The Slave Trade
Methods of tradingTrans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Likely the most well-known way of trading slaves was how they got to America: The Middle Passage. By this route, Africans were taken from their homelands, often by trade, and loaded on to European ships. These ships are infamous today for their absolutely horrible living conditions and cramped spaces that don't need to be elaborated on because of how infamous they are and how disturbing they were. However, a common misconception is that the majority of slaves went to British North America, or the USA. That's not true. Only about 5% of all African slaves that crossed the Atlantic Ocean ended up in what is now the United States. The vast majority of them went in bondage to either the Caribbean or Brazil. The importation of slaves by this route was abolished in America and the British Empire in 1807, 56 years before slavery ended in the United States. This is because, unlike in Haiti or Brazil, the population of slaves in America was self-sustaining. More slaves were born than died. There wasn't a need to continue importing slaves from Africa. The last country to end the middle passage was Brazil, who wouldn't abolish slavery until 1888. Chattel Slavery The most common way for slaves to be traded within the United States was via auction. This was called, as the title implies, chattel slavery due to the fact that African slaves were traded like cattle. These African slaves weren't seen as people, but as property. This property could be traded. More often than not, slaves were traded to plantations further south than where they were. The semi-common expression, "Sold down the river" refers to this practice. That river was often the Mississippi, and it's not up the river, because slaves were sold further south more often than they were sold further north. For example, an African slave would be working in Kentucky, and then be sold down to Alabama or Mississippi to pick cotton. Another common thing that would happen as a result of this method of slave trading is the splitting up of families. Families were split up because they gave the slaves a sense of humanity that the masters didn't want them to have. Those families were one of the few positive aspects of life a slave could know, and they plantation masters split them up to prevent them from getting a sense of humanity, then rising up or escaping. The Triangular Trade Network in the Atlantic, in which slaves were a large commodity.
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Timeline
states where slavery was legal
* Years after 1863 are shown for when those states re-entered the Union, and ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware never left the Union, so the Emancipation Proclamation applied to them, but not the Confederate states. (Except for Mississippi, which somehow accidentally only ratified the Amendment in 2013).
** The first years on the list for the states are when they entered the U.S., and not when slavery became legal. Slavery was legal in all British colonies for long before 1776, including northern ones, who abolished it upon becoming states. |