African American Studies: Slavery and Abolition

A movement culminating in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed first to end the slave trade, and then to abolish the institution of slavery and emancipate slaves.

Sometimes called ‘the War Between the States’ or ‘the Second American Revolution’, a conflict in the USA which resolved two great issues: the nature of the Federal Union and the relative power of the states and the central government; and the existence of black slavery.

A trade in Africa which started in ancient times. Slaves were sent across the Sahara and were traded in the Mediterranean by Phoenicians; Graeco-Roman traders in the Red Sea and beyond traded slaves from E Africa to Egypt and the Middle East.

US Supreme Court decision of 1857 which denied ‘blacks’ (African Americans) US citizenship and made slavery legal in all US territories.

In U.S. history, the executive order abolishing slavery in the Confederate States of America.

Bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

Secret order of Southern sympathizers in the North during the Civil War. Its members were known as Copperheads.

From Britannica concise encyclopedia
Form of entertainment popular in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It originated in the 1830s with the popular white performer Thomas D. Rice, known as “Jim Crow,” who wore the stylized makeup called blackface and performed songs and dances in a stereotyped imitation of African Americans.

Institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services.

From Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
No book published in the United States during the nineteenth century had as great an impact on American politics and society as the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (1852), written by the New England abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in the decade preceding the U.S. Civil War.

In U.S. history, loosely organized system for helping fugitive slaves escape to Canada or to areas of safety in free states. It was run by local groups of Northern abolitionists, both white and free blacks.

He spent his boyhood in Ohio. Before he became prominent in the 1850s, his life had been a succession of business failures in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York.

Although he was born a slave in Maryland in 1818, in 1895 he died a free man who not only had bought his own freedom with the money he earned from his publications and public speaking tours but also had risen to the highest position an African American had ever held in the U.S. government.

American abolitionist leader who founded and published The Liberator (1831-1865), an antislavery journal.

16th president of the United States.

American writer whose antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) had great political influence and advanced the cause of abolition.

US antislavery and women's-suffrage campaigner. A former slave, she ran away and became involved with religious groups.

US abolitionist. Born a slave in Maryland, she escaped to Philadelphia (where slavery was outlawed) in 1849. She helped set up the Underground Railroad, a secret network of sympathizers to help slaves escape to the North and Canada.