Slavery in America The History of Slavery in America From the beginnings of slavery in British North America around 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 enslaved Africans to the Virginia colony at Jamestown, nearly 240 years passed until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution officially ended slavery in 1865. This section of the site is devoted to an in-depth investigation of those years from many angles; from looking at the lives and cultures of the oppressed before they were enslaved, to understanding the ways in which those enslaved survived and ultimately triumphed over the institution of slavery. If you are interested in contributing to the Slaveryinamerica.org Web site, please join us. History Essays: Scholars and historians contribute original essays on the latest scholarship regarding the issues and events in the history of slavery in America. In addition to offering the materials on the site through their academic disciplines, we also offer them thematically, below. Creating Slavery
Slavery: The Abolition of Slavery Project It may seem extraordinary today but, just less than 200 years ago, many people throughout Europe, Africa and the Americas saw nothing wrong in the idea that one human being could own another. The ‘owned' person or ‘slave' had no rights. In this section: You will find background information on the history of African enslavement: how the Transatlantic Slave Trade developed, British involvement in the Slave Trade, how a movement arose to try to abolish it and the opposition they faced. Picture Gallery What is Slavery? Africa Before Transatlantic Slavery Many Europeans thought that Africa's history was not important. The Arrival of European Traders During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European traders started to get involved in the Slave Trade. The Middle Passage The Middle Passage refers to the part of the trade where Africans, densely packed onto ships, were transported across the Atlantic to the West Indies. The Pro-Slavery Lobby What was the Pro-Slavery or West India Lobby?