Raised in plantation privilege, Mary Boykin Chestnut was unprepared for the trauma of war and defeat. “February 18, 1861…. I do not allow myself vain regrets or sad foreboding. This Southern Confederacy must be supported now by calm determination and cool brains. We have risked all, and we must play our best, for the stake[…]
After the Civil War, touring groups of black college singers popularized slavery-era songs, giving rise to a new musical genre. “Swing low, sweet chariot….” These words are familiar to many Americans, who might sing them in worship, in Sunday school, around campfires, in school, and in community choruses. But the black singers responsible for introducing[…]
White Christian slaveholders argued that slavery was a necessary evil because it would control the sinful, less humane, black race. Slave owners had many justifications for why holding people in bondage was acceptable. From the idea that African Americans were a lesser race who needed taking care of by white patriarchs to the economic justification,[…]
Amos Lawrence backed abolitionist pioneers in the town that bears his name. On May 24, 1854, Anthony Burns, a young African-American man, was captured on his way home from work. He had escaped from slavery in Virginia and had made his way to Boston, where he was employed in a men’s clothing store. His owner[…]
Cane sugar was the source of oppression and bitter opposition before cotton became the symbol of American slavery. Today, land developer and businessman William Cooper is best known for founding Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. But back in the 1790s, Cooper was a judge and a congressman who used his[…]
Exploring the first boycott against sugar made with slave labor in the West Indies. Introduction While many companies have trumpeted their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, others are beginning to face consumer pressure for not appearing to do enough. For example, some people are advocating a consumer boycott of Starbucks over an internal[…]
Freedom on the Move is a database collecting these ads, which help form a more complete picture of slavery and the enslaved. a more than 200-year-old fugitive slave ad reads: “Run away from the subscriber in Albemarle, a Mulatto slave called Sandy. His stature is rather low, inclining to corpulence, and his complexion light; he[…]
Nationalism (or “100% Americanism”), Protestant Christianity, and white supremacy became inextricably linked. Randall J. Stephens responds to Kelly J. Baker’s essay, “The Artifacts of White Supremacy,” which is featured in the June issue of the Forum. Baker’s essay considers how discussions about racism—and white supremacy in particular—tend to treat it as a matter of belief,[…]
The meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation, for those at the time and for us today. As he stood before hundreds of rapt listeners at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Congressman John Lewis took a moment to reflect on the opening passage of the Declaration of Independence. Echoing others who have spoken from the steps,[…]
Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate ship to escape from slavery in South Carolina. By Meredith Good Two long pulls and a jerk at the whistle cord: That produced the sound echoing in the dark salty air on May 13, 1862, as the CSS Planter stealthily glided against the tide of Charleston Harbor, passing Fort Sumter. This signal[…]
A number of issues were involved in the Civil War, all inextricably bound to the institution of slavery. Context for Conflict The role of slavery in bringing on the Civil War has been hotly debated for decades. One important way of approaching the issue is to look at what contemporary observers had to say. In[…]
Insights into the lives of African Americans at Arlington and other plantations in the Upper South before and after the Civil War. In the following excerpt from Civil War Places, William A. Blair reads the inscriptions on the headstones in Section 27 of Arlington National Cemetery for insights into the lives of African Americans at[…]
It would take several decades of legal action and years of nonviolent direct action to spark real change. Introduction The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as “Jim Crow” represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost[…]
It was not until 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education and later 1964 with the Civil Rights Act that these laws were finally abolished. Introduction Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States after 1876 requiring the separation of African-Americans from white Americans[…]
De facto segregation continues today because of both contemporary behavior and the historical legacy of de jure segregation. Introduction Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, refers to the segregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation in the United States along racial lines. The[…]
Slavery was abolished over 150 years ago in the United States, but the hard work of achieving equality continues today. Slavery and the Roots of Racism By Lance Selfa Over 150 years ago, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrendered to the Union Army’s Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, ending the[…]
Introduction From the start of European expansion into the Atlantic world, Britain fought other powers for territory in the Caribbean and many islands became part of the British Empire. The region experienced near eradication and expulsion of its indigenous populations by European powers. It was also on the receiving end of the largest enforced migration[…]
The worldwide movement against slavery (still not entirely eliminated) can be seen as a coming of age for humanity. Introduction Abolitionism (from “abolish”) was a political movement in late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that sought to end the practice of slavery and the worldwide slave trade. Its chief impetus came from Protestantism, as most abolitionists,[…]
Almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories. Introduction Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labor existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. As historian David Eltis explains, “almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders[…]
By 1851, Brown was internationally well known. This article, The Narrative of Henry Box Brown (1849), was originally published in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it please see: https://publicdomainreview.org/legal/ Henry Brown was born a slave, sometime around 1815, in Louisa County, Virginia. After the farmer who owned[…]
Whether we like it or not, John C. Calhoun is still very much with us today. Introduction Once described by historian David Potter as “the most majestic champion of error since Milton’s Satan,” John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) played a central role in the sectional conflict over slavery that divided the United States during the first[…]
The Underground Railroad didn’t just head North – also led to Mexico. The Underground Railroad also ran south—not back toward slave-owning states but away from them to Mexico, which began to restrict slavery in the 1820s and finally abolished it in 1829, some thirty-four years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This may be history, but[…]
How did the abolitionist movement evolve and respond to national events that shook the nation in the 1850s? Introduction Illinois was never a slave state, but there were struggles within the state between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 stated that slavery would not exist in the states that[…]
A favorite of Old Hickory, she made him seem kinder than he was. Why? Though he no longer holds an exalted place in the American imagination, Andrew Jackson continues to draw attention. Witness Jon Meacham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Lion, which chronicled the triumphs and travails of the seventh president’s two administrations. No less interesting, if[…]
How did Twain’s Huckleberry Finn engage and challenge popular ideas about slavery and race in nineteenth-century America? By Lawrence HoweNot Pictured Introduction Students in the United States know Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a fixture in the American literary canon and a staple of high school reading lists. But this status has[…]
It was only midway through the war that Lincoln reached the conclusion that abolishing slavery would preserve the nation. Introduction For generations, Abraham Lincoln has been known as “the Great Emancipator.” His Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 effectively declared that, if the North won the Civil War, the American institution of slavery would come to[…]
Published by Revistas, Mare Nostrum, 08.09.2019, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.
His work catapulted Powers to international fame in the 19th century. Introduction They say Ideal beauty cannot enter The house of anguish. On the threshold stands An alien Image with enshackled hands, Called the Greek Slave! as if the artist meant her (That passionless perfection which he lent her, Shadowed not darkened where the sill[…]
More successful than most third parties, it had two senators and fourteen representatives sent to the thirty-first Congress. Introduction The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States which was active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It formed as a breakaway faction of the[…]
She overheard talk of freedom and was determined it should apply to her, too. Nearly 250 years ago, a group of white men gathered in a house in Massachusetts to draft a document on independence aimed at the British crown. A woman who was enslaved in the house overheard the discussion and determined that the[…]