British Parliament debates the treaty with Spain to suppress slave trading

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...

The law provided that people enslaved in New York would gain freedom on a delayed timetable, with children born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1799 already subject to long compulsory service. It...

Britain and Spain signed a treaty aimed at abolishing the slave trade and suppressing illicit trafficking by their subjects. Spain agreed to end the trade north of the equator sooner than its trade to...

The treaty authorized bilateral action against Dutch slave ships and established mixed commission courts in Freetown and Paramaribo. Such courts created an early international enforcement system,...

The compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and barred slavery north of a specified latitude in part of the Louisiana Purchase. It managed sectional power rather...

Congress classified the international slave trade as piracy, punishable by death under federal law. The statute strengthened the legal ban on importation but was rarely enforced to match its stated...

A planned uprising involving free and enslaved Black organizers was scheduled for this date but was exposed before it began. White authorities relied on coerced testimony and secret proceedings,...

Independence from Portugal created a new state that maintained slavery and the Atlantic trade. Enslaved Africans and their descendants shaped Brazilian society and resisted bondage, while political...