United States enacts a federal ban on importing enslaved people

Denmark’s prohibition on its own participation in the transatlantic slave trade took effect after a decade-long delay between enactment and implementation. The ban ended legal Danish trafficking...

The treaty transferred France’s Louisiana territory to the United States, greatly expanding settler claims across Indigenous lands and the geographic space of slavery. The acquisition strengthened the...

Haiti declared independence, following a revolution in which formerly enslaved people defeated French efforts to restore colonial rule. It became the first independent state born from a successful...

Haiti’s constitution established a postrevolutionary state after independence and prohibited slavery. It asserted sovereignty in a world where slaveholding powers sought to isolate the new republic...

Congress passed legislation in advance of the constitutional deadline, setting penalties for importing enslaved people from abroad beginning in 1808. The law prohibited legal importation but did not...

The Slave Trade Act received royal assent, prohibiting British subjects from participating in the transatlantic slave trade from 1808. The law followed decades of Black and white organizing,...

The federal prohibition on importing enslaved people took effect. Slavery remained legal, and the internal trade forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of people from the Upper South to expanding cotton...

Enslaved people began a coordinated march along the Mississippi River north of New Orleans, attacking plantations and seeking to overthrow slavery. Authorities killed many insurgents and executed...

The treaty ending the War of the Sixth Coalition included a French commitment to abolish the slave trade within five years. The delay and weak enforcement allowed trafficking to continue. European...

The convention restored colonial possessions after the Napoleonic Wars and included Dutch commitments to prohibit participation in the African slave trade. It joined anti-trade diplomacy to the...