History of Slavery in the United States .
Deduplicated: 423 entries reduced to 421 unique links by URL.
General Overviews and Core Timelines
America’s History of Slavery Began Long Before Jamestown
| Michael Guasco | The Conversation | August 23, 2019
Places 1619 in broader context by tracing earlier slavery and slave trading in the Americas and European empires.
How Slavery’s Legacy Affects the Mental Health of Black Americans
| Ramin Skibba | Smithsonian Magazine | September 26, 2018
Explores historical trauma, racism, and the continuing effects of slavery and its aftermath on Black health and social life.
Did Francis Drake Bring Enslaved Africans to North America Decades Before Jamestown?
| Lorraine Boissoneault | Smithsonian Magazine | August 20, 2018
Explores evidence that enslaved Africans may have reached North America before the 1619 Jamestown landing, complicating simplified origin stories of slavery.
The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History
| Michael Guasco | Smithsonian Magazine | September 13, 2017
Argues that slavery in North America did not begin in isolation in 1619 and must be understood within a broader Atlantic, colonial, and Indigenous history.
The Slave Narrative Tradition
| National Endowment for the Humanities | Humanities Magazine | 2013
Explains how slave narratives shaped abolitionism, literature, historical evidence, and public memory.
Slavery in America
| Equal Justice Initiative | EJI | 2013
Report tracing slavery’s history and its legacy in racial terror, segregation, mass incarceration, and the continuing struggle for truth and repair.
Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature
| National Endowment for the Humanities | Humanities Magazine | 2011
Discusses slave narratives and literature as sources for understanding slavery, freedom, authorship, and Black testimony.
Slavery and the Making of America
Companion site to the PBS series examining slavery as central to American development, with biographies, timelines, primary sources, and teaching materials.
Slavery in the United States
| Contributors | Wikipedia | Updated 2026
Broad overview of the legal, economic, political, and social history of slavery in what became the United States, from colonial beginnings through abolition in 1865 and later legacies.
Slavery in America: United States Black History
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Encyclopedia overview of slavery in the United States, covering colonial origins, regional development, resistance, abolition, and emancipation.
Slavery, Freedom, and the Struggle for Empire to 1763
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Textbook chapter placing slavery within colonial empire, labor systems, settlement, and the growth of racial hierarchy before the American Revolution.
The Paradox of Liberty
| National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian | No date
Explores the contradiction between American ideals of liberty and the reality of slavery during the founding era.
Africans in America
Major PBS resource tracing slavery and Black resistance from the colonial era through the Civil War, with documents, narratives, and historical analysis.
Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation
Covers the origins of racial slavery in colonial America and the transformation from mixed forms of servitude to hereditary race-based bondage.
Africans in America: Revolution
Examines slavery during the American Revolution, including contradictions between liberty rhetoric and the continued enslavement of Black people.
Africans in America: Brotherly Love
Covers the early republic, cotton expansion, Black institutions, abolitionism, and the growing conflict over slavery.
Transatlantic Slave Trade and Middle Passage
How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Continues to Impact Modern Life
| Smithsonian Books | Smithsonian Magazine | November 7, 2024
Article explains how the slave trade shaped the modern world and why myths about responsibility and memory continue to distort public understanding of slavery’s long-term consequences.
The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
| Andrew Kahn and Jamelle Bouie | Slate | June 25, 2015
Interactive visualization of slave voyages showing the geographic scale, timing, and human toll of the transatlantic slave trade.
The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law
| Jenny S. Martinez | Cambridge University Press | 2012
Scholarly book resource linking suppression of the slave trade to early international law and human rights frameworks.
Slave Ships and the Middle Passage
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Explains slave ships, the Middle Passage, and the forced transportation of millions of Africans into Atlantic slavery.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Middle Passage
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Overview of the transatlantic slave trade, including capture, transport, mortality, sale, and the economic systems that profited from forced migration.
Atlantic Slave Trade
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Overview of the transatlantic slave trade, including European traders, African captives, plantation economies, and the forced migration of millions.
Slave Trade Act of 1807
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the law banning British participation in the transatlantic slave trade, useful for comparing abolition of the trade with the persistence of slavery.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
| Emory University and partners | SlaveVoyages | No date
Digital database documenting slave ship voyages, forced migration, ports, mortality, and the scale of the Atlantic slave trade.
Slave Voyages: Understanding the Database
| SlaveVoyages Consortium | SlaveVoyages | No date
Explains the sources, methods, and limits of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
Slave Voyages: Intra-American Slave Trade Database
| SlaveVoyages Consortium | SlaveVoyages | No date
Database focused on slave voyages within the Americas after arrival from Africa, useful for studying regional redistribution and plantation expansion.
Slave Voyages: People of the Atlantic Slave Trade
| SlaveVoyages Consortium | SlaveVoyages | No date
Names database helping recover identities of enslaved Africans documented in courts, registers, ship records, and liberation records.
The Language of the Slave Trade
| SlaveVoyages Consortium | SlaveVoyages | No date
Explains terminology used in slave-trade records and why language matters when interpreting sources created by enslavers and traders.
The Zong Massacre
| Royal Museums Greenwich | Royal Museums Greenwich | No date
Explains the massacre aboard the slave ship Zong, important for understanding Atlantic slavery, insurance, law, and abolitionist outrage.
The Middle Passage
| Royal Museums Greenwich | Royal Museums Greenwich | No date
Explains the Atlantic crossing forced upon enslaved Africans and the conditions aboard slave ships.
Aboard a Slave Ship
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Describes shipboard conditions, confinement, disease, violence, and resistance during the transatlantic slave trade.
The Triangular Trade
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Explains the trade networks connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas through enslaved labor, manufactured goods, and plantation commodities.
Slavery and Freedom at the Smithsonian
| National Museum of American History | Smithsonian | No date
Smithsonian exhibition resource connecting slavery to the founding, expansion, Civil War, and continuing struggle over American freedom.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Charleston
| International African American Museum | IAAM | No date
Museum site located at Gadsden’s Wharf, interpreting the arrival, survival, and descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States.
Slave Trade in South Carolina
| South Carolina Encyclopedia | South Carolina Encyclopedia | No date
Explains South Carolina’s role in the Atlantic slave trade and its dependence on enslaved labor.
Economy, Capitalism, Domestic Slave Trade, and Forced Labor
How Slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South
| Becky Little | HISTORY | September 2, 2020
Explains how slavery became central to Southern wealth, cotton expansion, land values, and national economic development.
How Slavery Became America’s First Big Business
| Calvin Schermerhorn | The Conversation | August 19, 2019
Explains slavery as a major business system tied to credit, insurance, shipping, commodities, and national economic growth.
The Clear Connection Between Slavery and American Capitalism
| Matthew Desmond | The New York Times Magazine | August 14, 2019
Argues that plantation slavery shaped American capitalism through cotton production, finance, management practices, credit systems, and forced labor.
A History of Slavery in the United States
| Daina Ramey Berry | Black Perspectives / AAIHS | October 15, 2018
Scholarly public-history essay summarizing slavery in British North America and the United States, emphasizing capitalism, violence, family, resistance, and memory.
These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States
| Lincoln Mullen | Smithsonian Magazine | May 15, 2014
Uses historical census maps to show the spread of slavery from 1790 to 1860, especially the westward expansion of plantation slavery and cotton production.
Slavery and the Making of America
Companion site to the PBS series examining slavery as central to American development, with biographies, timelines, primary sources, and teaching materials.
Slave Markets of the South
| Encyclopedia of Arkansas | Encyclopedia of Arkansas | No date
State encyclopedia article explaining slavery in Arkansas, including plantation labor, sale, law, Civil War, and emancipation.
The Domestic Slave Trade in Virginia
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Explains how enslaved people were sold from Virginia to the Deep South as cotton expanded and the domestic slave trade grew.
The Domestic Slave Trade
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Overview of the internal slave trade, explaining forced family separations and the movement of enslaved people to new cotton territories.
The Business of Slavery
| National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian | No date
Explains how slavery functioned as a business system involving labor, property, finance, insurance, trade, and national wealth.
The Domestic Slave Trade and Forced Migration
| National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian | No date
Covers the forced movement of enslaved people within the United States, especially through sale from older slave states to cotton frontiers.
Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800–1850
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Provides context for Northern economic growth and its relationship to cotton, trade, textile production, and slavery.
Cotton Is King: The Antebellum South, 1800–1860
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Textbook chapter on the antebellum slave South, cotton production, plantation society, proslavery ideology, and enslaved people’s lives.
Convict Leasing
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the convict lease system, a post-emancipation labor regime that continued many economic functions of slavery through criminalization and coercion.
Sharecropping
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Describes the agricultural labor system that emerged after slavery, often trapping formerly enslaved families in debt and dependency.
Slavery in South Carolina
| South Carolina Encyclopedia | South Carolina Encyclopedia | No date
State overview of slavery in South Carolina, where enslaved Africans and African Americans formed a large share of the population.
How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy
| Heather Andrea Williams | National Geographic | No date
Connects slavery to global capitalism, showing how forced labor, plantation crops, shipping, banking, and industrialization were intertwined.
Cotton Kingdom
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Describes the plantation economy of the Deep South, where cotton expansion intensified slavery before the Civil War.
King Cotton
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the political and economic idea that cotton gave the slaveholding South power over national and global markets.
The Cotton Gin and Slavery
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Explains how cotton technology and global demand intensified slavery rather than weakening it.
The Slave Economy
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Overview of the economic systems of slavery, including plantations, cotton, trade, credit, and national wealth.
Aboard a Slave Ship
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Describes shipboard conditions, confinement, disease, violence, and resistance during the transatlantic slave trade.
Plantation Life
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Overview of plantation labor and violence in the Americas, useful for placing U.S. slavery within the broader Atlantic plantation system.
Slave Manifests of Coastwise Vessels
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Explains records created for the coastwise domestic slave trade, documenting forced movement by ship within the United States.
Slave Labor and the Making of the Capitol
| Architect of the Capitol | Architect of the Capitol | No date
Describes the commemorative marker honoring enslaved laborers who helped build the U.S. Capitol.
Slave Codes in Colonial Georgia
| New Georgia Encyclopedia | New Georgia Encyclopedia | No date
Describes legal codes that defined slavery, restricted Black life, and protected enslavers’ authority in colonial and antebellum Georgia.
Slave Codes
Covers North Carolina laws regulating enslaved people and limiting movement, assembly, education, and resistance.
Slavery in Louisiana
| 64 Parishes | Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities | No date
State encyclopedia article on slavery in Louisiana, including French, Spanish, and American legal regimes and plantation economies.
The Slave Trade in Savannah
| New Georgia Encyclopedia | New Georgia Encyclopedia | No date
Explains Savannah’s role in both the Atlantic and domestic slave trades.
Slavery in Pennsylvania
Explains slavery and the slave trade in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, showing Northern involvement in bondage and gradual abolition.
Enslaved Life, Family, Labor, Culture, and Resistance
American Slavery: Separating Fact from Myth
| Daina Ramey Berry | The Conversation | June 19, 2017
Corrects common myths about slavery, including misconceptions about enslaved people’s value, labor, resistance, and the scale of the institution.
Slave Rebellions
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Overview of slave rebellions in the Atlantic world, useful for understanding resistance by enslaved people in the United States and beyond.
Stono Rebellion
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Encyclopedia article on the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, one of the largest slave uprisings in colonial North America.
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the 1831 revolt led by Nat Turner and the severe repression and legal restrictions that followed across the slaveholding South.
Gabriel’s Rebellion
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Overview of Gabriel’s planned 1800 uprising in Virginia and its significance in the history of enslaved resistance and white fear of rebellion.
Denmark Vesey
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Biography of Denmark Vesey, associated with an alleged 1822 slave rebellion plot in Charleston and remembered as a symbol of resistance.
Slave Resistance
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Explains everyday resistance, escape, sabotage, rebellion, cultural survival, and the ways enslaved people challenged slavery from within.
The Slave Family
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Examines family life under slavery, including marriage, parenting, separation, kinship networks, and survival under constant threat of sale.
The Plantation System
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Describes plantation organization, labor discipline, overseers, field work, skilled labor, and the economic structure of slave agriculture.
Slave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing
| National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund | NLEOMF | No date
Explains slave patrols as institutions designed to control enslaved people, suppress resistance, and enforce the racial order of slavery.
The 1811 Slave Revolt
| Whitney Plantation | Whitney Plantation | No date
Explains the 1811 German Coast uprising in Louisiana, one of the largest slave revolts in U.S. history.
Life on the Plantation
| Whitney Plantation | Whitney Plantation | No date
Describes daily life, labor, family, punishment, and survival among enslaved people on a Louisiana sugar plantation.
Stono Rebellion
| South Carolina Encyclopedia | South Carolina Encyclopedia | No date
State encyclopedia article on the 1739 Stono Rebellion and its consequences for slave law and white repression.
Denmark Vesey Plot
| South Carolina Encyclopedia | South Carolina Encyclopedia | No date
Covers Denmark Vesey and the alleged Charleston conspiracy of 1822, highlighting fear, repression, and Black resistance.
Indian Enslavement in Virginia
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Explains the enslavement of Indigenous people in colonial Virginia and how it overlapped with the rise of African slavery.
Runaway Enslaved People and Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Describes flight from bondage in colonial Virginia and the legal, racial, and social differences in punishments for Black and white runaways.
Literacy and Education of the Enslaved in Virginia
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Describes laws restricting literacy among enslaved people and how education became both a form of resistance and a target of white repression.
Clothing and Adornment of Enslaved People in Virginia
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Encyclopedia Virginia | No date
Examines clothing, material culture, identity, coercion, and self-expression among enslaved people in Virginia.
Life Under Slavery
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Describes daily life for enslaved people at Mount Vernon, including labor, housing, family, skilled work, surveillance, and resistance.
Skills: Life on the Monticello Plantation
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Describes the skilled labor of enslaved artisans, cooks, blacksmiths, carpenters, nailmakers, and domestic workers who sustained Monticello’s economy.
The German Coast Uprising
| 64 Parishes | Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities | No date
Covers the 1811 revolt by enslaved people in Louisiana, a major uprising against plantation slavery.
Slave Insurrections
| Tennessee Encyclopedia | Tennessee Historical Society | No date
Covers fears and realities of rebellion among enslaved people in Tennessee and the broader South.
Slavery in North Carolina
State encyclopedia article covering slavery in North Carolina from colonial origins through emancipation.
Slave Narratives
Explains slave narratives connected to North Carolina and their value as testimony against slavery.
The Slave Dwelling Project
| Slave Dwelling Project | Slave Dwelling Project | No date
Public-history project preserving and interpreting places where enslaved people lived, shifting focus from mansions to the spaces of forced laborers.
The People of Whitney Plantation
| Whitney Plantation | Whitney Plantation | No date
Restores names and stories of people enslaved at Whitney Plantation, emphasizing biography and memory over enslaver-centered history.
Resistance and Rebellion
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Explains forms of resistance by enslaved people, from everyday defiance to organized rebellion across slave societies.
The Slave Economy
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Overview of the economic systems of slavery, including plantations, cotton, trade, credit, and national wealth.
Slave Resistance
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Essay on resistance by enslaved people, including rebellion, escape, work slowdowns, cultural preservation, and everyday defiance.
Law, Constitution, Secession, and Federal Policy
Compromise of 1850: Digital Resources
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress Research Guides | May 28, 2026
Primary-source guide to the Compromise of 1850, including materials on the Fugitive Slave Law and the intensifying national conflict over slavery.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery
| National Archives | National Archives | May 10, 2022
Explains the constitutional amendment passed in 1865 that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.
Constitutional Amendments Series: Amendment XIII
| National Archives | Reagan Library Blog | September 8, 2022
Reviews the Thirteenth Amendment as the legal endpoint of slavery and a turning point in constitutional history after the Civil War.
Race, Slavery, and Freedom: The Evolution of Their Status
| National Park Service | National Park Service | March 28, 2022
Explains how race, legal status, servitude, freedom, and slavery evolved in colonial North America during the seventeenth century.
U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition
| History.com Editors | HISTORY | April 25, 2024
Accessible timeline explaining slavery from colonial America through the Civil War, with attention to regional differences, the domestic slave trade, abolitionism, and emancipation.
The Emancipation Proclamation
| National Archives | National Archives | January 28, 2022
Provides historical context and text for Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation declaring enslaved people in rebelling Confederate areas free as a war measure.
How Slavery Became America’s First Big Business
| Calvin Schermerhorn | The Conversation | August 19, 2019
Explains slavery as a major business system tied to credit, insurance, shipping, commodities, and national economic growth.
America’s History of Slavery Began Long Before Jamestown
| Michael Guasco | The Conversation | August 23, 2019
Places 1619 in broader context by tracing earlier slavery and slave trading in the Americas and European empires.
The 1619 Project
| Nikole Hannah-Jones and contributors | The New York Times Magazine | August 14, 2019
Influential project placing slavery and Black Americans’ struggle for freedom at the center of U.S. history, public memory, democracy, capitalism, and citizenship debates.
The 1619 Project Curriculum
| Pulitzer Center | Pulitzer Center | 2019
Educational resource collection built around The 1619 Project, with lesson materials on slavery, democracy, capitalism, resistance, and historical memory.
A History of Slavery in the United States
| Daina Ramey Berry | Black Perspectives / AAIHS | October 15, 2018
Scholarly public-history essay summarizing slavery in British North America and the United States, emphasizing capitalism, violence, family, resistance, and memory.
The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History
| Michael Guasco | Smithsonian Magazine | September 13, 2017
Argues that slavery in North America did not begin in isolation in 1619 and must be understood within a broader Atlantic, colonial, and Indigenous history.
Slavery and the Making of the American University
| Scott Jaschik | Inside Higher Ed | April 7, 2017
Reports on universities investigating their ties to slavery, including institutional wealth, slaveholding founders, campus labor, and memorialization.
The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
| Andrew Kahn and Jamelle Bouie | Slate | June 25, 2015
Interactive visualization of slave voyages showing the geographic scale, timing, and human toll of the transatlantic slave trade.
These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States
| Lincoln Mullen | Smithsonian Magazine | May 15, 2014
Uses historical census maps to show the spread of slavery from 1790 to 1860, especially the westward expansion of plantation slavery and cotton production.
Slavery in America
| Equal Justice Initiative | EJI | 2013
Report tracing slavery’s history and its legacy in racial terror, segregation, mass incarceration, and the continuing struggle for truth and repair.
The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law
| Jenny S. Martinez | Cambridge University Press | 2012
Scholarly book resource linking suppression of the slave trade to early international law and human rights frameworks.
Emancipation Proclamation: The 13th Amendment
| National Archives | Pieces of History | January 3, 2013
Describes the relationship between Lincoln’s wartime emancipation policy and the later constitutional abolition of slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment.
Slavery and the Making of America
Companion site to the PBS series examining slavery as central to American development, with biographies, timelines, primary sources, and teaching materials.
Slavery in the United States
| Contributors | Wikipedia | Updated 2026
Broad overview of the legal, economic, political, and social history of slavery in what became the United States, from colonial beginnings through abolition in 1865 and later legacies.
Slave Codes
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the laws that defined enslaved people as property, restricted movement, punished resistance, and protected enslavers’ power.
Slavery and the Constitution
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Explains how the Constitution protected slavery through compromise, representation, fugitive clauses, and limits on ending the Atlantic trade.
The Missouri Crisis
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Describes the Missouri Compromise and how the debate over slavery’s expansion exposed deep sectional conflict.
The Fugitive Slave Law
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Explains the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and why it radicalized many Northerners by forcing participation in slave-catching.
The Dred Scott Decision
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Summarizes the Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to Black Americans and rejected congressional power to ban slavery in territories.
Imperial Reforms and Colonial Protests, 1763–1774
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Useful background on slavery and liberty debates in the revolutionary era, including colonial protest and contradictions in freedom rhetoric.
Creating Republican Governments, 1776–1790
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Covers early state and national governments, including constitutional compromises and debates over slavery after independence.
Jacksonian Democracy, 1820–1840
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Explains the political era in which slavery, expansion, race, and democracy became increasingly contested.
A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 1800–1860
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Covers westward expansion and the repeated political conflicts over whether slavery would spread into new territories.
Troubled Times: The Tumultuous 1850s
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Explains the decade of crisis over slavery, including the Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott, and John Brown.
Dred Scott Decision
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the 1857 Supreme Court decision denying Black citizenship and intensifying the national crisis over slavery’s expansion.
Fugitive Slave Acts
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains federal laws requiring the return of escaped enslaved people and the political backlash that strengthened abolitionist resistance.
Missouri Compromise
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Describes the 1820 compromise over slavery’s expansion, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
Compromise of 1850
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the package of laws addressing slavery in new territories, including California statehood and the strengthened Fugitive Slave Act.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the 1854 law that reopened the slavery expansion question and helped trigger violent conflict in Kansas.
Bleeding Kansas
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Covers the violent struggle between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas during the 1850s.
Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Covers the 1807 U.S. law banning the importation of enslaved people after 1808 while domestic slavery and internal slave trading continued.
Black Codes
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains post-Civil War laws designed to restrict Black freedom, labor mobility, voting, and civil rights after emancipation.
Slavery, the Constitution, and a Lasting Legacy
| National Constitution Center | Interactive Constitution | No date
Constitutional analysis of slavery-related compromises and how the founding document accommodated slavery while avoiding the word itself.
The Fugitive Slave Clause
| National Constitution Center | Interactive Constitution | No date
Explains the constitutional clause requiring return of persons “held to service or labor,” a foundation for later fugitive slave laws.
The Thirteenth Amendment
| National Constitution Center | Interactive Constitution | No date
Provides constitutional text and interpretation of the amendment abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude except as criminal punishment.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866
| U.S. Senate Historical Office | United States Senate | No date
Explains the first federal civil rights law, passed after slavery to define citizenship and protect formerly enslaved people’s rights.
The Fourteenth Amendment
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Explains the amendment that expanded citizenship and equal protection after slavery and in response to Black Codes.
The Fifteenth Amendment
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Explains the amendment prohibiting denial of voting rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments
| National Constitution Center | Interactive Constitution | No date
Explains the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments as constitutional responses to slavery, emancipation, citizenship, and voting rights.
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
| National Park Service | Lincoln Home National Historic Site | No date
Covers debates over slavery’s expansion, popular sovereignty, race, and the future of the Union.
The Gag Rule
| U.S. House of Representatives | History, Art & Archives | No date
Explains the House gag rule that blocked antislavery petitions and deepened conflict over slavery and free speech.
Slavery in the House of Representatives
| U.S. House of Representatives | History, Art & Archives | No date
Explains how slavery shaped congressional debates, representation, petitions, and the political careers of Black Americans after emancipation.
The Senate and Slavery
| U.S. Senate Historical Office | United States Senate | No date
Explores the Senate’s role in slavery debates, compromises, territorial expansion, and the crisis that led to Civil War.
The Caning of Charles Sumner
| U.S. Senate Historical Office | United States Senate | No date
Explains the 1856 attack on antislavery senator Charles Sumner and its symbolism in the violent politics of slavery.
Slavery and Freedom in the Making of America
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Essay resource connecting slavery to American political development, revolution, expansion, abolition, Civil War, and emancipation.
The Origins of Slavery
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Explains the development of slavery in colonial America and the shift toward racialized hereditary bondage.
Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Essay on Dred Scott v. Sandford and its role in deepening sectional conflict over slavery and citizenship.
Abolition, Underground Railroad, Freedom Seekers, and Activists
Boston’s Women and the Underground Railroad
| National Park Service | National Park Service | January 5, 2026
Highlights women in Boston who aided freedom seekers, founded antislavery organizations, and helped make the Underground Railroad a community-based resistance network.
What Is the Underground Railroad?
| National Park Service | National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom | April 7, 2025
Overview of the Underground Railroad as a decentralized freedom movement involving self-emancipating people, free Black communities, Indigenous people, and antislavery allies.
The Underground Railroad
| National Park Service | Lincoln Home National Historic Site | September 14, 2023
Explains the Underground Railroad, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and how escapes from slavery shaped northern opinion before the Civil War.
Universities Confront Their Ties to Slavery
| Gene Demby | NPR | September 6, 2017
Explores how universities have begun researching and acknowledging links to slavery and the slave trade.
Significant Events of the Underground Railroad
| National Park Service | Women’s Rights National Historical Park | February 26, 2015
Timeline of antislavery resistance and Underground Railroad history, from early colonial slavery through abolitionist organizing and the Civil War.
Frederick Douglass
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Biography of Frederick Douglass, formerly enslaved writer, speaker, editor, and abolitionist whose life reshaped American debates over slavery and citizenship.
Harriet Tubman
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Biography of Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery and repeatedly risked her life guiding others to freedom through the Underground Railroad.
Sojourner Truth
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Biography of Sojourner Truth, formerly enslaved abolitionist and women’s rights advocate who challenged slavery, racism, and sexism.
William Lloyd Garrison
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Biography of the radical abolitionist editor of The Liberator, whose uncompromising antislavery activism shaped the national abolition movement.
The Liberator
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Explains the abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison and its role in spreading antislavery arguments.
Underground Railroad
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Overview of the Underground Railroad as a network of routes, communities, and activists helping enslaved people escape bondage.
The Abolitionist Movement
| Steven Mintz | Digital History | No date
Covers antislavery activism, moral arguments, organizing strategies, Black abolitionists, and the growth of radical abolitionism.
Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Biography of Harriet Tubman, emphasizing her escape from slavery, work on the Underground Railroad, Civil War service, and freedom activism.
Harriet Jacobs
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Biography of Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and a major voice on gender, sexual violence, motherhood, and slavery.
Henry Box Brown
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Biography of Henry Box Brown, who escaped slavery by mailing himself in a crate and later became a public antislavery speaker.
Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
| National Park Service | Frederick Douglass National Historic Site | No date
Biography of Frederick Douglass, whose escape from slavery and antislavery activism made him one of the most influential abolitionists in U.S. history.
Language of Slavery
| National Park Service | National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom | No date
Explains why terms such as “freedom seeker” better center enslaved people’s agency and avoid language shaped by enslavers and slave-catching law.
Quakers and Slavery
Explains Quaker antislavery activity and the complicated history of religious opposition to slavery.
The Underground Railroad in North Carolina
Covers escape routes, free Black communities, and antislavery networks connected to North Carolina.
The President’s House Site
| National Park Service | Independence National Historical Park | No date
Visitor and history page for the memorial to enslaved people held by Washington at the presidential residence in Philadelphia.
Abolition
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Covers abolition campaigns in the Atlantic world and the long struggle to end both the slave trade and slavery.
The Abolitionist Movement
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Overview of abolitionist activism, with attention to Black leadership, religious reform, print culture, and political conflict.
Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and Afterlives
America Turns 250 as Museums Fight to Preserve Troubled History
| Reuters | Reuters | July 3, 2026
Covers current disputes over how museums and parks present slavery, founding ideals, Indigenous history, and marginalized communities during the U.S. 250th anniversary.
Early Photos of Enslaved People in 1850 Head Home from Harvard to South Carolina Museum
| Associated Press | AP News | 2026
Reports on the return of early photographs of enslaved people from Harvard to a South Carolina museum, highlighting ethics, descendants, and historical memory.
The New History of Fighting Slavery
| The Atlantic | The Atlantic | February 2026
Reviews new scholarship emphasizing enslaved people’s resistance across the Atlantic world rather than centering only white abolitionists.
The Way We Remember Slavery Is Changing
| The Washington Post | The Washington Post | March 14, 2025
Reports on local memorial projects honoring enslaved people by name and showing how communities are changing the public memory of slavery.
Dred Scott v. Sandford: Digital Collections
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress Research Guides | April 30, 2025
Research guide to primary sources on the Dred Scott case, slavery, citizenship, federal power, and the sectional crisis before the Civil War.
Joe Biden Addresses America’s Original Sin of Slavery on Angola Visit
| The Guardian | The Guardian | December 3, 2024
Reports on U.S. recognition of slavery’s Atlantic history during a presidential visit to Angola, connecting American slavery to African origins and memory.
Why Descendants Are Returning to the Plantations Where Their Ancestors Were Enslaved
| Smithsonian Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine | July 11, 2024
Explores descendant-led efforts to reclaim plantation history, showing how slavery’s story continued after emancipation through family memory, land, labor, and community survival.
Plantation Slavery
| National Park Service | National Park Service | July 26, 2022
Describes plantation slavery through the example of Belle Grove, emphasizing the diverse labor enslaved people performed in agriculture, trades, and industry.
Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery
| Harvard University | Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery | 2022
University report documenting Harvard’s historical ties to slavery and proposing research, memorialization, education, and reparative initiatives.
Slavery at Harvard
| Harvard University | Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery | 2022
Explains direct and indirect connections between Harvard, slavery, slaveholders, racial science, and financial networks.
America Is Still Reckoning With the Failures of Reconstruction
| Smithsonian Institution | Smithsonian Magazine | October 27, 2021
Connects emancipation to Reconstruction, showing how formerly enslaved people demanded land, citizenship, voting rights, family security, and constitutional protection.
Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade
| Joshua D. Rothman | Smithsonian Magazine | April 19, 2021
Details how New Orleans became a major marketplace in the domestic slave trade, connecting the Upper South to cotton plantations in the Deep South.
The Long War Against Slavery
| The Atlantic | The Atlantic | March 2020
Essay on why slavery history must foreground capitalism, violence, resistance, and the continuing political fight over memory.
Can Slavery Reënactments Set Us Free?
| Julian Lucas | The New Yorker | February 17, 2020
Examines educational slavery reenactments and debates over empathy, trauma, public history, and the ethics of simulating enslavement.
Slavery in New England
| History.com Editors | HISTORY | February 5, 2020
Explains slavery and slave-trade profits in New England, challenging the myth that slavery was only a Southern institution.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Report on Teaching Slavery
| Learning for Justice | Learning for Justice | 2018
Report documenting gaps in student and teacher knowledge about slavery and offering recommendations for better history instruction.
Remembering Slavery
| Casey Cep | The New Yorker | February 7, 2018
Essay on slavery memory, testimony, and the importance of listening to formerly enslaved people’s accounts while recognizing the limitations of archived interviews.
What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery
| Melinda D. Anderson | The Atlantic | February 1, 2018
Examines shortcomings in how schools teach slavery and why honest, specific instruction matters for understanding U.S. history.
Why We Need to Teach Slavery’s History Honestly
| Hasan Kwame Jeffries | The Conversation | February 20, 2018
Argues that slavery education often avoids violence, economics, and resistance, weakening public understanding of American history.
Teaching Hard History: Slavery in the United States
| Hasan Kwame Jeffries | Learning for Justice | Spring 2018
Explains common failures in slavery education and argues for teaching slavery as central to American development.
At a Pivotal Moment of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass Delivered a Speech That Reframed What Was at Stake
| David W. Blight | Smithsonian Magazine | 2026
Examines Frederick Douglass’s wartime argument that the Civil War had to become a fight against slavery, not merely a struggle to preserve the Union.
Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War
| National Park Service | Lincoln Home National Historic Site | March 7, 2023
Summarizes the historical consensus that slavery and the status of African Americans were central causes of the Civil War.
Monticello and Honest History
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | July 12, 2022
Explains Monticello’s commitment to interpreting slavery honestly and using decades of research to tell the stories of Jefferson and the enslaved community.
The Civil War, 1860–1865
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Covers secession, war, emancipation, Black military service, and the destruction of slavery.
The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877
| OpenStax | U.S. History | No date
Explains the aftermath of slavery, including freedom, citizenship, Black political participation, white resistance, and federal retreat.
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Slavery by Another Name
Companion resource explaining how forced labor continued after emancipation through convict leasing, debt peonage, and racial terror.
Slavery by Another Name
Thematic resource on post-Civil War forced labor systems that exploited the Thirteenth Amendment exception and undermined Black freedom.
Freedmen’s Bureau
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Overview of the federal agency created after the Civil War to assist formerly enslaved people with education, labor contracts, legal rights, and relief.
Reconstruction
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | No date
Covers the post-slavery struggle over citizenship, voting rights, labor, land, political power, and white supremacist backlash.
The Freedmen’s Bureau
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Research guide to Freedmen’s Bureau records, a major source for studying formerly enslaved people, families, labor, schools, and Reconstruction.
Freedmen’s Bureau Records
| FamilySearch Wiki | FamilySearch | No date
Genealogical guide explaining how Freedmen’s Bureau records help trace formerly enslaved families after emancipation.
The Freedmen’s Bureau Online
| Angela Walton-Raji and contributors | Freedmen’s Bureau Online | No date
Research site organizing Freedmen’s Bureau records and related materials for tracing formerly enslaved people and Reconstruction communities.
From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
| Equal Justice Initiative | EJI | No date
Explains EJI’s framework connecting slavery, racial terror lynching, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration as linked systems of racial control.
Robert Smalls
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Biography of Robert Smalls, who escaped slavery by commandeering a Confederate vessel and later became a Reconstruction political leader.
Contraband: Formerly Enslaved People and the Civil War
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Explains how escaped enslaved people reached Union lines and transformed federal policy through the “contraband” designation.
Fort Monroe and Freedom’s Fortress
| National Park Service | Fort Monroe National Monument | No date
Explains Fort Monroe’s role in the contraband decision and the movement of enslaved people toward Union protection and freedom.
Camp Nelson National Monument
| National Park Service | Camp Nelson National Monument | No date
Covers a major Union Army supply depot and recruitment center where enslaved people sought freedom and Black men enlisted in the U.S. Army.
United States Colored Troops
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Explains the role of Black soldiers, many formerly enslaved, in fighting slavery and securing Union victory during the Civil War.
Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Primary-source lesson on Black Civil War soldiers and their role in emancipation, Union victory, and citizenship claims.
Reconstruction and Its Aftermath
| Library of Congress | African American Odyssey | No date
Exhibition section on the period after slavery, focusing on constitutional change, Black officeholding, white resistance, and the collapse of Reconstruction.
The Civil War
| Library of Congress | African American Odyssey | No date
Library of Congress exhibition section on Black military service, emancipation, and African Americans’ role in the Civil War.
The Road to Civil War
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Explains the conflicts over slavery expansion that led to the Civil War.
Emancipation and the Meaning of Freedom
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Essay on the process of emancipation and formerly enslaved people’s definitions of freedom.
John Brown’s Raid
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Essay on Harpers Ferry, militant abolitionism, white Southern fear, and the road to Civil War.
The Civil War and Emancipation
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Explains how slavery became the central issue of the Civil War and how emancipation changed the war’s meaning.
Reconstruction
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | No date
Explains Reconstruction as the unfinished struggle to define freedom, citizenship, labor, voting, and equality after slavery.
The Civil War and Emancipation
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Explains how emancipation unfolded during the Civil War through federal policy, Union military action, and the actions of enslaved people themselves.
Lincoln and Emancipation
| National Park Service | Lincoln Home National Historic Site | No date
Explains Lincoln’s evolving policy on slavery and emancipation during the Civil War.
Harpers Ferry and the Struggle Against Slavery
| National Park Service | Harpers Ferry National Historical Park | No date
Connects Harpers Ferry to abolitionism, Black history, John Brown, Civil War, and emancipation.
Primary Sources, Slave Narratives, and Testimony
Compensated Emancipation in Washington, D.C.
| Damani Davis | Prologue Magazine / National Archives | Spring 2010
Explains compensated emancipation in the capital and the records that reveal enslaved people’s names, families, and appraised values.
A Slave No More
| Dwight Garner | The New York Times | September 18, 2007
Review of David Blight’s publication of two newly discovered emancipation narratives, showing how first-person accounts continue to reshape slavery history.
Up from Slavery
| Booker T. Washington | Documenting the American South | 1901
Autobiography beginning with Washington’s childhood in slavery and continuing into freedom, education, and post-emancipation Black institution-building.
Thirty Years a Slave
| Louis Hughes | Documenting the American South | 1897
Narrative by Louis Hughes describing slavery in Virginia and Mississippi, wartime escape efforts, and the struggle for freedom.
Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House
| Elizabeth Keckley | Documenting the American South | 1868
Memoir by Elizabeth Keckley, formerly enslaved dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, linking slavery, freedom, work, and Civil War Washington.
The Thirteenth Amendment Text
| United States | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | 1865
Primary constitutional text abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.
The Emancipation Proclamation Text
| Abraham Lincoln | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | January 1, 1863
Full primary text of Lincoln’s proclamation freeing enslaved people in areas under Confederate rebellion.
The Cornerstone Speech
| Alexander H. Stephens | Teaching American History | March 21, 1861
Primary proslavery Confederate speech declaring slavery and white supremacy central to the Confederacy’s foundation.
Texas Declaration of Secession
| State of Texas | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | 1861
Primary source using openly proslavery and white supremacist arguments to justify secession from the United States.
Georgia Declaration of Secession
| State of Georgia | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | 1861
Primary source explaining Georgia’s secession through slavery, fugitive slave disputes, antislavery politics, and sectional conflict.
The Confederate Constitution
| Confederate States of America | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | 1861
Primary source showing how the Confederacy constitutionally protected slavery and slaveholding property.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
| Harriet Jacobs | Documenting the American South | 1861
Full text of Harriet Jacobs’s narrative, one of the most important accounts of slavery, gendered violence, motherhood, and resistance.
South Carolina Declaration of Secession
| State of South Carolina | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | 1860
Primary source showing how secessionists framed constitutional conflict around slavery, slaveholding rights, and federal power.
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom
| William and Ellen Craft | Documenting the American South | 1860
Narrative of Ellen and William Craft’s daring escape from slavery, using disguise, travel, and resistance to expose slavery’s reach.
Mississippi Declaration of Secession
| State of Mississippi | Avalon Project / Yale Law School | 1861
Primary source explicitly stating Mississippi’s secession was tied to the institution of slavery.
Twelve Years a Slave
| Solomon Northup | Documenting the American South | 1853
Full text of Solomon Northup’s memoir about kidnapping, enslavement in Louisiana, plantation violence, and eventual rescue.
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
| Frederick Douglass | Teaching American History | July 5, 1852
Full text of Douglass’s famous speech condemning slavery and exposing the contradiction between American independence and human bondage.
The Narrative of William W. Brown
| William Wells Brown | Documenting the American South | 1847
Slave narrative by William Wells Brown describing enslavement, escape, antislavery activism, and the domestic slave trade.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
| Frederick Douglass | Documenting the American South | 1845
Full text of Douglass’s first autobiography, a foundational slave narrative exposing slavery’s violence and asserting Black intellectual and moral authority.
Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society
| American Anti-Slavery Society | Teaching American History | 1833
Primary document stating the principles of organized abolitionism and demanding immediate emancipation.
The History of Mary Prince
| Mary Prince | Documenting the American South | 1831
First published narrative of a Black woman in Britain’s abolitionist movement, useful for comparing U.S. slavery with British Atlantic slavery.
The Confessions of Nat Turner
| Thomas R. Gray | Documenting the American South | 1831
Controversial primary source on Nat Turner’s rebellion, requiring careful reading because it was mediated by a white lawyer after Turner’s capture.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
| Olaudah Equiano | Documenting the American South | 1789
Influential Atlantic slave narrative describing capture, the Middle Passage, enslavement, freedom, and abolitionist arguments.
Documenting the American South: North American Slave Narratives
| University of North Carolina | Documenting the American South | No date
Digital collection of slave narratives and autobiographies, central for studying slavery from the perspectives of enslaved and formerly enslaved people.
North American Slave Narratives: Introduction
| University of North Carolina | Documenting the American South | No date
Introduces the slave narrative genre and explains how first-person accounts challenged proslavery myths and documented the reality of bondage.
Slavery and the Supreme Court
| Justia | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center | No date
Full case resource for Dred Scott v. Sandford, one of the most consequential proslavery Supreme Court decisions.
Prigg v. Pennsylvania
| Justia | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center | No date
Supreme Court case involving fugitive slave law, state personal liberty laws, and federal power over escaped enslaved people.
The Amistad Case
| Justia | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center | No date
Case resource on enslaved Africans who revolted aboard the Amistad and won a Supreme Court ruling securing their freedom.
United States v. The Amistad
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Primary-source lesson on the Amistad revolt, court case, and antislavery activism surrounding illegally trafficked Africans.
Isaac Granger Jefferson
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Biography of Isaac Granger Jefferson, formerly enslaved at Monticello, whose recollections are an important source on Jefferson’s plantation.
Madison Hemings
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Biography of Madison Hemings, son of Sally Hemings, whose 1873 memoir is central to understanding the Hemings family and Jefferson.
Slavery, Memory, and the Archive
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Research guide to federal records about slavery, including slave manifests, court cases, military records, Freedmen’s Bureau files, and census materials.
African American Genealogy: Records of Enslaved People
| National Archives | National Archives | No date
Research guide for finding enslaved ancestors in Civil War and Reconstruction-era federal records.
Petitions Against Slavery
| Massachusetts Historical Society | Massachusetts Historical Society | No date
Primary-source item showing how enslaved and free Black people used petitions to challenge slavery and claim rights.
Digital Archives, Databases, Maps, and Research Guides
African American History Online: A Resource Guide
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress Research Guides | May 28, 2026
Resource guide linking major digital collections on African American history, including slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and Black activism.
Slavery and Abolition: Topics in Chronicling America
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress Research Guides | No date
Research guide for newspaper coverage of slavery and abolition, including major events, antislavery organizing, congressional debates, and public controversy.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | No date
Collection description for more than 2,300 first-person accounts and hundreds of photographs of formerly enslaved people gathered in the 1930s.
Voices and Faces from the Collection
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | No date
Presents sample excerpts and photographs from the WPA slave narratives, offering first-person testimony about slavery, memory, family, and survival.
Slave Narratives from Slavery to the Great Depression
| Norman R. Yetman | Library of Congress | No date
Explains the long tradition of slave narratives and how the WPA interviews fit into the broader history of testimony against slavery.
The WPA and the Slave Narrative Collection
| Norman R. Yetman | Library of Congress | No date
Describes how the Federal Writers’ Project collected former slave interviews and why the collection must be read critically and historically.
Slavery in the United States: Primary Sources and the Historical Record
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | No date
Lesson plan built around primary sources that helps readers analyze the documentary record of slavery in the United States.
Pre-Civil War African-American Slavery
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | No date
Primary-source timeline page covering enslaved African American life, labor, resistance, and the political conflicts over slavery before the Civil War.
The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
| University of Virginia | Virginia Center for Digital History | No date
Digital project using runaway ads and legal notices to map slavery, resistance, and the daily realities of enslaved people in Virginia.
Mapping the Domestic Slave Trade
| University of Richmond | Digital Scholarship Lab | No date
Interactive project visualizing the forced migration of enslaved people through the domestic slave trade from the Upper South to the Deep South.
Visualizing Emancipation
| University of Richmond | Digital Scholarship Lab | No date
Maps emancipation during the Civil War using evidence of enslaved people’s flight, Union military action, and changing federal policy.
Valley of the Shadow: Slavery and Civil War Communities
| University of Virginia | Valley of the Shadow | No date
Digital archive comparing Northern and Southern communities before, during, and after the Civil War, with materials on slavery and emancipation.
The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860
| University of Richmond | Digital Scholarship Lab | No date
Mapping project showing how enslaved populations expanded across the United States as cotton agriculture and westward settlement grew.
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade
| Matrix / Michigan State University and partners | Enslaved.org | No date
Digital humanities project linking data about enslaved people, slaveholders, events, places, and sources across the history of slavery.
Freedom on the Move
| Cornell University and partners | Freedom on the Move | No date
Database of runaway slave advertisements that documents enslaved people’s resistance, skills, family ties, and efforts to seize freedom.
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery
| Villanova University | Last Seen | No date
Digital archive of “Information Wanted” ads placed by formerly enslaved people searching for family members separated by slavery and sale.
Lost Friends Database
| Historic New Orleans Collection | Lost Friends Database | No date
Database of newspaper ads by formerly enslaved people seeking loved ones separated by slavery, sale, war, and migration.
The Freedmen and Southern Society Project
| University of Maryland | Freedmen and Southern Society Project | No date
Documentary history project publishing records on emancipation, Black military service, labor, family, violence, and Reconstruction.
Freedmen and Southern Society Project: Documents
| University of Maryland | Freedmen and Southern Society Project | No date
Collection of primary-source documents showing how enslaved and formerly enslaved people shaped emancipation and freedom.
Lowcountry Digital History Initiative: Slavery
| College of Charleston | Lowcountry Digital History Initiative | No date
Digital exhibit on African passages, slavery, adaptation, and Black life in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Lowcountry Digital History Initiative: The Domestic Slave Trade
| College of Charleston | Lowcountry Digital History Initiative | No date
Explains the domestic slave trade and its impact on families, labor systems, and the expansion of slavery in the American South.
Georgetown Slavery Archive
| Georgetown University | Georgetown Slavery Archive | No date
Digital archive documenting Georgetown’s involvement in slavery, including the 1838 sale of enslaved people and descendant-led memory work.
Slavery and Remembrance
| Colonial Williamsburg and partners | Slavery and Remembrance | No date
Public-history project connecting historic sites that interpret slavery, memory, resistance, and descendant communities.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas
| Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. | Slavery Images | No date
Visual archive of images related to the Atlantic slave trade, plantation labor, punishment, resistance, and material culture.
The Amistad Center for Art & Culture
| Amistad Center for Art & Culture | Amistad Center | No date
Museum and cultural resource preserving African American history, including memory of the Amistad case and broader freedom struggles.
State, Regional, and Local Histories
Slavery in Texas
| Randolph B. Campbell | Handbook of Texas | No date
Detailed state history of slavery in Texas, including Mexican rule, the Republic of Texas, annexation, Civil War, and emancipation.
Juneteenth
| Teresa Palomo Acosta | Handbook of Texas | No date
State encyclopedia article on Juneteenth and the delayed announcement of emancipation in Texas on June 19, 1865.
Slavery in Missouri
| Missouri Encyclopedia | Missouri Encyclopedia | No date
Overview of slavery in Missouri, a border state where slavery, migration, politics, and sectional conflict intersected.
Slavery in Maryland
| Maryland State Archives | Maryland State Archives | No date
State archive resource on slavery in Maryland, including records, people, manumission, and the transition from slavery to freedom.
Legacy of Slavery in Maryland
| Maryland State Archives | Maryland State Archives | No date
Digital project documenting enslaved people, slaveholders, manumissions, freedom seekers, and slavery-related records in Maryland.
Slavery in New York
| New-York Historical Society | New-York Historical Society | No date
Explains the often-overlooked history of slavery in New York and its importance to the city’s colonial and early national economy.
New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War
| New-York Historical Society | New-York Historical Society | No date
Exhibition page explaining New York’s economic ties to slavery and the city’s divided politics during the Civil War.
Slavery in Rhode Island
| Rhode Island Historical Society | Rhode Island Historical Society | No date
Public-history resource on Rhode Island’s deep involvement in slavery, slave trading, shipping, and rum commerce.
The Royall House and Slave Quarters
| Royall House and Slave Quarters | Royall House and Slave Quarters | No date
Museum resource interpreting slavery in colonial Massachusetts through one of the only surviving slave quarters in the northern United States.
Slavery in Colonial Georgia
| New Georgia Encyclopedia | New Georgia Encyclopedia | No date
Explains Georgia’s early ban on slavery, later legalization, and development of plantation slavery.
Slavery in Antebellum Georgia
| New Georgia Encyclopedia | New Georgia Encyclopedia | No date
Covers slavery’s central role in Georgia’s antebellum economy, society, politics, and plantation agriculture.
Slavery in Tennessee
| Tennessee Encyclopedia | Tennessee Historical Society | No date
State encyclopedia overview of slavery in Tennessee, including plantation regions, urban slavery, labor, resistance, and emancipation.
Fort Pillow Massacre
| Tennessee Encyclopedia | Tennessee Historical Society | No date
Civil War article relevant to slavery and emancipation because Black Union soldiers, many formerly enslaved, were targeted by Confederate troops.
Slavery in Delaware
| Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs | State of Delaware | No date
State resource on slavery in Delaware, a border state where slavery declined slowly and emancipation remained contested.
Gradual Abolition Act of 1780
| The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia | Rutgers University / MARCH | No date
Explains Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law and its limitations, including how freedom was delayed for many enslaved people.
Slavery in New Jersey
| New Jersey Historical Commission | State of New Jersey | No date
State history resource showing New Jersey’s deep ties to slavery and its slow process of gradual abolition.
Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey
| New Jersey State Library | New Jersey State Library | No date
Research resource on slavery, gradual emancipation, and Black life in New Jersey.
Slavery in Connecticut
| ConnecticutHistory.org | Connecticut Humanities | No date
Explains the history of slavery in Connecticut and challenges assumptions that New England was separate from slavery.
Venture Smith
| ConnecticutHistory.org | Connecticut Humanities | No date
Biography of Venture Smith, an African-born man enslaved in New England who purchased freedom for himself and his family.
Slavery in Massachusetts
| Massachusetts Historical Society | Massachusetts Historical Society | No date
Explains the history and end of slavery in Massachusetts through documents, court cases, petitions, and public debate.
Elizabeth Freeman
| Massachusetts Historical Society | Massachusetts Historical Society | No date
Resource on Elizabeth Freeman, whose freedom suit helped undermine slavery in Massachusetts after the American Revolution.
Quock Walker Case
| Massachusetts Historical Society | Massachusetts Historical Society | No date
Explains the Massachusetts court cases associated with Quock Walker and the legal weakening of slavery in the state.
African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts
| Massachusetts Historical Society | Massachusetts Historical Society | No date
Digital exhibit on slavery’s decline in Massachusetts, emphasizing lawsuits, petitions, Black activism, and revolutionary-era freedom claims.
Slavery in Vermont
| Vermont Historical Society | Vermont Historical Society | No date
Explains slavery and abolition in Vermont, including the state constitution’s antislavery language and its limits.
Slavery in Maine
| Maine Historical Society | Maine Memory Network | No date
Public-history resource on slavery and Black life in Maine, including Northern complicity and local records.
Slavery in the District of Columbia
| White House Historical Association | White House Historical Association | No date
Explains slavery in Washington, D.C., including enslaved labor in the president’s neighborhood and the national capital.
The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation
| National Park Service | Independence National Historical Park | No date
Interprets the Philadelphia house where George Washington lived as president while holding enslaved people, including those who sought freedom.
Slavery and Freedom at the President’s House
| Independence Hall Association | USHistory.org | No date
Public-history site documenting Washington’s enslaved household in Philadelphia and the stories of people such as Ona Judge and Hercules Posey.
African Burial Ground National Monument
| National Park Service | African Burial Ground National Monument | No date
Explains the rediscovery of a burial ground for free and enslaved Africans in New York City, revealing Northern slavery and Black community life.
The African Burial Ground
| U.S. General Services Administration | GSA | No date
Federal history page on the African Burial Ground and its significance for understanding slavery and African American life in colonial New York.
Slavery in Alabama
| Encyclopedia of Alabama | Encyclopedia of Alabama | No date
Covers slavery in Alabama from territorial expansion through the cotton boom, Civil War, and emancipation.
Slavery in Mississippi
| Mississippi Encyclopedia | Mississippi Encyclopedia | No date
Overview of slavery in Mississippi, one of the most heavily enslaved cotton states before the Civil War.
Solomon Northup and Twelve Years a Slave
| 64 Parishes | Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities | No date
Biography of Solomon Northup and his enslavement in Louisiana, connecting kidnapping, plantation slavery, and abolitionist testimony.
Slavery in Florida
| Florida Memory | State Library and Archives of Florida | No date
Classroom resource on slavery in Florida, including documents, images, laws, and the transition from Spanish to American rule.
Fort Mose
| Florida Museum | Florida Museum | No date
Explains Fort Mose, a free Black settlement in Spanish Florida formed by people escaping slavery from British colonies.
The Seminoles and Black Seminoles
| National Park Service | National Park Service | No date
Explains the history of Black Seminoles, including communities of freedom seekers who escaped slavery and allied with Seminole people.
The Weeping Time
| New Georgia Encyclopedia | New Georgia Encyclopedia | No date
Explains the 1859 sale of hundreds of enslaved people near Savannah, one of the largest slave auctions in U.S. history.
Founders, Presidents, Historic Sites, and Plantations
Whitney Plantation
| Whitney Plantation | Whitney Plantation | No date
Plantation museum history page centered on the lives of enslaved people in Louisiana and the violence of plantation slavery.
Slavery at Monticello
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Overview of slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, including Jefferson’s lifelong slaveholding, the lives of enslaved families, and Monticello’s public-history interpretation.
People Enslaved at Monticello
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Database-style resource on individuals enslaved at Monticello, helping recover names, family ties, work roles, and fragments of biography from plantation records.
Slavery FAQs
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Answers common questions about Jefferson, slavery, emancipation, race, plantation labor, and the lives of people enslaved at Monticello.
Thomas Jefferson’s Attitudes Toward Slavery
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Examines Jefferson’s contradictions: his stated opposition to slavery, racist beliefs, political caution, and lifelong dependence on enslaved labor.
The Life of James Hemings
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Biography of James Hemings, an enslaved chef trained in France whose skill, labor, and negotiated freedom reveal the global dimensions of slavery at Monticello.
Getting Word African American Oral History Project
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Getting Word / Monticello | No date
Oral history project preserving descendants’ stories from Monticello’s enslaved families, connecting slavery, emancipation, migration, memory, and family continuity.
George Washington and Slavery
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Explains Washington’s lifelong relationship to slavery, from inheritance and purchase to plantation management and his late decision to free some enslaved people.
Ona Judge
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Biography of Ona Judge, who escaped enslavement by George and Martha Washington and resisted repeated attempts to force her back into slavery.
George Washington’s Journey to Emancipation
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Traces Washington’s changing views on slavery while also showing the limits and contradictions of his actions as a major slaveholder.
A Decision to Free His Slaves
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Explains Washington’s will, which freed only the enslaved people he legally owned and left many others in bondage under the Custis estate.
George Washington’s List of Enslaved People, 1799
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Primary-source page presenting Washington’s 1799 list of enslaved people, documenting names, families, ownership status, and plantation organization.
Status of Enslaved People in Washington’s Will
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Explains the complicated legal status of enslaved people at Mount Vernon and why Washington’s will did not free everyone living there.
Washington’s Contested Antislavery Legacy
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Discusses how Washington’s reputation has been shaped by both his slaveholding and his limited late-life antislavery actions.
Hercules Posey
| Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association | Mount Vernon | No date
Biography of Hercules Posey, an enslaved cook held by George Washington who eventually escaped slavery.
Sally Hemings
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Biography and evidence summary on Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello and mother of several of Jefferson’s children.
Elizabeth Hemings
| Thomas Jefferson Foundation | Monticello | No date
Biography of Elizabeth Hemings, matriarch of a large enslaved family at Monticello whose descendants played major roles in plantation life and memory.
Slavery at George Mason’s Gunston Hall
| Gunston Hall | Gunston Hall | No date
Explains slavery at George Mason’s plantation and the contradiction between Mason’s rights language and slaveholding.
Slavery at James Madison’s Montpelier
| Montpelier Foundation | Montpelier | No date
Public-history resource on the enslaved community at James Madison’s plantation and the descendants who preserve that history.
The Mere Distinction of Colour
| Montpelier Foundation | Montpelier | No date
Exhibition page on slavery, race, the Constitution, and the enslaved community at Montpelier.
Slavery at James Monroe’s Highland
| James Monroe’s Highland | Highland | No date
Explains the history of enslaved people at James Monroe’s plantation and the ongoing work to recover their lives and descendants.
Slavery at Poplar Forest
| Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest | Poplar Forest | No date
Interprets the enslaved community at Jefferson’s retreat plantation, including labor, family, archaeology, and historical recovery.
Slavery at Colonial Williamsburg
| Colonial Williamsburg | Colonial Williamsburg | No date
Explores slavery in eighteenth-century Williamsburg and the work of interpreting enslaved people’s lives in a restored colonial capital.
Enslaved Labor and the Construction of the White House
| White House Historical Association | White House Historical Association | No date
Documents enslaved labor used to build the White House and other federal structures in the new capital.
Slavery and the U.S. Capitol
| Architect of the Capitol | Architect of the Capitol | No date
Explains how enslaved labor contributed to the construction of the U.S. Capitol and federal Washington.
Enslaved Laborers at the U.S. Capitol
| U.S. Capitol Visitor Center | U.S. Capitol Visitor Center | No date
Exhibition resource on enslaved workers who helped build the Capitol and the contradiction of slavery in the seat of democracy.
The Emancipation Memorial
| National Park Service | Capitol Hill Parks | No date
Explains the history and controversy of the Emancipation Memorial, raising questions about public memory, freedom, and representation.
Universities and Institutional Reckoning
Princeton & Slavery Project
| Princeton University | Princeton & Slavery Project | No date
Digital project exploring Princeton’s historical ties to slavery through people, places, documents, essays, and public scholarship.
Columbia University and Slavery
| Columbia University | Columbia University and Slavery | No date
Research project documenting Columbia’s ties to slavery, including trustees, students, finances, and institutional history in colonial and early national New York.
Yale and Slavery Research Project
| Yale University | Yale and Slavery Research Project | No date
Institutional research project documenting Yale’s historical relationship to slavery, slave trading, racial ideology, and memory.
Universities Studying Slavery
| University of Virginia | Universities Studying Slavery | No date
Consortium connecting colleges and universities researching their institutional ties to slavery and promoting public accountability.
Slavery and the Making of the University
| University of Virginia | President’s Commission on Slavery and the University | No date
Public-history project documenting the University of Virginia’s ties to slavery and the enslaved laborers who built and maintained the institution.
Penn & Slavery Project
| University of Pennsylvania | Penn & Slavery Project | No date
Student-faculty research project uncovering the University of Pennsylvania’s connections to slavery, race, finance, and historical memory.
Georgetown Slavery Archive
| Georgetown University | Georgetown Slavery Archive | No date
Digital archive documenting Georgetown’s involvement in slavery, including the 1838 sale of enslaved people and descendant-led memory work.
Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery
| Harvard University | Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery | 2022
University report documenting Harvard’s historical ties to slavery and proposing research, memorialization, education, and reparative initiatives.
Slavery at Harvard
| Harvard University | Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery | 2022
Explains direct and indirect connections between Harvard, slavery, slaveholders, racial science, and financial networks.
Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice Report
| Brown University | Brown University | 2006
Landmark university report examining Brown’s historical connections to slavery and the slave trade, helping inspire similar institutional investigations.
Slavery and the Making of the American University
| Scott Jaschik | Inside Higher Ed | April 7, 2017
Reports on universities investigating their ties to slavery, including institutional wealth, slaveholding founders, campus labor, and memorialization.
Universities Confront Their Ties to Slavery
| Gene Demby | NPR | September 6, 2017
Explores how universities have begun researching and acknowledging links to slavery and the slave trade.
Teaching, Museums, Public History, and Memory
America Turns 250 as Museums Fight to Preserve Troubled History
| Reuters | Reuters | July 3, 2026
Covers current disputes over how museums and parks present slavery, founding ideals, Indigenous history, and marginalized communities during the U.S. 250th anniversary.
Slavery’s Descendants and the Fight for Historical Recognition
| Associated Press | AP News | No date
AP topic page collecting reporting on slavery, descendants, reparations, museum controversies, historical memory, and public reckoning.
The Legacy Museum
| Equal Justice Initiative | Legacy Sites | No date
Museum connecting slavery to racial terror, segregation, mass incarceration, and ongoing struggles for justice.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
| Equal Justice Initiative | Legacy Sites | No date
Memorial resource connecting the history of slavery to racial terror lynching and the long struggle to acknowledge racial violence.
The Whitney Plantation’s Field of Angels
| Whitney Plantation | Whitney Plantation | No date
Memorializes enslaved children who died in Louisiana, emphasizing the family trauma and child mortality embedded in plantation slavery.
What Is Juneteenth?
| National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian | No date
Smithsonian overview of Juneteenth as a celebration of emancipation, Black resilience, and the delayed enforcement of freedom.
Slavery and Freedom
| National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian | No date
Exhibition overview placing slavery at the center of U.S. history while tracing Black resistance, survival, culture, and freedom struggles.
Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period
| Library of Congress | African American Odyssey | No date
Covers free Black communities living under the shadow of slavery, including discrimination, activism, and vulnerability to kidnapping.
Teaching Hard History: American Slavery
| Learning for Justice | Learning for Justice | No date
Curriculum framework for teaching slavery accurately, emphasizing enslaved people’s humanity, resistance, economics, law, and continuing legacy.
Coming to the Table
| Coming to the Table | Coming to the Table | No date
Organization addressing the legacy of slavery through dialogue, genealogy, racial healing, and descendants of enslaved people and enslavers.
The Price of Freedom: Americans at War
| National Museum of American History | Smithsonian | No date
Civil War exhibition section including slavery, emancipation, Black military service, and the war’s transformation into a fight over freedom.
The Amistad Center for Art & Culture
| Amistad Center for Art & Culture | Amistad Center | No date
Museum and cultural resource preserving African American history, including memory of the Amistad case and broader freedom struggles.
The Afterlives of Slavery
| International Slavery Museum | National Museums Liverpool | No date
Explores slavery’s legacies in racism, inequality, memory, culture, and contemporary debates over repair.
Books and Scholarship
Banking on Slavery
| Sharon Ann Murphy | University of Chicago Press | 2023
Book page for scholarship on banks, finance, and the role of slavery in U.S. economic institutions.
Master Slave Husband Wife
| Ilyon Woo | Simon & Schuster | 2023
Book page for the story of Ellen and William Craft’s escape from slavery and their antislavery activism.
The Ledger and the Chain
| Joshua D. Rothman | Basic Books | 2021
Book page for a study of domestic slave traders and the business networks that expanded slavery across the South.
South to Freedom
| Alice L. Baumgartner | Basic Books | 2020
Book page explaining how enslaved people escaped south into Mexico and how Mexican antislavery politics shaped U.S. slavery debates.
The Kidnapping Club
| Jonathan Daniel Wells | Oxford University Press | 2020
Book page on kidnapping free Black people into slavery and the policing networks that supported slavery in New York.
Sweet Taste of Liberty
| W. Caleb McDaniel | Oxford University Press | 2019
Book page for the story of Henrietta Wood, who survived kidnapping, re-enslavement, and won a reparations lawsuit.
They Were Her Property
| Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers | Yale University Press | 2019
Book page for scholarship showing white women’s active participation in slave ownership, market transactions, discipline, and plantation management.
Accounting for Slavery
| Caitlin Rosenthal | University of Chicago Press | 2018
Book page for scholarship on plantation management, accounting, and business practices under slavery.
The Common Wind
| Julius S. Scott | Verso Books | 2018
Book page for scholarship on Black communication networks, maritime movement, and resistance across the Caribbean and Atlantic world.
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
| Daina Ramey Berry | Beacon Press / Penguin Random House | 2017
Book page for scholarship on the monetary valuation of enslaved people from birth to death and beyond.
Never Caught
| Erica Armstrong Dunbar | Simon & Schuster | 2017
Book page for the story of Ona Judge’s escape from George and Martha Washington.
Slavery’s Capitalism
| Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, editors | University of Pennsylvania Press | 2016
Book page for essays on slavery’s relationship to capitalism, finance, markets, production, and national economic development.
The Slave’s Cause
| Manisha Sinha | Yale University Press | 2016
Book page for a major history of abolition that centers Black activists, enslaved resistance, and interracial antislavery movements.
Troubled Refuge
| Chandra Manning | Oxford University Press | 2016
Book page on Civil War refugee camps and freedpeople’s movement from slavery toward uncertain freedom.
Gateway to Freedom
| Eric Foner | W. W. Norton | 2015
Book page for scholarship on the Underground Railroad, especially New York City’s networks of abolitionists and freedom seekers.
Empire of Cotton
| Sven Beckert | Penguin Random House | 2014
Book page for a global history of cotton connecting slavery, capitalism, empire, and industrialization.
The Half Has Never Been Told
| Edward E. Baptist | Basic Books / Penguin Random House | 2014
Book page for a major history arguing that slavery’s expansion and violence were central to American capitalism and economic growth.
The Case for Reparations
| Ta-Nehisi Coates | The Atlantic | June 2014
Landmark essay connecting slavery to Jim Crow, housing discrimination, wealth theft, and the argument for reparative justice.
The Internal Enemy
| Alan Taylor | W. W. Norton | 2013
Book page for a Pulitzer-winning study of slavery, war, and enslaved people’s flight to British lines during the War of 1812.
River of Dark Dreams
| Walter Johnson | Harvard University Press | 2013
Book page for a study of slavery, capitalism, imperial ambition, and plantation power in the Mississippi Valley.
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
| Jeanne Theoharis | Beacon Press | 2013
Book page useful for connecting slavery’s legacy to later Black freedom struggles, especially segregation and civil rights activism.
Help Me to Find My People
| Heather Andrea Williams | University of North Carolina Press | 2012
Book page on formerly enslaved people’s efforts to reunite families separated by sale and slavery.
The Fiery Trial
| Eric Foner | W. W. Norton | 2010
Book page for a Pulitzer-winning study of Abraham Lincoln’s evolving views on slavery and emancipation.
The Warmth of Other Suns
| Isabel Wilkerson | Penguin Random House | 2010
Book page on the Great Migration, showing how slavery’s aftermath, Jim Crow, and racial violence shaped twentieth-century Black migration.
Out of the House of Bondage
| Thavolia Glymph | Cambridge University Press | 2008
Book page for a study of enslaved women, white women, labor, violence, and power in the plantation household.
I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land
| Karolyn Smardz Frost | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 2007
Book page about Thornton and Lucie Blackburn’s escape from slavery and the Underground Railroad.
Bury the Chains
| Adam Hochschild | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 2005
Book page for a history of the British abolition movement, useful for placing U.S. antislavery politics in Atlantic context.
Forever Free
| Eric Foner | Penguin Random House | 2005
Book page for a history of emancipation and Reconstruction after slavery.
Slave Country
| Adam Rothman | Harvard University Press | 2005
Book page on American expansion and the spread of slavery into the Gulf South.
Closer to Freedom
| Stephanie M. H. Camp | University of North Carolina Press | 2004
Book page for scholarship on enslaved women, everyday resistance, mobility, and plantation geography.
Generations of Captivity
| Ira Berlin | Harvard University Press | 2003
Book page for a broad history of African American slavery from the colonial period through emancipation.
Many Thousands Gone
| Ira Berlin | Harvard University Press | 1998
Book page for a major synthesis tracing the first two centuries of slavery in mainland North America.
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
| David Brion Davis | Oxford University Press | 1999
Book page for a landmark study of slavery, abolitionism, revolution, and moral politics in the Atlantic world.
Soul by Soul
| Walter Johnson | Harvard University Press | 1999
Book page for a major study of slave markets, enslaved people’s forced sale, and the human and economic logic of the domestic slave trade.
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution
| Eric Foner | HarperCollins | 1988
Book page for the classic history of Reconstruction, essential for understanding the aftermath of slavery.
Ar’n’t I a Woman?
| Deborah Gray White | W. W. Norton | 1985
Book page for a foundational history of enslaved women, gender, labor, family, sexuality, and resistance.
American Slavery, American Freedom
| Edmund S. Morgan | W. W. Norton | 1975
Book page for an influential interpretation of slavery and republican freedom in colonial Virginia.
