When the European colonial powers of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands forcefully abducted families in Africa to perform the arduous labor required to fuel the New World's economic engine in the 15th century, the slave trade in the Americas officially began. Slavery has existed in Portugal since before the nation's founding. Residents of the current Portuguese territory were frequently forced into slavery before independence and also forced others into slavery. Portugal was a major player in the Atlantic slave trade, which involved the vast trafficking and shipping of the enslaved from Africa and other areas of the world to the American continent, throughout the Kingdom of Portugal's period of rule after its independence. The Marquis de Pombal forbade the import of the enslaved into European Portugal in 1761. However, slavery was only outlawed in the African Portuguese possessions in 1869. When Portuguese traders delivered the first sizable quantity of enslaved Africans to Europe in 1444 A.D., the Atlantic slave trade officially got underway.

Spain's Ferdinand II died and the importation of the enslaved Africans he had been licensing was suspended by Cardinal Ximenes. It is unclear whether the Cardinal opposed slavery itself, or it was because of the loose method of import licensing that was causing the colonies' Black populations to grow almost out of control. The suspension had little effect, though, as the new Spanish king, Charles V, immediately resumed the issuance of licenses.

In response to a well-planned and well-coordinated enslaved African rebellion that had taken place on his sugar plantation, the Nueva Isabela, Diego Colon (a descendant of Christopher Columbus) introduces strict laws designed to prevent future rebellions. These laws restricted the physical movements of the enslaved Africans, prohibited them from bearing arms and accessing weapons, required enslavers to keep strict slave registers, and introduced harsh punishment in the form of physical torture and execution. This would be the model that is eventually passed on during chattel slavery in the US.

Estevanico, an enslaved African from Morocco, accompanied his enslaver, Andres de Dorantes, on an expedition to conquer Florida. Estevanico, born around 1503 in Azemmour, Morocco, had probably been sold into slavery by the Portuguese, who had captured Morocco in 1513 and started selling its people after a drought in 1520. When Estevanico and the explorers arrived in Florida on April 12, 1528, they fought with the native population and lost. The survivors, Estevanico among them, served as the enslaved and medicine men until 1535 when Estevanico, Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado escaped and headed up the Rio Grande toward the Northwest. In March of 1536, the five-man party met up with a Spanish patrol on the Rio Sinaloa and followed it back to a Spanish outpost. Later that year the group made its way to Mexico where the Viceroy of Mexico asked if they would lead an expedition into Arizona and New Mexico. Estevanico was the only one to accept and, in February of 1539, he led a party to northwest New Mexico. Later that year, however, he was captured by the Zuni tribe and killed as a spy.

English navigator John Hawkins hijacked a Portuguese ship carrying enslaved Africans to Brazil and, thus, English participation in the slave trade began. He traded the enslaved Blacks at Hispaniola for a sizable profit. Queen Elizabeth also profited from Hawkins's slave trade despite having expressed outrage at the institution of slavery.

Eleven enslaved Blacks were brought to New York in 1626 as indentured or bonded servants. They first lived in lower Manhattan in the area of Fort Amsterdam and Wall Street. They were later freed of their bonds and eventually developed into a free Black community in Manhattan and nearby Brooklyn. However, slavery was legal in New York for another two hundred years.

Prior to this date, Blacks had been sold in Boston, but it is not definitely known when the first enslaved Blacks were directly brought to the region. Authorities who claim that enslaved Africans were first brought to New England in 1638 base their contention on an entry in John Winthrop's Journal. Winthrop recorded on December 12, 1638, the arrival of the ship Desire at Boston. The cargo of the vessel, according to Winthrop, included salt, cotton, tobacco, and enslaved Blacks. The statement of Governor Winthrop is the first recorded account of Black slavery in New England.

Massachusetts recognized slavery as a legal institution, the first of the North American colonies to do so. Section ninety-one of the Body of Liberties of 1641 read: "There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or Captivities amongst us, unless it be lawful Captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel. .. This exempts none from servitude who shall be Judged thereto by Authoritie."

During this time there were skirmishes with Native American people and the Dutch wanted the enslaved Blacks to help protect their settlements rather than join the Native Americans. They were granted partial freedom, where they could buy land and a home and earn a wage from their enslaver, and then full freedom. Their children remained in slavery. During such times, intermarriage with working class whites became common.

A Virginia statute recognized slavery and established the status of mixed-blood offspring as enslaved or free in accordance with the status of the mother. Known as "partus sequitur ventrem", this legal doctrine was derived from Roman civil law and translates to "offspring follows belly" (referring to the belly of the mother). The Slave Codes of Virginia, and those that followed them, were motivated by the growth of the Black population and the fears of uprisings of the enslaved Africans. They were also specifically designed to protect the property in enslaved Blacks. Generally, enslaved Africans were not allowed to leave the plantation, to wander, or to assemble without permission from their enslaver. They could not own weapons and could not testify against Whites in court. Enslaved Blacks found guilty of murder or rape were to be executed. For petty offenses, they were whipped, maimed, or branded. The codes of the enslaved Africans grew out of the laws regulating indentured servitude, but the enslaved, unlike the indentured servants, had practically no rights.

Maryland declared that Black slaves should serve durante vita (for duration of life). This law gave legal recognition to slavery in the colony of Maryland.

French slavery in the New World centered in Haiti. The French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing the island between France and Spain.

The colony of Massachusetts revised slavery laws established in 1641 to permit the enslavement of a slave's offspring. The law gave children the same status as their mothers.

Slavery prohibited in West New Jersey.

The charter of the Free Society of Traders in Pennsylvania recognized the slavery of Blacks. The enslaved were to be freed after fourteen years of service, upon condition they cultivate land allotted to them, and surrender two-thirds of the produce annually.

Quakers at Germantown, Pennsylvania, adopted the first formal anti-slavery resolution in American history. The Society of Friends declared that slavery was in opposition to Christianity and the rights of man. The Quakers continued their anti-slavery protests throughout the seventeenth century.

Boston, Massachusetts, jurist Samuel Sewall condemned the business of slavery in his pamphlet, "The Selling of Joseph." Sewall is also remembered for his public confession of error and guilt in the condemnation to death of nineteen alleged witches during the Salem witch trials.

Gustavus Vassa was born and name as Olaudah Equiano in Nigeria. Vassa enjoyed a childhood filled with tribal unity. At the age of ten, he was kidnapped by nearby tribesmen and sold into slavery. He was brought to Virginia where he was purchased by a British sailor, Michael Pacal, who took him to England. There he began his formal education and was given the name Gustavus Vassa, after the sixteenth-century Swedish king. He traveled with his enslaver across the seas, witnessing fighting between the French and the British. He was further educated in London and was baptized in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, in February 1759. When Vassa requested freedom, his enslaver angrily sent him to the West Indies to be sold. Vassa's new enslaver was a Philadelphia Quaker who taught him commercial arts. Vassa bought his freedom in 1766 and earned his living trading goods from the Caribbean. His interest in abolition was aroused by his exposure to the slave trade and inspired his autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano." Vassa died in 1794.

Crispus Attucks of Framingham, Massachusetts, an escaped enslaved Black man, died with four other Americans in the Boston Massacre. He was in the forefront of the group that taunted British soldiers during the altercation and reportedly was the first to fall from their fire. Massachusetts later honored Attucks with a statue in Boston. Attucks was born enslaved to Deacon William Brown in Framingham. In November 1750, he escaped slavery, at the age of 27. In Boston, Black Americans held an annual Crispus Attucks Day from 1858 to 1870.

Known originally as the Pennsylvania Society for The Abolition of Slavery, this group included many active Quakers. The Society first worked toward obtaining an abolition law in Pennsylvania and protecting free Blacks from being kidnapped and sold into slavery. After a successful campaign for adequate protective legislation, the Society helped enforce the new laws through committees of correspondence and by employing lawyers to secure the conviction of offenders. The Society suspended its operations during the revolutionary war, although individual members continued active work. The group was reorganized in 1787 as "The Pennsylvania Society for "Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Blacks Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and Improving the Condition of the African Race".

Lord Dunmore, British royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation promising freedom to enslaved Africans who joined the British forces in the Revolutionary War. Southerners, especially Virginians, were alarmed and angered. Virginia responded by attempting to convince Blacks that the British motives were purely selfish and promised them good treatment if they remained loyal to the Patriot cause. On December 13, 1775, a Virginia Convention promised to pardon all enslaved Blacks who returned to their enslavers within ten days. It is not clear how many enslaved Blacks served with the British, but the war did have an unsettling effect on the institution of slavery. At least 100,000 Blacks ran away from their enslavers during the conflict. The Dunmore proclamation helped to bolster Southern support for the patriots as the British threatened slavery.

A section that alleged that King George III had forced the slave trade and slavery on the colonies was eliminated at the insistence of representatives from Georgia and South Carolina. Thomas Jefferson had charged King George with waging a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." In the monarch's determination "to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold," Jefferson said he had suppressed "every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce." Historians agree that this was one example of the American exaggerations in the list of grievances against King George III.

Prince Whipple, a native of Amabou, Africa, accompanies George Washington across the Delaware River. Though Whipple was born free, he was sold into slavery on the way to the colonies where he was sent by his parents to be educated. An 1819 painting by Thomas Sully and a later work by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze depicted a Black man as part of Washington's party. Whipple, whose surname was taken from his enslaver, regained his freedom after serving in the Revolutionary War by petitioning to the council and House of New Hampshire in 1779.

Known as Billy, Will, or William, the mixed-race enslaved Black man of John Tayloe of Virginia was sentenced to death by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Prince William County, for "aiding in the seizure of an armed vessel and feloniously and traitorously waging war against Virginia." Billy argued that his part in the attack was not of his own free will. Two Justices, Henry Lee and William Carr, dissented with the court on grounds that, because Billy was enslaved, he owed no allegiance and, therefore, could not be guilty of treason. Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson moved to pass a reprieve to June 30 through the state legislature. The reprieve was apparently granted, a move that may have evidenced a sense of justice in a slave-holding state, as well as Jefferson's hypothesized anti-slavery views.

The Continental Congress prohibited slavery in the Northwest territory under the famous Ordinance of 1787. Specifically, there could be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the region Northwest of the Ohio River except as punishment for a crime.

Prince Hall, a veteran of the War for Independence, received a charter for a masonic lodge for Blacks. This group was chartered in England as African lodge no. 459. Hall, the first master of the organization, set up additional African lodges in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island during 1797. Hall was born in Barbados, British West Indies, in 1735, the son of an Englishman and a free Black woman. He was apprenticed as a leather worker but abandoned that training to emigrate to Boston. During the Revolutionary War, Hall and twelve other free Blacks were inducted into a masonic lodge by a group of British soldiers stationed in Boston. When the British evacuated the area, Hall organized a masonic lodge for Blacks. Hall, a self-educated clergyman, also championed the establishment of schools for Black children in Boston, urged Massachusetts to legislatively oppose slavery, and proposed measures to protect free Blacks from kidnapping and enslavement. Following his death in Boston on December 4, 1807, the African Grand Lodge became the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, which has become a major social institution in Black America.

Abraham was born into slavery in Pensacola, Florida. His Seminole name was "Sohanac" or "Souanakkc Tustenukle." By the early 1820s he was living in Florida with the slave-holding Seminole Indians, among whom runaway enslaved Blacks often sought refuge. In 1825 Abraham accompanied Seminole chief Micanopy on an official visit to Washington, D.C., and was granted his freedom. Over the next several years, Abraham witnessed many Seminole treaties as an interpreter. During this period, the Seminoles were being pressured by the U.S. government to move from Florida; Abraham secretly advised Micanopy to resist this pressure and encouraged the enslaved plantation Blacks of the area to support the Seminoles and the Blacks associated with the Seminole. During the Third Seminole War, which began in 1835, Abraham negotiated for peace, eventually persuading Micanopy to surrender. Abraham's settlement provided that the Black allies of the Seminoles be allowed to leave Florida with them. On February 25, 1839, Abraham was sent west, where he raised cattle near the Little River in Arkansas. Abraham had two sons, Renty and Washington, and one daughter by his wife, Hagar.

Eli Whitney of Massachusetts, a white inventor, obtained a patent for his cotton gin. The invention strengthened the institution of slavery, especially in the South.

John Malvin was born free to a free mother, Dalcus Malvin, and an enslaved father in Dumfries, Prince William County, Virginia. He was taught reading and spelling by an old enslaved Black person who used the Bible as a teaching guide, and he learned carpentry from his father. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1827 to remain free, and he became a community leader and helped with the underground railroad. Malvin married Harriet Dorsey in Cincinnati on March 8, 1829. After his arrests and brief imprisonment as a fugitive slave in 1831, Malvin became interested in emigration and migration. In 1832 he founded the School Education Society in Cleveland to provide a school for Black children. Malvin purchased his father-in-law's freedom in 1833. He was a delegate to the National Convention of Colored Freemen in Cleveland in 1848. During the 1850s, Malvin attended meetings of the influential Ohio state Convention of Colored Citizens and was elected vice president of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1858. Malvin worked to end the Black laws of Ohio, which prohibited Blacks from attending schools and imposed a five-hundred-dollar security bond on Blacks entering the state. At the start of the Civil War, Malvin urged Black Americans in Cleveland to organize troops, although it would be several years before Blacks would be allowed to serve. One year before his death, Malvin's autobiography was published in the Cleveland leader as a forty-two-page booklet entitled "Autobiography". Malvin died on July 30, 1880, in Cleveland and was buried in Erie Cemetery.

Little documentation of James Barbadoes's life remains, despite his activism and leadership among free Blacks in Boston. In 1930 Barbados's name appeared on a list of freed Black heads of families in Boston. He was a member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association and a delegate to the Convention of The People of Color in Philadelphia in 1831. Barbadoes was also a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. At a May 1934 meeting of the New England anti-Slavery Society, Barbadoes urged support for William Lloyd Garrison and his abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator. Barbadoes and three others extended an invitation to Garrison to attend a meeting of Black American citizens; after that he returned from England. In the 1830s, Barbadoes ran a barbershop and rented rooms in Boston. He died on June 22, 1841, of West India Fever after a doomed mission to settle a group of Blacks in Jamaica.

Blacks in North Carolina presented a petition to Congress protesting a state law that required enslaved Blacks, although freed by their quaker enslavers, to be returned to the state and to the status of slavery. This first recorded anti-slavery petition by Blacks was rejected by the Congress.

A compilation of stories called "A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture" detailed the life of the former Connecticut enslaved African known as Venture (1729-1805). A son of the prince of the Dukandarra tribe, Venture was born into slavery in Guinea, West Africa. His birth name, Broteer, was changed to Venture by his enslaver who brought him to America. Nicknamed "Black Bunyan," Venture worked to purchase his own freedom at the age of thirty-six, and the freedom of his wife, daughter, two sons, and three other enslaved Africans. The narrative described, and possibly exaggerated, the great feats of work that Venture performed, such as carrying a barrel of molasses on his shoulders for two miles. The depiction of the lives of enslaved and free Blacks in eighteenth-century Connecticut was a key element in the narrative.

Although there was movement towards the abolition of slavery, the legislature took steps to characterize indentured servitude for Blacks in a way that redefined slavery in the state. Slavery was important economically, both in New York City and in agricultural areas, such as Brooklyn. Based on a model in Pennsylvania, in 1799, the legislature passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. It freed no living enslaved Black person, in part to allow owners at the time to recoup the most profit from their enslaved Blacks before losing them. It declared children of enslaved Blacks born after July 4, 1799, to be legally free, but the children had to serve an extended period of indentured servitude: to the age of 28 for males and to 25 for females. Enslaved Blacks born before that date were redefined as indentured servants and could not be sold, but they had to continue their unpaid labor.

Slavery was abolished in Ohio in 1802 by the state's original constitution.

Known by the American South to be fiercely independent and resistant to chattel slavery, a boatload of roughly 75 captive Igbo people survived the middle passage to be sold at local slave auctions. Chained and packed under the small vessel (named either “The Schooner York” or “The Monrovia”), they rose up in rebellion, took control of the ship, and drowned their captors in what is now known as Igbo landing in Georgia. Though what happened next is unclear, various accounts site they died by suicide by walking into Dunbar Creek. A letter written by Savannah slave dealer William Mein states that the Igbo people walked into the marsh where 10 to 12 drowned and some were "salvaged" by bounty hunters who received $10 a head from the captives’ intended plantation owners (One of which was Thomas Spalding, a Georgia politician). According to some sources, survivors of the Igbo rebellion were taken to Cannon's Point on St. Simons Island and Sapelo Island. This has been referred to as the first freedom march in America and has spawned myths and Gullah folklore.

Sarah Mapps Douglass was born into a prominent quaker family in Philadelphia. Her maternal grandfather, Cyril Bustin, owned a bakery, was a schoolmaster, and was an early member of the Free African Society. Her mother ran a quaker millinery store adjacent to the family bakery, and her father was a founding member of the First African Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Douglass was privately tutored, and in the 1820s she opened a school for Black American children that would later receive support from the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. It was through her involvement as corresponding secretary of this society that Douglass became acquainted with Sarah and Angelina Grimke, daughters of a prominent white judge. Their association spurred condemnation from whites, resulting in riots and mob violence in the 1830s and 1840s. Realizing the futility of her struggle against segregation, Douglass in 1853 took charge of the girl's primary department of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, a job she held until her retirement in 1877. After the Civil War she served as vice-chairperson of the Women's Pennsylvania Branch of the American Freedmen's Aid Commission. Douglass died on September 8, 1882, in Philadelphia.

Northup was a born-free Black American man from New York who was tricked, drugged, and kidnapped by 2 men, then sold into slavery in Louisiana for 12 years, before regaining his freedom, thanks to the help of Samuel Bass, a Canadian carpenter and abolitionist. Solomon sued the men involved in his kidnapping and enslavement, but none received punishment, due to a Washington D.C. law prohibiting Black men from testifying against white people. He is well known for his co-written bestselling memoir, "12 Years A Slave", which was adapted and produced as a feature film in 2013, receiving 3 Academy Awards.

Stephen Smith purchased his freedom from slavery for fifty dollars in January 1816 and, later that year, his release from indentured servitude. Smith had previous experience in the lumber business and soon established his own firm. Smith was born to an enslaved mother, Nancy Smith, in Paxtang, Pennsylvania. At the age of five he was indentured to a patriot of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Boude. Great success allowed Smith to dabble in coal, railroading, stocks, and real estate, and eventually brought him into ownership of more than fifty houses and $18,000 worth of stock in New York's Columbia bank. But Smith still faced challenges because he was Black. In 1834, envious Whites attacked his office, and later that year, Smith was warned that he should leave his Columbia community. He remained in Columbia until 1842 when he moved to Philadelphia. Smith attended a national convention for free people of color in New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was also an activist who participated in the operations of the underground railroad, the American Moral Reform Society, and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, among many other abolitionist groups. Smith was a benefactor to the Institute For Colored Youth, The Home For Destitute Colored Children, The House of Refuge, and the Olive Cemetery. The House For Age and Infirm Colored Persons was renamed the Stephen Smith Home For The Aged, in recognition of Smith, who had donated $28,000 and the ground to build on and made the home the principal beneficiary of his estate. Smith died in 1873.

The famous Missouri Compromise was approved by Congress. Slavery was prohibited north and west of the 36-30 parallel line within the Louisiana territory. Missouri itself entered the Union as a slave state, while Maine entered as a free state.

Denmark Vesey, likely born into slavery in St. Thomas before being brought to Charleston, purchased his freedom after winning a lottery around the age of 32. He became a co-founder of the second largest African Methodist Episcopal church in the nation, attracting over 1,800 members (more than 10% of Blacks in the city, mostly enslaved Blacks). In 1821, Vesey and a few of his followers began to plan a revolt, kill slaveholders in Charleston, liberate the enslaved, and sail to the Black republic of Haiti for refuge. Vesey would review plans of the revolt with his followers at his home during religious classes, inspiring them by connecting their potential freedom to the Biblical story of Exodus, and God's delivery of the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery. By some accounts, the revolt would have involved thousands of enslaved Blacks in the city as well as others who lived on plantations which were located miles away. Two enslaved Blacks, however, who were deeply loyal to their enslavers, informed the city officials of the plot, who then sent a militia to arrest the plot's leaders and many suspected followers on June 22, before the rising could begin, which was believed to be planned for July 14. No white people were killed or injured. Vesey, about 55 years old at the time, and five enslaved Blacks were among the first group of men to be rapidly judged guilty by the secret proceedings of a city-appointed court and condemned to death. The suspects were allowed visits by ministers; Dr. Benjamin Palmer visited Vesey after he was sentenced to death, and Vesey told the minister that he would die for a "glorious cause". They were executed by hanging on July 2, 1822. In later proceedings, some 30 additional followers were executed. His son Sandy was also found guilty of conspiracy and deported from the United States, along with many others. City authorities ordered that the church should be razed and its minister was expelled from the city.

Maryland reenacted a law providing for the banishment of free Blacks who could not give security for proper behavior. Any free Black in Maryland or traveling through the state without a job had to provide security for good behavior or leave the state within fifteen days. The law carried a punishment of a $50 fine or being sold into slavery for up to six months.

Freedom’s Journal, established the same year that slavery was abolished in New York, was the first Black American-owned and operated newspaper in the United States. In its early years, it distributed more than 800 copies throughout 11 states and the District of Columbia. It reached as far as Canada, Haïti, and the United Kingdom for an annual subscription cost of $3.00. The newspaper was founded on March 16, 1827, at 5 Varick Street in Lower Manhattan, New York, by Jamaican-born John Brown Russwurm, Bowdoin College’s first Black American graduate and only the third Black person to graduate from an American college. Cofounder Samuel Eli Cornish, born in Sussex County, Delaware, and a graduate of the Free African School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, also founded Shiloh Presbyterian Church, the first Black Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, in 1822.

Freedom’s Journal was entertaining and informative. Its pages included articles regarding improving education, health, and living conditions for the over 300,000 free Black women and men living in the northern states of the U.S. The paper had a classified section that included a listing of schools, jobs, and affordable places to live. There was also a social section that printed information about birth, death, and wedding announcements. The paper’s primary focus, however, remained the campaign to end slavery in the South and fight racial discrimination in the North.

In September 1827, Cornish resigned as co-editor of Freedom’s Journal because of disputes with cofounder Russwurm, leaving him the sole editor. Russwurm shifted the focus of the paper, which now began promoting the idea of emigration of Black Americans to Africa. Russwurm embraced the controversial American Colonization Society, a predominantly white organization that worked to return free Blacks to its West African colony of Liberia, a stand increasingly opposed by many Northern African Americans. By this time, however, many financial supporters of the newspaper halted their involvement, and on March 28, 1829, Freedom’s Journal ceased publication after releasing only 103 issues. In April 1829, Samuel Cornish revived the newspaper, changing its name to The Rights of All. However, that publication survived only for eight months.

In 1829, John Brown Russwurm earned a Master of Arts degree from Bowdoin and emigrated to Liberia by November of that year. In 1836, he became Governor of Maryland County in Liberia and remained in that office until he died on June 9, 1851, at the age of 52. Samuel Eli Cornish died in Brooklyn, New York, on November 6, 1858. He was 63.

Despite its short life span, Freedom’s Journal established the vital role of Black newspapers in Black American life and politics. It also created the model of journalism that numerous Black journals and journalists would follow in the United States and around the world for the next two centuries.

Slavery in New York officially abolished.

Theodore Sedgwick Wright graduated from the Princeton Theological Seminary, making him the first Black to graduate from an American theological seminary. He then took his lifelong post as pastor of the First Colored Presbyterian Church, also called the Shiloh Presbyterian Church. Wright constantly organized and promoted civil rights efforts. Throughout the 1830s, he lectured for active abolitionist movements and, in 1833, helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society. After withdrawing from the organization in 1840 over the growing trend toward Garrisonian radicalism, he helped form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In addition to fighting for freedom, Wright pushed for jury trials in fugitive enslaved people cases and Black franchisement, including an 1840 push for suspension of the property requirement for Black voters. Wright was also active in the temperance movement and missions to evangelize African peoples. Wright was born to R. P. G. Wright in 1797. He received his early education at the New York African Free School. Wright died in 1847.

William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of the militant anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator, with financial aid and moral support from such prominent Black Americans as James Forten of Philadelphia.

Also known as the Baptist war, the Christmas Rebellion, and the Sam Sharpe Rebellion. This eleven-day rebellion led by Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe, involved up to 60,000 enslaved Blacks (one fifth of the total enslaved Black population) in the colony of Jamaica. The rebels had been paying close attention to the abolitionist movement in London. Thomas Burchell, a white Baptist missionary in Montego Bay working to help liberate the enslaved, went to London for Christmas vacation. The enslaved Africans expected he would return with papers for emancipation from the king, William IV. The Jamaican governor announced however, that no emancipation had been granted. Demanding more freedom and higher wages, they decided to peacefully boycott working the plantations until their demands were met. The rebellion exploded on Dec 27th when the rebels set fire to Kensington Estate, causing the colonial authorities to institute martial law and summon Jamaican maroons to help suppress the revolt and they succeeded. About 500 enslaved Blacks were killed in total, with about 200 killed during the revolt and over 300 killed in various forms of judicial execution by the Jamaican government in many times for minor offenses (one recorded execution was for the theft of a pig; another a cow). Suspecting many white missionaries of encouraging the rebellion, some were arrested, tarred, feathered, and later released. Groups of white colonials destroyed Black churches. Historians argue that the brutality of the Jamaican plantocracy during the revolt accelerated the British political process of emancipating the enslaved Blacks. When a few white missionaries described how badly they were treated by the colonial militias, the House of Commons expressed their outrage that white planters could have tarred and feathered white missionaries. Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 for initial measures to begin in 1834, followed by partial emancipation (outright for children six or under, six years apprenticeship for the rest) in 1834 and then unconditional emancipation of chattel slavery in 1838.

In February 1832, a group of “females of color” in Salem, Massachusetts organized the first women’s antislavery society in the United States. Like most free Black antislavery societies, the Salem organization addressed a variety of issues important to free Blacks in addition to the campaign against slavery. It supported secular and Sabbath schools for free Blacks, assisted newly freed or runaway slaves, and opposed racial segregation and discrimination in the northern free states. Two years after its founding, the Society expanded its membership to include White women and officially re-organized as the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society.

The Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society (SFASS) was similar in some ways to other female anti-slavery organizations. It raised money to support abolitionist publications such as The Liberator by organizing annual bazaars that featured the contributions of local free Blacks and organized lecture series. The society’s support for The Liberator underscored its Garrisonian politics that advocated the immediate end of slavery as well as Garrison’s support of the expanded role of women in the movement.

Like other abolitionist women, its participants were often involved in a host of other reform activities. For example, the Society’s vice-president, Clarissa C. Lawrence, also served as president of the Colored Female Religious and Moral Reform Society of Salem, and Sarah Parker Remond was a prominent abolitionist lecturer who would eventually pursue a career in medicine. Remond’s family was among the Black elite in Salem and active participants in the abolitionist movement.

Many of the members, however, were self-supporting women. The working-class rank and file of the Society shaped the scope of its priorities and activities. In addition to its overt antislavery work, for example, the SFASS established a sewing school for young Black women and girls and raised funds to help sustain a local Black church. The Society disbanded in January 1866 but a number of former members participated in the activities of the Freedman’s Bureau in the South.

The infamous "gag rule" was adopted in the U.S. House of Representatives. Under the act, anti-slavery petitions were simply laid on the table without any further action. This denial of the right of petition angered former president John Quincy Adams, then a congressman from Massachusetts. Adams fought vigorously against the rule, helping to rouse public opinion in the North. Anti-slavery petitions began to pour into Washington; more than 200,000 of them in a single session. In 1844, the gag rule was rescinded. Its opponents saw it as an effort to deny White men their right of freedom of petition in an attempt to keep Black men enslaved.

Jeremiah Burke Sanderson (1821-1875) made his first public address at an abolitionists meeting in Nantucket, Massachusetts. (Frederick Douglass also gave his first public speech there.) Throughout the 1840s, the Scottish and African-blooded Sanderson, born and educated in New Bedford, Massachusetts, spoke out against slavery in his state as well as in New York, where, in 1853, he joined the National Council of the National Colored Convention. Although Sanderson did not promote immigration of Blacks abroad, he did support the massive migration of Blacks to California in 1854 by going there himself. There, he helped many Black religious, social, political, and educational organizations increase their status in American society. Sanderson was elected to the African Methodist Episcopal church positions of secretary of the California conference and state delegate to the church's national conference, but died in a train accident on August 19, 1875, before he was able to serve.

Abolitionist and businessman David Jenkins founded the Palladium of Liberty, a weekly Columbus, Ohio newspaper that advocated the abolition of slavery. Although the paper ran for little more than a year, it influenced future Black-operated newspapers in the midwest.

Henry Vinton Plummer was born as an enslaved African in Prince George's County, Maryland. At eighteen, Plummer escaped from slavery after having been sold at least twice. In 1864, he enlisted in the navy and taught himself to read during his year and a half of service. In 1867, Plummer married Julia Lomax; together they had six sons and two daughters. Plummer began ministering in Maryland congregations while preparing to attend Wayland seminary in Washington D.C., from which he graduated in 1879. Upon the recommendation of Frederick Douglass, President Chester A. Arthur appointed Plummer chaplain of the 9th Cavalry in 1884. Championing temperance, Plummer formed the Loyal Temperance Legion for the children of the Black troops at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Although he was popular among the soldiers, his influence may have been viewed as a threat to the white-run army. In the months following Plummer's proposed plan for the colonization of central Africa by Black American volunteer soldiers, he was accused and convicted of drunkenness. Upon his dismissal, Plummer moved to Kansas where his attempts to return to the service were unsuccessful. He spent the remainder of his life serving his churches. Plummer died in Wichita, Kansas, on February 8, 1905.

The Cockstock Affair is argued to be the justification that White settlers used to install Oregon’s exclusion laws against Black Americans in the 1840s. As the details of the Affair have been widely debated, there are different ways of interpreting the events, causes, and outcomes. That being said, the Affair is significant in understanding how Whites, Natives, and Blacks interacted in United States territories.

Essentially, the Affair was between James D. Saules, a Black Oregon settler, and Cockstock, a Native American of the Wasco tribe with ties to the Molalla tribe. Another settler, Winslow Anderson, had promised Cockstock a horse in exchange for the labor Cockstock had performed on Anderson’s land. However, Anderson then sold that horse to Saules, in turn instigating a conflict between Saules and Cockstock. Cockstock stole the horse, as he believed it was his rightful property, and Saules appealed to Elijah White, an Indian subagent for the Oregon Territory. As White became involved, the conflict escalated. White put a bounty upon Cockstock’s head, believing that Cockstock should be put on trial in an attempt to soothe the fears of the non-Native settlers.

The Affair reached the climax on March 4th, 1844 as Cockstock and his allies traveled to Oregon City and then faced off against the settlers. In the heat of the battle, settlers George LeBreton and Sterling Rogers, as well as Cockstock, died. It is important to note that there have been many contradicting accounts of the conflict. For example, some accounts blamed Cockstock as supposedly looking for a fight, while others cast Elijah White as foolish.

Regardless of the individuals responsible for the violence, the results were impactful and long-standing. White settlers became fearful and angry that the interactions between Black and Native peoples led to violence which left them threatened. The Cockstock Affair was the first instance of physical conflict between the American settlers and Native peoples in that region.

In the aftermath of the incident in June 1844, the provisional government of Oregon territory enacted the first of a series of black exclusion laws. Ostensibly these laws were justified to prevent the establishment of slavery but they required all Black Americans, slave and free, to leave the territory under threat of violent whippings or arrests. Although the law was supposedly defended by Peter H. Burnett, a member of the legislature who introduced the measure as a benefit for Black people, it in fact perpetuated anti-Black feelings and eventually segregated the region through inequality.

Dred Scott, an enslaved Black man, filed suit in the St. Louis circuit Court claiming that his temporary residence in a free territory should have made him a free man. Scott was a semi-literate man who travel throughout the country, specifically into the free portions of the Louisiana territory, where slavery had been excluded by the Missouri compromise of 1820, and into free Illinois which formed the basis for the case.

Black American abolitionist Frederick Douglass began publication of his own newspaper, the North Star. Douglass, who was formally enslaved, became the era's most well-known Black anti-slavery speaker and writer. Born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, in 1817, Douglass was separated in infancy from his mother and had harsh enslavers as a child. While still very young, Douglass became a house servant in Baltimore, where white playmates taught him to read. His first attempt at escape was thwarted, but in 1838, while working as a ship calker, he managed a successful break from slavery. Further education by anti-slavery groups in the North made Douglass a very lucid speaker and writer. The publication of the North Star was one of the factors that led to Douglass's break with William Lloyd Garrison, the noted white abolitionist and publisher of the Liberator. Garrison saw no need for two major rival anti-slavery publications, but Douglass and other Blacks had become convinced that they must play a more leading role in the abolitionist movement, and that included the printing of a newspaper. In later years, Douglass was appointed to several political and diplomatic posts, including unofficial advisor to presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, marshal of the district of Columbia, recorder of deeds of the district of Columbia, and minister to Haiti. He also served as president of the Freedmen's Bank in 1874.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was concluded between the United States and Mexico, ending two years of combat between the countries. Under the terms of the treaty, the present states of New Mexico and California were ceded to the United States. Many pro-slavery Southerners had supported the war, anticipating that new lands would be opened to slavery. Many anti-slavery Northerners had opposed the war, fearing that it was the result of a pro-slavery conspiracy designed to open new territory to slavery. Shortly after the war began in 1846, democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced an amendment to a pending bill in Congress—to become known as the "Wilmot Proviso"—which sought to prohibit slavery in any territory acquired as a result of the Mexican war. The proviso passed in the House of Representatives but was defeated in the Senate. The Mexican cession and the status of slavery there precipitated bitter debate between North and South from 1848 to 1850. One proposed solution was offered by President Zachary Taylor, who suggested that California and New Mexico bypass the territorial stage of government and apply directly for statehood, thus nullifying the question of slavery in the Mexican Cession territories. This proposal was unacceptable to the South, for both New Mexico and California would enter the Union as free states, thus upsetting the precarious sectional balance in the U.S. Senate that now stood at fifteen states each. The grounds were laid for the famous Compromise of 1850.

On April 15, 1848, a daring escape attempt unfolded. 77 enslaved people, aided by Black and White abolitionists, boarded The Pearl schooner in D.C., aiming for freedom via Chesapeake Bay. Bad weather and a fast response from slaveholders ended their plan near Point Lookout, Maryland. The recapture sparked outrage, leading to violence against abolitionists and free Blacks in D.C.'s first major riot. The recaptured faced sale to the South, while those who helped, like The Pearl's captain, were imprisoned. Despite the failure, the Pearl Incident may have influenced anti-slavery legislation and inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin. It stands as a powerful symbol of the fight for freedom.

The autobiography of James William Charles Pennington, who had escaped slavery when he was twenty-one, was written in 1849. Upon escape, he devoted himself to Christianity and abolition, using his story to gain support and expose the horrors of slavery. His work took him to London as Connecticut's representative at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention and to Paris, Brussels, Scotland, and Frankfurt as a lecturer. Though Pennington did not support emigration by Black Americans to Africa, he did support the evangelization of Africa's indigenous peoples. In 1855, Pennington helped organize the New York Legal Rights Association, which worked to bring equality to the city's transportation system.

By the time Thomas Greene Bethune was four, the blind child, who was born into slavery, was being exhibited as the "musical marvel" of the Bethune plantation in Georgia. The exhibition of Tom, however, soon turned into exploitation as his enslavers made several fortunes on his talent, including an estimated $100,000 from an 1866 European tour showcasing his talents as a pianist and composer. Colonel James Bethune even used Tom's talent to benefit the confederacy throughout the Civil War. When Tom was 15, colonel Bethune gained guardianship of the boy, supposedly with his parents' consent. In 1865 with the end of the war, an attempt was made to liberate Tom from the guardianship that was akin to slavery. That, however, failed and Tom's "guardianship" was eventually passed on to the colonel's son, and later, the son's widow and her second husband who profited off the last fifteen years of Tom's life. Tom reportedly died penniless on June 13, 1908, in Hoboken, New Jersey. His accomplishments included performances before foreign dignitaries and President James Buchanan, the composition of over 100 piano and vocal pieces, and the mastery of over 700 pieces by European greats such as Beethoven and Bach.

Harriet Tubman, the best-known Black female abolitionist, returned to Maryland and Virginia at least twenty times and is credited with freeing anywhere from about 100-300 enslaved Blacks. The daring abolitionist was born in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1823. While working as a field hand as a young girl, she suffered a severe head injury by a weight that an enraged overseer had thrown at another enslaved Black. The damage from that blow caused Tubman to suffer from "sleeping seizures" for the rest of her life. In 1844, she married a free Black, John Tubman, but remained enslaved. In 1849, her enslaver died, and rumors emerged that those he enslaved were to be sold into the deep South. Tubman, along with two of her brothers, escaped. Fearing capture and punishment or death, the brothers returned to the plantation, but Tubman, using the North Star for directions, marched on until she reached Philadelphia. In 1850, Tubman returned to Maryland for a sister and a brother, and in the following year she led a party of eleven Blacks from the South into Canada, leaving behind her husband, who had married another woman. In 1857, Tubman made one of her last trips into Maryland, rescuing her parents and three additional brothers and sisters. The family then settled in Auburn, New York. The family home, purchased from anti-slavery senator William H. Seward, was later turned into a home for elderly and indigent Black Americans. After serving in the Civil War as a nurse and a spy, Tubman devoted all of her energy and earnings to this home during the twilight of her life. Tubman, often called "the Moses of her people," died in Auburn in 1913.

Congress enacted the famous Compromise of 1850. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and other moderate statesmen from both sections drew up this omnibus solution to the problem of slavery in the Mexican cession as well as other outstanding differences between North and South. The provisions of the compromise relating to slavery included the outlawing of the slave trade in Washington, D.C., but the retention of slavery itself; the passage of a new, tougher fugitive slave law to replace the poorly enforced act of 1793; and the admission of California as a free state.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel by a Northern white woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published in Boston. The book, which exaggerated the cruelties of slavery, evoked sympathy for Blacks in the North, and greatly angered the South.

William Wells Brown, formerly enslaved, and also an abolitionist, historian, and physician, published Clotel, the first novel written by a Black American, in London. The work, an account of the life of a Black woman whose father was an American president, draws on the legend that Thomas Jefferson had fathered many children by his enslaved mistresses. Brown was born to an enslaved woman and a white enslaver in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1816. He was educated in St. Louis, Missouri, where he served as an apprentice to the martyred abolitionist editor, Elijah P. Lovejoy. Brown also published "Three Years in Europe; or: Places I Have Seen, and People I Have Met" (1852), in which he gave his impressions of such notables as Richard Cobden, Victor Hugo, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Brown was also a regular contributor to William Lloyd Garrison's "Liberator," the "London Daily News," and the "National Anti-Slavery Standard." His reputation as an historian rest largely upon such works as "The Black Man" (1863) and "The Negro in the American Rebellions" (1867). Brown's principal anti-slavery work was as a conductor on the underground railroad and as an anti-slavery lecturer. He died in 1884.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was approved by congress and President Franklin Pierce. In addition to providing formal organization for the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska, the act repealed the Missouri compromise of 1820, thus removing anti-slavery restrictions north and west of the 36-30 parallel line in the Louisiana territory. According to the bill's author, senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, congress, in the Compromise of 1850, had abandoned all efforts to protect or to prohibit slavery in the territories. Therefore, it was only consistent, Douglas reasoned, that the new principle be applied in the Louisiana territory as elsewhere. Southerners viewed Kansas as ripe for slavery. Northern anti-slavery men opposed the prospects of a slave Kansas and the repeal of the Compromise of 1820. The contest for control of Kansas between the pro- and anti-slavery forces led to several years of bitter, often bloody strife in the territory and in congress. In fact, Kansas came to be known as "Bleeding Kansas." The most significant acts of violence were the sacking of the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, in May 1856 and the subsequent retaliation by John Brown (who, with his followers, slaughtered five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek), and the beating of anti-slavery senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina on the floor of the U.S. Senate, also in the spring of 1856. Sumner had denounced the South and some of its representatives for the "crime against Kansas," the rape of a virgin territory by slaveholders. His remarks against Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina led to the attack by Brooks, Butler's nephew. The acrimony and political confusion in Kansas prevented the territory from being admitted into the union by congress until just before the Civil War. On January 29, 1861, Kansas joined the union as a free state, representing the will of the majority of the bona fide residents there.

Anthony Burns, an enslaved fugitive, was arrested in Boston. His enslaver refused an offer of $1,200 made by Boston citizens for his freedom. Burns was escorted through the streets of Boston by U.S. troops as he returned to the south. The incident was indicative of a growing anti-slavery sentiment in the north, especially following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act.

Amidst a cry for the end of slavery, Wilberforce was founded in 1856 as Wilberforce university of the Methodist Episcopal church and named after British abolitionist and philanthropist William Wilberforce. The school was part of a plan to establish education for Blacks in Ohio. Wilberforce was sold to the A.M.E. Church in 1863 and awarded its first bachelor's degrees in 1867. Wilberforce was distinguished as the first Black college and the first college with a Black president.

The U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, declaring that Black Americans were not citizens of the United States and denying the congress the power to prohibit slavery in any federal territory. Scott was eventually freed by new enslavers. Meanwhile, he remained enslaved, albeit a famous one, in St. Louis where he worked as a porter. The Dred Scott decision, a clear-cut victory for the south, alarmed abolitionists in the north and fueled the fires leading to the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln, viewed by southerners as an abolitionist, was elected president of the United States on a platform opposed to the further expansion of slavery into the territories.

The U.S. senate passed a bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. Enslavers were to be compensated at the rate of $300 per enslaved Black. One hundred thousand dollars was also allocated for the voluntary emigration of these freedmen to Haiti or Liberia.

President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill abolishing slavery in the federal territories.

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln, went into effect on January 1, 1863. This proclamation declared that "all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of the state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." With this proclamation more than three-quarters of all enslaved Blacks were set to be free. And, while certainly a move towards the ending of slavery, the proclamation only applied to those enslaved Africans in states that had seceded from the Union, and not to enslaved Blacks living in the four slave states that remained a part of the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation was, in part, a military tactic by the President. The document notes that emancipation was "an act of justice, warranted by the constitution upon military necessity." The issuing of the proclamation helped to rally support among abolitionists. Enslaved Blacks set to be free by the proclamation could join the union army. Moreover, it gave the union the moral high ground, helping the union to gain support from other nations.
It took time for the message of emancipation to spread. It would not be until June 19, 1865, after the end of the Civil War, that word of emancipation would reach the slaves of Galveston, Texas. Ultimately, the Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for the abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War. And it earned Abraham Lincoln the nickname of The Great Emancipator.

The 13th Amendment, which prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, was adopted.

The new state constitutional conventions met in Charleston, South Carolina. Black delegates were in a decided majority. Louisiana had an equal number of Blacks and whites in its convention, while all other southern states had white majorities. The magnanimity of the Black delegates at Charleston was reflected in the words of Black representative Beverly Nash: "I believe, my friends and fellow-citizens, we are not prepared for this suffrage. But we can learn, we recognize the southern white man as the true friend of the Black man. In these public affairs we must unite with our white fellow-citizens. They tell us that they have been disfranchised, yet we tell the north that we shall never let the halls of Congress be silent until we remove that disability." The state constitutions drawn up by southern constitutional conventions with Black members in 1867 and 1868 sought to abolish property qualifications for voting and holding office, imprisonment for debt, and slavery.

Reverend Henry Highland Garnett was appointed minister to Liberia. In 1816, at the age of eight, Garnett freed himself from slavery after his enslaver died. In 1839, he graduated from Oneida Collegiate Institute and, in 1842, from Troy Theological College.

Reverend Moses A. Hopkins was appointed U.S. Minister to Liberia. Hopkins had escaped slavery during the Civil War and joined the Union Army as a cook. He had attended Avery College, Lincoln University, and the Theological Seminary at Auburn, New York, before attaining his position as minister. He had also reportedly organized the Albion Academy in North Carolina with six students under him.

Booker T. Washington dined with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. But the meeting was bitterly criticized by many whites, especially Southerners, as a departure from racial etiquette. The previous year, Washington's autobiography, "Up from Slavery," had been hailed by Southern and Northern whites for its non-vindictive attitude toward the South and its previous slave system. The book has become a classic in American letters, primarily because of Washington's prominence.

The U.S. Supreme Court remanded Clyatt v. United States back to the lower court. The case was brought to the high court when Samuel Clyatt appealed his conviction for peonage after he had forced two Blacks to return to Georgia to repay a debt. The two Blacks, Will Gordon and Mose Ridley, argued that their 13th Amendment rights had been violated in that the amendment prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude. The specific charge upon Clyatt, however, was "returning" two men to peonage. The high court ruled that an initial state of peonage was not evidenced, and the case was sent back to Georgia courts for retrial.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, the Black poet who was instrumental in making Black dialect an accepted literary form, died of tuberculosis in Dayton, Ohio, at thirty-four years of age. Dunbar had been born in Dayton on June 27, 1872, to the formerly enslaved Joshua and Matilda Dunbar. His father had escaped slavery and fled to Canada but he returned during the Civil War to fight with the Massachusetts 55th regiment. Although Paul Dunbar was senior class poet at Dayton's Central High School and the editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, his first career was operating an elevator for four dollars a week. By 1893, he had compiled a book of his verse and was selling it to passengers on his elevator. Two years later he published "Majors and Minors," which received a favorable review by William Dean Howells in Harper's Weekly. That review brought Dunbar national recognition. The following year, his "Lyrics of Lowly Life" appeared. Many of these earlier works were published by Orville and Wilbur Wright, who were experimenting with printing newspapers on a homemade press. In the last ten years of his life, Dunbar produced eleven volumes of verse, three novels, and five collections of short stories. Critics generally agree that Dunbar's best works are his poems, particularly those written in dialect. Despite his Midwestern origins, Dunbar's poems deal nostalgically with the pathos and humor of the old South. William Dean Howells considered Dunbar the first Black to ably express an aesthetic appreciation of Black life through verse. Dunbar's biographer, Benjamin Brawley, observed that "Dunbar soared above race and touched the heart universally. In a world of discord, he dared to sing his song about nights bright with stars, about the secret of the wind and the sea, and the answer one finds beyond the years. Above the dross and strife of the day, he asserted the right to live and love and be happy. That is why he was so greatly beloved and why he will never grow old."

Harriet Tubman, often referred to as "the Moses of her people," died in Auburn, New York. A leading Black female abolitionist, Tubman was born in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1823 and had escaped from slavery in July of 1849. She returned to Maryland and Virginia at least twenty times and is credited with freeing between 80-350 enslaved Blacks. While working as a field hand as a young girl, Tubman was injured when, an overseer threw a weight at another enslaved Black but hit Tubman in the head. The blow caused Tubman to suffer from "sleeping seizures" for the rest of her life. In 1844, she married a free Black, John Tubman, but she remained enslaved. In 1849, her master died and rumors emerged that his enslaved people were to be sold in the deep south. With two of her brothers, Tubman escaped. Fearing punishment or death, the brothers returned to the plantation, but Tubman, using the North Star for direction, marched on until she reached Philadelphia. In 1850, Tubman returned to Maryland for a sister and a brother, and in the following year she led a party of eleven Blacks from the South into Canada. She left her husband, who had married another woman, behind. In 1857, Tubman made one of her last trips into Maryland to rescue her parents and three additional brothers and sisters. The family then settled in Auburn, New York. The family home, purchased from the abolitionist Senator William H. Seward, was later turned into a home for elderly and indigent Blacks. After serving in the Civil War as a nurse and a spy, Tubman devoted her energy and earnings to this home.