Slavery: Did you mean...?

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (16-18 October 1859) was carefully planned and, at first, perfectly executed – until he made the mistake of letting the physician John Starry go (who then raised the local militia) and allowing...

Enslaved Blacks in the United States, seeking freedom, often fled to Canada, especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled citizens in free states to help slave-catchers apprehend them. Although they frequently faced racial prejudice...

The establishment of the Middle and Southern English Colonies of North America was encouraged by the earlier English settlements of Jamestown Colony of Virginia in the south (founded 1607) and Plymouth Colony and, especially, Massachusetts...

The Amistad Seizure (also known as the Amistad Incident, the Amistad Rebellion, the Amistad Mutiny, and Amistad Revolt) was a conflict aboard the Spanish schooner La Amistad in July 1839, off the coast of Cuba, during which free Blacks, who...

African slave life in Colonial British America was far worse than slavery practiced in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans. The indigenous tribes took people as slaves in raids, enslaved those convicted of crimes, and traded slaves...

Colonel Tye (c. 1753-1780) was an African-American Loyalist leader who commanded one of the most effective guerilla forces of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Born into slavery, he escaped in 1775 and joined the British cause...

In 1848, Ellen and William Craft escaped from slavery in Georgia by Ellen posing as a Southern gentleman and William as 'his' slave (since women were not allowed to travel alone with a male slave). They arrived in the free state of Pennsylvania...

T. R. Dew's A Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832 is a pro-slavery work written in response to calls for emancipation of the slaves of Virginia in the wake of Nat Turner's Rebellion of August 1831. Emancipation...

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (1850-1864) was part of the Compromise of 1850, drafted to diffuse tensions between Southern 'slave states' and Northern 'free states.' The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 already allowed slaveholders to reclaim...

Henry Box Brown (l. c. 1815-1897) was an enslaved African American who became famous as "the man who mailed himself to freedom" after he had himself shipped in a box from Richmond, Virginia, to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...