On October 28, 1830, Josiah Henson crossed into Canada with his wife, Nancy, and their children, escaping slavery in the United States. But Henson’s journey did not end with his own freedom. He went on to help other Black...
Slavery produced countless victims and countless perpetrators. Most slave owners faded into obscurity, but Edwin Epps remains infamous because one of the men he enslaved survived to tell the world exactly what happened on his plantation. His memoir, Twelve...
When people think of slavery in America, they often picture plantation owners, politicians, and traders. Few imagine that some of slavery’s most passionate defenders stood behind church pulpits. One of the most influential was Benjamin Morgan Palmer, a celebrated...
At a time when Kentucky was a slave state and many churches either defended slavery or remained silent, John Gregg Fee preached that slavery was a sin against both God and humanity. For that, he was disowned by his...
For decades in the mid 19th century, a brick slave jail in Lynchburg, Virginia, functioned as one of the busiest holding points in the domestic slave trade of the Upper South. Enslaved Africa men, women, and children were confined...
Throughout American history, politicians, plantation owners, lawyers, and religious leaders all offered different arguments in defense of slavery. Some claimed it was necessary for the economy, while others argued that it maintained social order. Few, however, relied as heavily...
In 1829, a free Black abolitionist living in Boston published a pamphlet that would send waves of fear through parts of slaveholding America. It was not a government report, a newspaper investigation, or a speech from a famous politician....
James Gillespie Birney was not born an abolitionist. He once owned enslaved Africans and lived within the slaveholding world before eventually turning against it. After freeing those he still held, Birney founded The Philanthropist, an anti-slavery newspaper that made...
Throughout the Atlantic slave world, slaveholders often promoted Christianity among enslaved Africans believing religion would encourage obedience, humility, and submission. Plantation owners funded chapels, welcomed missionaries, and encouraged Bible teaching partly because they believed Christian instruction would make enslaved...
The Massasoit Guards were an African American militia company founded in Boston in 1854 to help protect the city’s Black community from slave catchers during the years leading up to the American Civil War. Formed by Black abolitionists at...
