French National Assembly grants political rights to some free men of color

The ordinance prohibited slavery in the territory north and west of the Ohio River while also requiring the return of people escaping from labor service. The contradiction shows how the new republic...

Delegates signed a Constitution that included the three-fifths apportionment rule, a fugitive labor clause, and a temporary protection for the Atlantic import trade. It avoided naming slavery directly...

Parliament passed the Dolben Act, setting limits on the number of enslaved Africans carried on British ships and requiring a surgeon aboard. The act responded to public pressure and exposed the lethal...

William Wilberforce addressed the House of Commons in support of ending Britain’s slave trade. Parliamentary advocacy drew on a much wider campaign: Black testimony, petitions, boycotts, organizing by...

The declaration proclaimed universal rights but left colonial slavery unresolved. Free people of color and enslaved people in the colonies contested the limits of French revolutionary citizenship,...

A gathering remembered as Bois Caïman is associated with the coordination of the revolt that began days later. The event’s details come largely through later and colonial accounts, but the uprising...

A broad uprising began in northern Saint-Domingue and developed into the Haitian Revolution. Enslaved people organized military resistance, destroyed plantation infrastructure, and demanded freedom in...

The Danish Crown prohibited its subjects from participating in the Atlantic trade after a transition period, making 1803 the effective date. The delay allowed merchants to accelerate trafficking...

France enacted a law granting equal political rights to free men of color in its colonies. It addressed neither the legal status of enslaved people nor the fundamental power of plantation owners. In...

The first federal Fugitive Slave Act created procedures to seize and return people accused of escaping slavery. It denied alleged fugitives a jury trial and punished those who aided them. Black...