Influential leaders of the abolition movement (1810-60)
included:
In the election of 1860, the anti-slavery Republican party had swept the
North, and Abraham Lincoln into the Presidency, with a plurality of popular
votes and a majority of electoral votes. After decades of controlling the
Federal Government, the newly disenfranchised Southern states rebelled and
demanded to secede from the Union, launching the Civil War. Ironically,
Southern leaders clawed back the idea of 'states rights' from Midwestern and
Northeastern leaders, and each Southern state would assert their individual
sovereign status and right to 'self determination'. Northern leaders like
Lincoln and Chase had viewed the slavery interests as a threat politically,
and with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new slave nation, with
control over the Mississippi River and the West, as a militarily unacceptable
impossibility.
The 1860s
saw the end of slavery in America.
Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation of
1863 was a
symbolic gesture that ended slavery nowhere, but only proclaimed freedom for
slaves within the Confederacy. However, the proclamation made the abolition of
slavery an official war goal and it was implemented as the Union retook
territory from the
Confederacy. Legally, slaves within the United States remained enslaved
until the final ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December of
1865, 8 months
after the cessation of hostilities in the
Civil War. However, practically, the slaves in many parts of the south
were freed by Union armies or by the chaos of the time, when they simply left
their former owners. Many joined the Union army as supporting workers or
combatant troops, and many more fled to Northern cities or stayed close to
Union troops. When Gen. Sherman led his famous march through the South to
Atlanta and Savannah, hundreds of thousands of new 'freedmen' followed him in
his wake, effectively rendering Sherman's army an army of liberation, in some
part mitigating the devastation inflicted by it upon the regions of the South
through which it passed.
During the period between the surrender of the last Confederate troops on
May 26,
1865 and the
final ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment on
December
6, 1865 (with
final recognition of the amendment on
December 18), officially ending slavery in the
United States, slaveholding persisted in the slave states that had not
seceded (Delaware,
Kentucky,
Maryland,
and Missouri)
and also in the territories located south of 36° 30' North latitude as per the
Missouri Compromise (most of the present-day states of
Arizona,
New
Mexico, and
Oklahoma,
although very few slaves could actually be found in these territories), but
history remains unclear on the precise date upon which the last chattel slave
was freed in the United States.
Juneteenth (June
19, 1865) is
celebrated in Texas
and some other areas, and commemorates the date when news of the
Emancipation Proclamation reached the last slaves at Galveston, TX, but
slavery most likely persisted, officially or unofficially, in at least some of
the aforementioned regions during the months leading up to December 1865.
The Civil War remains the most devastating event in American history, when
hundreds of thousands of American lives were lost. And yet the war effectively
decided the question of slavery for the country, and for that reason, remains
a noble cause in history for the descendants of Northerners and slaves alike,
though questions of states rights and limited Federal government have been
widely emphasized in Southern historiography in the intervening period.
In the slave-holding colonies of
British North America slavery was first abolished in
Upper
Canada (now the southern part of
Ontario;
slavery was officially abolished there in
1810, although
slavery had probably disappeared before then (see
John Graves Simcoe). Slavery had not been an important part of the Upper
Canadian economy; most slaves were servants. In the decades before the
American Civil War and especially after the enactment of the
Fugitive Slave Law, Canada became the destination of choice of runaway
slaves to escape to freedom.
- See also:
Slavery in Canada
International abolitionist movements
Slavery's origins are simply too old to recount. So, too, are movements to
free large or distinct groups of them.
Moses led
Israelite slaves from
ancient Egypt in the
Biblical
Book of Exodus - possibly the first detailed account of a movement to free
slaves, although clearly not accepted at face value as real history in all
particulars.
In England
in 1772 the case
of a runaway slave named James Somerset came before the
Lord Chief Justice
William Murray, Lord Mansfield. Basing his judgement on
Magna
Carta and
habeas corpus he declared - "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may
follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the
law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." It was thus
declared that the condition of slavery could not be enforced under English
law. However, little effort was made towards enforcing the judgement, and
slaves continued to be held in Britain for years to come.
In 1787
humanitarian campaigners in Britain founded the Society for Effecting the
Abolition of the Slave Trade. The "slave trade" consisted, not of slavery in
Britain, but rather of trafficking in slaves by British merchants operating in
British colonies and other countries. Shares of stock in companies engaged in
that trade was legally bought and sold in England. The anti-slave-trade
movement in Britain had support from
Quakers,
Baptists,
Methodists
and others, and reached out for support from the new industrial workers. The
primary leader of the fight against slavery in Britain was
William Wilberforce.
France
never authorized slavery on its mainland, but authorized it in some of its
overseas
possessions. On
February
4, 1794,
Abbé Grégoire and the
Convention abolished slavery. It was re-established in
1802 by
Napoleon,
and in the end abolished in
1848 under the
Second Republic.
The "Abolition of the Slave Trade Act" was passed by
Parliament on
March 25,
1807. The act
imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The
intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the British Empire,
but the trade continued and captains in danger of being caught by the
Royal
Navy would often throw slaves into the sea to reduce the fine. In
1827 Britain
declared that particiption in the slave trade was piracy and punishable by
death. On
August 23rd, 1833,
slavery was outlawed in the British colonies. On
August 1st
1834 all slaves
in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former
owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in
1838. After 1838,
the 'British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society' worked to outlaw slavery
overseas and to pressure the government to help enforce the suppression of the
slave trade by declaring slave traders
pirates and
pursuing them. This organization continues today as
Anti-Slavery International.
Sierra Leone was established as a country for former slaves of the British
Empire back in Africa.
Liberia
served an analogous purpose for American slaves. The goal of the abolitionists
was repatriation of the slaves to Africa.
Trade
unions as well didn't want the cheap labor of former slaves around.
Nevertheless, most of them stayed in America.
Slaves in the United States who escaped ownership would often make their
way north to
Canada via the "Underground
Railroad". The Underground Railroad was a grassroots organization, loosely
and informally organized.
The 1926 Slavery Convention, an initiative of the
League of Nations, was a turning point in banning global slavery.
Article 4 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in
1948 by the UN
General Assembly, explicity banned slavery.
The
United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
was convened to outlaw and ban slavery worldwide, including child slavery.
In
December 1966,
the UN General Assembly adopted the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which was developed
from the Universal Declaraction of Human Rights. Article 8 of this
international treaty bans slavery. The treaty came into force in
March
1976 after it had
been ratified by 35 nations.
As of November 2003, 104 nations had ratified the treaty
Apologies
In June
1997,
Tony Hall,
a
Democratic representative for
Dayton, Ohio proposed a national apology by the U.S. government for
slavery. This was at a time when the
Catholic Church in France apologised for its silence and begged
"forgiveness for Catholic inaction as regime sent
Jews to their
deaths in '40s".
At the
World Conference Against Racism,
Durban, the
US representatives walked out on
September 3, 2001
on the instructions of
Colin
Powell. His statement only concerns the conference discussion of
Israel who
also walked out. However the South African Government spokesperson said "The
general perception among all delegates is that the US does not want to
confront the real issues of slavery and all its manifestations."
At the same time the
British,
Spanish,
Dutch and
Portuguese delegations blocked an
EU apology for
slavery.
The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery
and is still being pursued across the world. E.g. The Jamaican Reparations
Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.
Reparations
As noted above, there have been movements to achieve reparations for those
held in involuntary servitude, or sometimes their descendants. There is a
growing modern movement to donate funds achieved in reparations efforts not to
the descendants of those held as slaves in prior generations, but instead to
donate them to those freed from slavery in this generation, in other countries
and circumstances.
In general, reparation for being held in slavery is handled as a
civil law
matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem,
since slaves are exactly those people who have no access to the legal process.
Systems of fines and reparations paid from fines collected by authorities,
rather than in civil courts, have been proposed to alleviate this in some
nations.
In the United States, the reparations movement often cites the
40 acres and a mule decree. Recent effort have also targeted businesses
that profited from the slave trade and issuing insurance on slaves.
Economics of slavery
According to the British Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer
any state which recognizes any claim by a person to a right of property over
another, there are an estimated 2.7 million people throughout the world mainly
children in conditions of slavery." They further note that slavery,
particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. According to a broader
definition used by
Free The Slaves, another advocacy group, there are 27 million people in
slavery today, spread all over the world. This is, also according to that
group:
- The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point
in world history
- The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been
enslaved at once
- Reducing the price of slaves to as low as US$40 in
Mali for young
adult male labourers, to a high of US$1000 or so in
Thailand
for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels (where they
invariably contract HIV). This represents the price paid to the person, or
parents
- This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in
raw labour terms - while the price of a comparable male slave in
1850 America
would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time, that represents
US$38,000 in today's dollars, thus slaves are about a thousand times
cheaper, at least in that category.
As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per
year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as
opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for
buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to
lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to
yield what are called disposable people - those who can be
exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the
prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or those
forced to work in mines.
Potential for total abolition
Those 27 million people produce a gross economic product of US$1.4 billion
dollars. This is also a smaller percentage of the
world economy than slavery has produced at any prior point in human
history. That, plus the universal criminal status of slavery, the lack of
moral arguments for it in modern discourse, and the many conventions and
agreements to abolish it worldwide, make it likely that it can be eliminated
in this generation, according to Free The Slaves. There are no nations whose
economy would be substantially affected by the true abolition of slavery.
A first step towards this objective is the
Cocoa Protocol, by which the entire
cocoa industry
worldwide has accepted full
moral and legal responsibility for the entire
comprehensive outcome of their
production processes. Negotiations for this protocol was initiated for
cotton,
sugar and other
commodity
items in the
19th
century - taking about 140 years to complete! Thus it seems also
that this is a unique turning point in history, where slowly all
commodity markets can lever licensing and other requirements to ensure
that slavery is eliminated from production, one industry at a time, as a
sectoral
simultaneous policy that does not cause disadvantages for any one market
player.
Generally,
consumer
moral purchasing efforts are ineffective against slavery since such slave
production as charcoal to produce rolled steel in
Brazil, or on
coffee or
sugar
plantations, is so far down the production chain that final packaged product
producers simply do not know how products are produced.
Related articles
External links, references
References
-
O Globo Online 2002 (http://oglobo.globo.com/arquivo/plantao/20020925/44869582.htm)
("País tem 2,5 mil trabalhadores escravos" - "Country has 2.5 thousand slave
workers")
Historic topics
Contemporary issues
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