1430s–90s
Portuguese mariners explore West Africa and import slaves into Iberia and the Canary Islands. Spanish merchants begin to trade in African slaves in the 1470s.
1492
Columbus’s first voyage to America opens the way for transatlantic slave trade; Columbus brings Indian slaves back to Spain and in 1498 recommends transporting African slaves already present in Seville, Valencia, and other cities to America. Spanish and Portuguese traders begin carrying black slaves to the New World in the early 1500s. (European slave traders brought to the Western Hemisphere an estimated 10–11 million Africans, of whom more than 90 percent were carried to Caribbean, Central American, and South American ports. Approximately 6 percent of the total, some 600,000, were carried into British North American colonies and the United States. More than one million Africans died during the Atlantic passage.)
1562
Sir John Hawkins makes first of three voyages carrying slaves from Africa to Hispaniola. Queen Elizabeth I disapproves, but nonetheless provides ships for Hawkins’s second and third voyages. Thereafter English involvement ceases until 1603.
1619
Dutch slave traders sell twenty Africans into servitude at the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia.
1641
Massachusetts Bay becomes first English colony in North America to give statutory recognition to slavery, followed by Connecticut, 1650; Virginia, 1661; Maryland, 1663; New York and New Jersey, 1664; South Carolina, 1682; Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 1700; North Carolina, 1715; and Georgia, 1750.
1655–58
England seizes Jamaica from Spain, dramatically expanding its slavery-based economic interests in the Americas.
1662
Virginia adopts law making children born to enslaved mothers slaves from birth. (Other colonies adopt similar laws in the decades to come as part of legal codes defining the status of slaves.)
1663
The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa (renamed Royal African Company in 1672) is chartered by Charles II of England. Granted a monopoly in Africa, the company is primarily interested in trade in gold and slaves. Slaves are acquired in exchange for manufactured goods from England and then sold to plantation owners in the West Indies and the American colonies in return for sugar, tobacco, and other staples for the English market, constituting what becomes known as the “Atlantic Triangular Trade.”
1688
First formal protest against slavery in English America is circulated in Quaker meetings in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
1693
George Keith’s Exhortation & Caution to Friends is presented at the August 13, 1693, meeting of the Philadelphia Quakers and then published the same year by William Bradford in New York, making it the earliest antislavery publication in America.
1698
Parliament ends the Royal African Company’s monopoly; new competitors enter the slave trade and the number of slaves transported on English ships considerably increases.
1700
The Selling of Joseph published by Massachusetts judge Samuel Sewall.
1712
Eight whites and twenty-fve blacks are killed in slave uprising in New York City.
1713
The Treaty of Utrecht grants Great Britain the Asiento, an exclusive thirty-year contract to supply slaves to the Spanish colonies; exploitation of these rights by the British South Sea Company causes a rapid escalation of the British slave trade.
1739
At least thirty whites and forty-four blacks are killed during the Stono slave rebellion in South Carolina.
1741
Rumors circulate in New York City of an alleged conspiracy between slaves and poor whites to destroy the city with a series of fires. After a fire in the governor’s house, two slaves confess and name dozens of co-conspirators, setting off mass arrests and the execution of thirty blacks and four whites.
1750
Estimated population of thirteen British colonies in North America is 236,000 blacks, almost all of them slaves, and 934,000 whites.
1758
Philadelphia Quakers pass measure condemning the ownership of slaves by their members.
1770
After twenty years of providing free classes for black students in his home, Anthony Benezet persuades the Society of Friends to open an “Africans’ School” in Philadelphia.
1772
In Somersett’s Case, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, rules that no positive law in England permits a slave-owner to forcibly send a slave overseas. Interpretation of his decision by other judges will make slavery legally unenforceable in Britain, eventually resulting in de facto emancipation. Publication in Britain of the Narrative of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, the first English-language slave narrative.
1773
Phillis Wheatley travels to England, where she publishes her landmark Poems on Various Subjects.
1775
As American Revolutionary War commences, Virginia royal governor Lord Dunmore issues a proclamation offering freedom to slaves of American rebels who run away from their masters and fight for the British, a tactic British commanders will repeat throughout the war. Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery is founded.
1776
Declaration of Independence adopted after Continental Congress deletes language in Thomas Jefferson’s draft condemning the slave trade.
1777
Vermont adopts constitution prohibiting slavery, the first of the newly independent United States of America to do so.
1780
Pennsylvania adopts law mandating the gradual abolition of slavery.
1781–83
Several Massachusetts court decisions find slavery incompatible with the state constitution, which declared in 1780 that all men “are born free and equal.” (No slaves are reported in Massachusetts in 1790 census.)
1783
As Revolutionary War formally ends, at least 3,000 former slaves leave New York City with evacuating British forces, many bound for resettlement in Nova Scotia. Over the eight-year course of the war, some 15,000 slaves were transported from the United States as the property of Loyalist émigrés.
1784
Connecticut and Rhode Island adopt laws for gradual emancipation of slaves.
1787
British Abolition Society forms in London, under leadership of William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and others. Continental Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, banning slavery in the territory north of the Ohio River. U.S. Constitution is framed; it counts slaves as three-fifths of free persons in apportioning representation and taxes, provides for the return of fugitive slaves, and forbids ending the importation of slaves before 1808.
1788
Inspired by the British Abolition Society, Jacques Pierre Brissot and others found the Société des Amis des Noirs in Paris. Massive petition campaign against the slave trade is mounted in Britain.
1789
Wilberforce introduces bill in British Parliament to abolish the slave trade (bill will eventually pass in 1807). The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself published in London.
1790
Quakers in Pennsylvania and New York petition Congress to abolish the slave trade.
1791
Toussaint L’Ouverture leads slave insurrection in French colony of Saint-Domingue, which will culminate in the end of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic in 1804.
1792
African American scientist and writer Benjamin Banneker publishes first of his six almanacs.
1793
Congress passes Fugitive Slave Law, allowing slaveholders to use federal courts to regain possession of runaway slaves. Invention of the cotton gin leads to expansion of cotton cultivation in the South.
1794
First national Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies meets in Philadelphia (nine societies from six states attend). These conventions continued almost annually through 1806, then met four more times between 1818 and 1828. Methodist Richard Allen founds the Bethel Church in Philadelphia, an African American congregation. French National Convention abolishes slavery throughout the French Empire.
1795
Peter Williams Sr. founds African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the first black church in New York.
1797
Four former slaves petition Congress on behalf of free blacks in North Carolina whose manumissions were being invalidated for lack of prior court approval.
1799
New York adopts law for gradual emancipation of slaves.
1800
Gabriel Prosser and thirty-five followers are executed for plotting slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia. United States census lists 108,395 free colored people, 893,041 black slaves, and 4,304,489 whites. Free blacks in Philadelphia petition Congress to end the slave trade and rescind the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
1802
Allegations surface of President Thomas Jefferson’s affair with his slave Sally Hemings. Napoleon reinstates slavery throughout the French Empire.
1804
New Jersey adopts law for gradual emancipation of slaves.
1807
Congress bans importation of slaves into the United States, effective January 1, 1808. Britain abolishes slave trade throughout its empire and begins using its navy to suppress slave trading by other nations. With the closure of the slave trade, and the widespread adoption of the cotton gin, slave trade within the United States increases as large numbers of slaves are sent from tobacco-growing states of the upper South to cotton-growing states of the lower South.
1808
Celebrations to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade begin in African American communities in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, and continue annually.
1812–14
During the War of 1812, British forces again encourage American slaves to flee to their side.
1815
The Congress of Vienna issues a decree against the slave trade, but France and Portugal continue their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
1816
American Colonization Society formed to emancipate slaves and send free blacks to establish settlements in Africa.
1820
Congress adopts Missouri Compromise, allowing the admission of Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state while prohibiting slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′ N.
1822
Denmark Vesey and thirty-five other blacks are executed in Charleston, South Carolina, for plotting a slave revolt. Founding of colony (later named Liberia) on the West African coast for American free blacks.
1827
The last slaves are freed in New York state.
1829
David Walker, a black abolitionist, publishes pamphlet David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, arguing for the necessity of slave insurrections. It is distributed throughout the South despite being banned in several states.
1831
William Lloyd Garrison founds the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, ends with the deaths of fifty-seven whites and at least one hundred blacks; Turner and nineteen followers are hanged.
1832
New England Anti-Slavery Society founded by Garrison to advocate the immediate abolition of slavery through nonviolent means and to oppose the colonization of free blacks.
1833
Parliament abolishes slavery in the British Caribbean, with full emancipation taking effect in 1838. The American Anti-Slavery Society, a national organization, is founded.
1839
Fifty-four Africans captured and brought to Cuba seize control of the Spanish schooner Amistad, killing two crew-members. They demand that the surviving crew return them to Africa, but the crew instead sail north. After entering Long Island Sound, the ship is captured by the revenue cutter Washington and the Africans are imprisoned in Connecticut. In 1841 the Supreme Court rules in their favor, and thirty-six of the surviving Africans are freed and sent to Sierra Leone.
1840
Liberty Party, the first antislavery political party, founded in Albany, New York.
1845–48
Annexation of Texas and the U.S.-Mexican War renew debate over the expansion of slavery. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself published in 1845. Slavery is abolished in the French Caribbean in 1848.
1850
U.S. Congress adopts series of measures regarding slavery (“Compromise of 1850”), including stronger Fugitive Slave Law that denies alleged fugitives legal protection and compels northern authorities to cooperate in returning runaway slaves; law provokes widespread opposition and resistance in the free states. United States census lists 434,495 free colored people, 3,204,313 slaves, and 19,553,068 whites.
1851
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in installments in the National Era. It appears as a book the next year, published by J. P. Jewett in Boston, selling an unprecedented 3,000 copies the first day and 300,000 copies the first year.
1853
William Wells Brown, while living in London, publishes the first novel by an African American, his controversial Clotel, inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemings.
1854–56
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repeals Missouri Compromise and leads to fighting between pro- and antislavery factions in Kansas and formation of Republican Party opposed to the further expansion of slavery.
1857
Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that Congress cannot exclude slavery from federal territories and that African Americans cannot be U.S. citizens, having “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
1859
John Brown seizes federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an unsuccessful attempt to start slave uprising; fifteen people are killed during the raid, and Brown is tried, convicted, and hanged along with four other men. His actions are memorialized by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and others. Blake: or the Huts of America by Martin R. Delany is serialized first in The Anglo-African Magazine and then, in 1861–62, in the Weekly Anglo-African Magazine. It is the first novel serialized in the U.S. by an African American.
1860
Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln is elected president November 6 on a platform opposing the extension of slavery. South Carolina secedes on December 20 (ten other states secede by May 1861).
1861
Harriet Ann Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is published in Boston under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Confederate forces shell Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, beginning Civil War. Lincoln drafts emancipation plan, in which slave-owners are to be compensated for freeing their slaves either monetarily or by the “apprenticeship” of minors (measure is later rejected by Delaware legislature). Three Virginia slaves escape and seek freedom with Union general Benjamin Butler’s army at Fort Monroe; Butler grants them refuge. Congress passes Confiscation Act, authorizing the federal government to confiscate slaves being used to militarily aid the rebellion.
1862
Congress prohibits Union officers from returning fugitive slaves and abolishes slavery in the District of Columbia and the federal territories. Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, declaring that all slaves in Confederate-held territory will be freed on January 1, 1863. U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates issues opinion in November declaring that free black persons born in the United States are American citizens.
1863
Emancipation Proclamation issued January 1, freeing slaves in Confederate-held territory and authorizing the enlistment of freed slaves in the Union army. More than 180,000 black men (including free blacks from northern states) will eventually serve in the Union forces.
1865
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, passed by Congress on January 31. Lincoln endorses amendment by signing joint resolution, submitting it to the states for ratification, although his signature is not legally required. Confederate armies surrender, April 9–May 26. Lincoln is assassinated on April 14. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment is completed December 6.