German Coast uprising begins in Louisiana

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...

Congress enacted a ban on importing enslaved people into the United States, effective 1 January 1808. The law did not abolish slavery, the domestic slave trade, or the forced movement of people within...

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...

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...

The treaty committed the United States and Britain to use their best efforts to end the trade, but it created no immediate enforcement mechanism. The language reflected diplomatic pressure and the...

The major European powers signed a declaration describing the slave trade as repugnant and expressing a goal of suppressing it. The declaration did not create immediate emancipation or a universal...

A large uprising began in Barbados during Easter week, with Bussa among its leaders. Enslaved people resisted the plantation regime and the threat that rumors of emancipation would be denied or...