400 years of slavery

When did slavery end
Who started slavery
When did slavery end in america

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Slavery in the United States

This article is about slavery from the founding of the United States in 1776. For the colonial period, see Slavery in the colonial history of the United States. For modern illegal slavery, see Human trafficking in the United States. For modern legal forced labor, see Penal labor in the United States.

"Peculiar institution" redirects here. For the book, see The Peculiar Institution.

See also: Abolitionism in the United States

The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1

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Atlantic slave trade

Slave trade between Africa and the Americas

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century.^[1] The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders,^[2] while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids.^[4]^[5] European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas.^[6]^[7] Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the National Museums Liverpool explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along

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Slavery in America

The Montgomery Slave Trade

Read the report

Beginning in the 16th century, millions of African people were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas under horrific conditions. Nearly two million people died at sea during the agonizing journey. Over more than two centuries, the enslavement of Black people in the United States created wealth, opportunity, and prosperity for millions of Americans. As American slavery evolved, an elaborate and enduring mythology about the inferiority of Black people was created to legitimate, perpetuate, and defend slavery. This mythology survived slavery’s formal abolition following the Civil War.

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Overview

In the South, where the enslavement of Black people was widely embraced, resistance to ending slavery persisted for another century following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Today, 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, very little has been done to address the legacy of slavery and its meaning in contemporary li