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Slave-Trade started
Twenty-one African chattel slaves were brought to British North America (Jamestown, Virginia) -
Period: to
Abducted Africans
10-13 million Africans were abducted (mainly by other Africans and Arabs) and sold as slaves (mostly in the Americas) -
"salve codes"
All the colonies legalized race-based (black) slavery and introduced "slave codes" -
Bit by Bit
Slavery in the USA was abolished in stages and decades after it was eliminated in Britain. Rhode Island banned it as early as 1774. Pennsylvania, New-York, and New Jersey followed suit. -
Continental Congress
The Continental Congress prohibited the practice in the Midwest. -
Slave trade, banned
The slave trade - or, more precisely, the importation of slaves into the USA - was banned. -
Period: to
Smugglers
Traders smuggled 270,000 slaves into the USA. -
Child-Slaves
Individual slaves were, at least theoretically, protected by law and social custom - not so the Negro family. The owner had the right to sell his slaves separately, regardless of their familial ties. Some states, like Louisiana in 1829, passed legislation prohibiting the sale of children under the age of ten. -
Slave-owners
Actually, only a minority of the white population in the south were slave-owners (347,525 out of 6,000,000). -
Freed slaves
There were 250,000 freed slaves in the south. -
Emancipated!
Slaves in the South (the Confederacy) were finally emancipated during the Civil War. -
Finally
But, even then, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to some states within the Union. These other slaves remained in slavery until December 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted.