The Dirty Business of Slavery

The trans-Atlantic slave trade began in the early 1500s with the arrival of Dutch and Portuguese explorers and continued until Brazil stopped importations in 1867. Chattel slavery, the legal ownership of men, women, and children who could be sold at will, existed throughout the Americas, and roughly 12.5 million Africans, principally from West and Central Africa, were purchased from African traders by European and American traders and brought to the Americas. After independence, many Americans, especially northerners, continued to outfit and man slave-trading ships. Britain outlawed its slave trade in 1808, and in that same year Congress made it illegal to import enslaved persons into the United States, but buying, selling, and ownership continued there. After 1808, the enslaved population in the United States grew primarily through natural increase, including births to enslaved women resulting from rape by white men and forced breeding, along with a relatively low death rate due to declining disease, favorable climate, and adequate food supply. The U.S. Constitution was founded on ideals of liberty yet did not act against slavery, allowing the slave trade to continue until 1808, requiring the return of escaped enslaved persons, and counting each enslaved person as 3/5 of an individual for population purposes. As the new nation grew under Washington and Adams, slavery also expanded; by 1800, one out of every six people in the United States was enslaved. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 made the Ohio River the boundary between free and slave territory, though slavery persisted in the old Northwest for decades, while in the 1790s Congress admitted Kentucky and Tennessee as slave states and Vermont as a free state. In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia's enslaved population declined after the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, but slavery continued for decades, and a long series of laws, court decisions, and political compromises shaped its expansion, restriction, and eventual abolition in the United States, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States