Why Juneteenth Matters: A brief history of slavery in the United States

Slavery has existed globally since the beginning of recorded history. Freedom Day is a celebration in the United States that marks the day on 19 June 1865 when the country’s last enslaved people learned they were free. The following list chronicles the history of the abolition of slavery in the United States.

I took the time to put this together because history matters. I think it is important to look at the entire picture of slavery in the US. That picture helps reinforce the principles of equality enshrined in the Constitution, which proposes that ALL PEOPLE are equal and are due the dignity, rights, and privileges prescribed by the Creator regardless of the race, sex, age, gender, or any other attribute that seems to divide us these days. That picture also highlights what innumerable people have fought to protect as members of the US Armed Forces.

The US is not perfect, but the ideals of equality and freedom are worth fighting for. God bless you. Peace be with you.

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A brief history of slavery in the United States

• Pope Paul III forbids slavery of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and any other population to be discovered, establishing their right to freedom and property (Sublimis Deus). (1537)
• Roger Williams and Samuel Gorton work to pass legislation abolishing slavery in Providence Plantations, the first attempt of its kind in North America. It does not go into effect. (1652)
• Fugitive slaves from the Thirteen Colonies granted freedom in return for conversion to Catholicism and four years of military service. (1687)
• The Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery is the first religious petition against African slavery in what would become the United States. (1688)
• Fort Mosé, the first legal settlement of free blacks in the US, is established. Word of the settlement sparks the Stono Rebellion in Carolina the following year. (1738)
• Pennsylvania Abolition Society formed in Philadelphia, the first abolition society within the territory that is now the US. (1775)
• The US Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, outlawing any new slavery in the Northwest Territories. (1787)
• The Slave Trade Act bans both American ships from participating in the slave trade and the export of slaves in foreign ships. (1794)
• American citizens banned from investment and employment in the international slave trade in an additional Slave Trade Act. (1800)
• Thomas Jefferson calls for criminalizing the international slave trade, asking Congress to "withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights ... which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe." (1806)
• Importation and exportation of slaves made a crime. (1808)
• The Compromise of 1820 bans slavery north of the 36o 30' line; the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy is amended to consider the maritime slave trade as piracy, making it punishable with death. (1820)
• In accordance with Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, Florida becomes a territory of the United States. A main reason was Spain's inability or unwillingness to capture and return escaped slaves. (1821)
• United States v. The Amistad finds that the slaves of La Amistad were illegally enslaved and were legally allowed, as free men, to fight their captors by any means necessary. (1841)
• The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 requires the return of escaped slaves to their owners regardless of the state they are in. (1850)
• Dred Scott v. Sandford rules that black slaves and their descendants cannot gain American citizenship and are not entitled to freedom even if they live in a free state for years. (1857)
• The Wyandotte Constitution establishes the future state of Kansas as a free state, after four years of armed conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups in the territory. Southern dominance in the U.S. Senate delays the admission of Kansas as a state until 1861. (1859)
• Last slave ship to unload illegally on U.S. territory, the Clotilda. (1860)
• The election of Abraham Lincoln leads to the attempted secession of eleven slaveholding states and the American Civil War. (1861)
• Congress passes the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing all slaves in the District of Columbia. Nathaniel Gordon becomes the only person hanged in U.S. history "for being engaged in the slave trade". (1862)
• Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in Confederate-controlled areas. Most slaves in "border states" are freed by state action, and a separate law frees the slaves in Washington, D.C. (1863)
• Slavery abolished, except as punishment for crime, by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It frees all remaining slaves, about 40,000, in the border slave states that did not secede. Thirty out of thirty-six states vote to ratify it; New Jersey, Delaware, Kentucky, and Mississippi vote against. Mississippi does not officially ratify it until 2013. (1865)
• Peonage Act of 1867, mostly targeting use of Native American peons in New Mexico Territory. Slavery among native tribes in Alaska was abolished after the purchase from Russia in 1867. (1867)
• Brussels Conference Act – a collection of anti-slavery measures to put an end to the slave trade on land and sea, especially in the Congo Basin, the Ottoman Empire, and the East African coast. (1890)
• The US ratifies the 1926 Slavery Convention. (1956)
• The Mississippi Legislature unanimously votes to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution after a clerk discovers it never had. It is the last eligible state in the union to do so. However, state officials fail to send the required documentation to the state register. (1995)

Thanks to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia for a good list from a global perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom#