U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition | HISTORY By: HISTORY.com Editors Slavery Slavery in America HISTORY.com Editors Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesPublished: April 25, 2024Last Updated: December 03, 2025 Table of contents 1 Slavery in Plantations and Cities 2 Cotton Gin 3 Living Conditions of Enslaved People 4 Slave Rebellions 5 Abolitionist Movement 6 Missouri Compromise 7 Kansas-Nebraska Act 8 John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry 9 Civil War 10 When Did Slavery End? 11 The Legacy of Slavery Table of contents Millions of enslaved Africans contributed to the establishment of colonies in the Americas and continued laboring in various regions of the Americas after their independence, including the United States. Many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 enslaved Africans ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista. Yet, enslaved Africans had been present in regions such as Florida, that are part of present-day United States nearly one century before. Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than Indigenous populations and indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans. Existing estimates establish that Europeans and American slave traders transported nearly 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas. Of this number approximately 10.7 million disembarked alive in the Americas. During the 18th century alone, approximately 6.5 million enslaved persons were transported to the Americas. This forced migration deprived the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women. In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern Atlantic coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia. Slavery in Plantations and Cities In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia. Starting in 1662, the colony of Virginia and then other English colonies established that the legal status of a slave was inherited through the mother. As a result, the children of enslaved women legally became slaves. Before the rise of the American Revolution, the first debates to abolish slavery emerged. Black and white abolitionists contributed to the enactment of new legislation, gradually abolishing slavery in some northern states such as Vermont and Pennsylvania. However, these laws emancipated only the newly born children of enslaved women. Did you know? One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former enslaved man who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War. But after the end of the American Revolutionary War, slavery was maintained in the new states. The new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery when it determined that three out of every five enslaved people were counted when determining a state's total population for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, European and American slave merchants purchased enslaved Africans who were transported to the Americas and forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work in the production of crops such as tobacco, wheat, indigo, rice, sugar, and cotton. Enslaved men and women also performed work in northern cities such as Boston and New York, and in southern cities such as Charleston, Richmond, and Baltimore. By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War. Though the Union victory freed the nation’s four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement that emerged a century after emancipation and beyond. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, people were kidnapped from Africa and forced into slavery in the American colonies. Shown are iron shackles used on enslaved people prior to 1860. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture This chart shows the packed positioning of enslaved people on a ship from 1786. DeAgostini/Getty Images In August 1619, the White Lion sailed into Point Comfort and dropped anchor in the James River.Virginia colonist John Rolfe documented the arrival of the ship and “20 and odd” Africans on board. Hulton Archive/Getty Images An iron mask and collar used by enslavers to keep field workers from running away and to prevent them from eating crops such as sugarcane, circa 1750. MPI/Getty Images The first U.S. president, George Washington, owned enslaved people, along with many of the presidents who followed him. Buyenlarge/Getty Images Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was born on a large Virginia estate run on enslaved labor. This is a portrait of Isaac Jefferson, enslaved by Jefferson, circa 1847. Fotosearch/Getty Images The slave auction was the epitome of slavery’s dehumanization. Enslaved people were sold to the person who bid the most money, and family members were often split-up. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Broadside advertising an auction outside of Brooke and Hubbard Auctioneers office, Richmond, Virginia, July 23, 1823. Chicago History Museum/Getty Images An enslaved Black male youth is shown in this photo from the 1850s, holding his white master’s child. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture L to R: William, Lucinda, Fannie, Mary, Frances, Martha, Julia, Harriet, and Charles or Marshall, enslaved in Virginia, 1861. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture By the Civil War’s start, the South made 75% of the world’s cotton and had the most U.S. millionaires. Shown: sweet potato farm, 1862. Library of Congress Enslaved people constituted about one-third of the southern population. A formerly enslaved man, whose forehead was branded with his owner's initials, is shown wearing a punishment collar in 1863. adoc-photos/Corbis/Getty Images Despite the horrors of slavery, it was no easy decision to flee. Escaping often involved leaving behind family and facing harsh weather and lack of food. Shown are two men who escaped slavery, circa 1861. Library of Congress A man named Peter, who had escaped slavery, reveals his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while joining the Union Army in 1863. Library of Congress Confederate soldiers rounding up Black people in a church during the American Civil War, Nashville, Tennesee, the 1860s. Kean Collection/Getty Images The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in Confederate states free, but for many, like those on Cockspur Island, it came later. Corbis/Getty Images Civil War Culture Show: America the Story of UsAmerica is at the brink of a Civil War as cotton spreads west and threatens to expand slavery into new territories. Stream Now 3:54m watch Cotton Gin In the late 18th century, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop planted and harvested by enslaved people, but whose production was limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand. But in 1793, a U.S.-born  schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple, mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years, the South transitioned from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region’s dependence on enslaved labor. Slavery was never widespread in the North as it was in the South, but many northern businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Although gradual abolition emancipated newborns since the late 18th century, slavery was only abolished in New York in 1827 and in Connecticut in 1848. Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860, it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South. A man named Peter, who had escaped slavery, reveals his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while joining the Union Army in 1863. Library of Congress A man named Peter, who had escaped slavery, reveals his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while joining the Union Army in 1863. Library of Congress Living Conditions of Enslaved People Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many enslavers owned fewer than 50 enslaved people. Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted. Many enslavers raped women they held in slavery, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved (from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their enslavers. Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families. Most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal. Slave Rebellions Enslaved people organized rebellions as early as the 18th century. In 1739, enslaved people led the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, the largest slave rebellion during the colonial era in North America.  Other rebellions followed, including the one led by  Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822. These uprisings were brutally repressed. The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner’s group, which eventually numbered as many as 50 Black men, murdered some 55 white people in two days before armed resistance from local white people and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them. Like with previous rebellions, in the aftermath of the Nat Turner’s Rebellion, slave owners feared similar insurrections and southern states further passed legislation prohibiting the movement and assembly of enslaved people. Harriet Tubman's Christmas Eve Rescue In 1854, Harriet Tubman helped her brothers and their families escape slavery on Christmas Day before they were sold. 1:00m watch Abolitionist Movement As slavery expanded during the second half of the 18th century,  a growing abolitionist movement emerged in the North. From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by formerly enslaved people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator. While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious “free-labor” argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little econ…