Former slave
Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel slavery, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From early colonial days, it was practiced in Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies which formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property and could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of states until 1865. As an economic system, slavery was largely replaced by sharecropping and convict leasing. By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. During and immediately following the Revolution, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. The role of slavery under the Constitution (1789) was the most contentious issue during its drafting. Although the creators of the Constitution never used the word "slavery", the final document, through the three-fifths clause, gave slave-owners disproportionate political power.[2] All Northern states had abolished slavery in some way by 1805; sometimes, abolition was a gradual process, and hundreds of people were still enslaved in the Northern states as late as the 1840 Census. Some slaveowners, primarily in the Upper South, freed their slaves, and philanthropists and charitable groups bought and freed others. The Atlantic slave trade was outlawed by individual states beginning during the American Revolution. The import-trade was banned by Congress in 1808, although smuggling was common thereafter. The rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor.
Size: 2226px × 3767px
Location: USA
Photo credit: © American Photo Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 13th, abolition, abolitionist, africa, africans, amendment, army, brown, charleston, chattel, civil, confederate, cotton, economic, economy, elderly, emancipate, emancipated, emancipation, free, freedom, freemen, human, indenture, indentured, john, labor, laborer, laborers, lincoln, men, notth, people, picker, picking, property, rebel, rights, slave, slavery, slaves, south, southern, thirteenth, trade, union, war
