Northwest Ordinance bars slavery in a US territory while preserving fugitive capture

A law passed in May 1782 allowed enslavers to free people by deed or will without prior legislative approval. Manumission expanded, but it remained dependent on enslavers’ decisions, often imposed...

In the Walker litigation, the state’s constitutional language of equality was applied against slavery. The decisions helped end slavery in Massachusetts through litigation and resistance by Quock...

The act declared children born to enslaved women after its passage free, while placing them in long-term service and leaving people already enslaved in bondage. It was gradual and conditional...

Formerly enslaved Black people from London arrived to establish Granville Town near present-day Freetown. Their settlement aspirations met difficult conditions and British imperial oversight, and...

A small group of activists founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Its campaign used petitions, testimony, publications, and consumer organizing, and relied heavily on...

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,...

The National Assembly extended political rights to some free men of color born of free parents in the French colonies. It did not free enslaved people and excluded most of the free population of...