret maps.

    ↓ The rest is history

    The Underground Railroad was a loose set of routes, safe houses and helpers, not a literal railway or a system of tunnels. Many of those who escaped did so on their own or with help from free Black communities, and figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were central. Estimates of the numbers who escaped vary, and a figure of tens of thousands over several decades is commonly given. The quilt code is not supported by any evidence from the period, and appears in print only in the late twentieth century.

    Sources

    1. BookFoner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015.
    2. BookStill, William. The Underground Railroad. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1872.
12. 12

    The belief that abolition ended slavery everywhere

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Many people believe that after the acts of 1833, 1865 and 1888 slavery was over for good, and that it now belongs only to the past.

    ↓ The rest is history

    Abolition in the Atlantic world did not end slavery elsewhere. Slavery remained legal in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia into the twentieth century, and the League of Nations adopted the Slavery Convention in 1926. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 bans slavery in all its forms. Forced labour, debt bondage and trafficking still exist today, and the International Labour Organization has estimated tens of millions of people in modern slavery.

    Sources

    1. PrimarySlavery Convention. Treaty of the League of Nations, signed at Geneva, 25 September 1926.
    2. BookBales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.