Slavery and America: A Global History, a National Crisis, and the Long Road to Freedom

Slavery existed in many societies long before the United States, and several African, European, Middle Eastern, and American networks participated in human trafficking. The Atlantic system was distinctive in its enormous scale and its connection to racial, hereditary chattel slavery in the Americas. SlaveVoyages estimates that about 12.5 million Africans embarked on Atlantic slave ships and about 10.7 million disembarked. In the United States, slavery shaped the economy, the Constitution, and the dispute that led to secession and the Civil War. The Union initially fought to preserve the nation; emancipation became an increasingly central war aim. Enslaved people and nearly 200,000 Black Union soldiers and sailors helped bring freedom about. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but Reconstruction's setbacks, segregation, and voting restrictions produced another long struggle for equal rights. America's record contains both profound injustice and significant, hard-won change.