# Slavery in the United States

Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel slavery that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been introduced and practiced by the British Empire in North America from early colonial days, and was practiced in all the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. After the United States gained its independence, states in the Northern United States, motivated by the ideals of the American Revolution, outlawed the practice of slavery, whereas states in the Southern United States continued it. As a result, the existence of slavery grew to become a major political issue in the United States throughout its practice, being contested by those who desired to end it, such as abolitionists and the Republicans, and those who desired to maintain it, such as the Democrats. In 1860, the anti-slavery candidate Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 United States presidential election. Several slave-holding states, unwilling to live under an anti-slavery leader, declared that they were leaving the U.S. as a result. The U.S. refused to recognize their claims and American Civil War erupted, after four years of which, the rebelling Confederate States of America surrendered and the institution was outlawed under the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

## Quotes

* Every measure of prudence... ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.
** John Adams, Letter to Robert J. Evans (June 8, 1819); The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1825)
* Slavery in this country, I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century.
** John Adams (1821), as quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage (New York: Norton, 1993), p. 138
* I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.
** John Brown, in a note written just before his execution (December 2, 1859); most sources say it was handed to the guard, but some dispute that and claim it was handed to a reporter accompanying him; as quoted in Richard Josiah Hinton, John Brown and his Men (1894)
* Many in the south once believed that slavery was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world.
** John C. Calhoun, speech in the U.S. Senate (1838), as quoted in Time-Life Books: The Civil War, vol. 1 (New York: Time Inc., 1983)
* This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.
** George Carlin, What Am I Doing in New Jersey? (August 15, 1988), HBO special
* As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that, it is true, has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage, a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then-colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of liberty, with which Heaven, without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features, has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our constitution of government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal, and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property, and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.
** William Cushing, in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Jennison (April 1783)
* We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
** Samuel Johnson, Taxation no Tyranny (1775)
* If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain, When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed?
* They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
** James Russell Lowell, "Stanzas on Freedom", Miscellaneous Poems (1843)
* Where slavery exists the republican Theory becomes still more fallacious.
** James Madison, "Vices of the Political System of the United States" (April 1787); Robert A. Rutland, William M. E. Rachal (eds.) The Papers of James Madison, vol. 9 (University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 350–51
* To Americans, that some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.
** Thomas Paine, "African Slavery in America", in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser (March 8, 1775), signed "Justice and Humanity"
* During slavery, "Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon," writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his 2012 book, "Flush Times and Fever Dreams." That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us the Panic of 1837, the stock-market crash of 1929 and the recession of 2008. It is the culture that has produced staggering inequality and undignified working conditions. If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a union-busting capitalism of poverty wages, gig jobs and normalized insecurity; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is.
** Matthew Desmond, "In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation." The New York Times Magazine (August 14, 2019)

## See also

* American Civil War
* Confederate States of America

## External links

* Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938