19th Century

Africans revolt in Louisiana.

The American Colonization Society was founded to transport freeborn blacks and emancipated slaves to Africa, leading to the creation of a colony that became the Republic of Liberia in 1847.

Fugitive slaves in Florida and Native Americans fight together against the forces of Andrew Jackson in the First Seminole War.

Georgia officially bans the slave trade.

The U.S. annexes East Florida, which previously served as a refuge for runaway slaves.

U.S. law declares slave trading to be a capital offense.

Canada denies the American government the right to pursue runaway slaves within its borders.

Virginia and North Carolina remove restraints on interstate slave trade.

Virginia outlaws blacks and mulattoes, whether free or slave, from meeting for the purposes of education and forbids teaching blacks to read and write.

Federal law passed requiring the inspection of passenger conditions on ships is used by Quakers to monitor conditions in the slave trade at the Baltimore (Maryland) Port. Society of Friends members accompany federal Customs inspectors.

Missouri Compromise allows Missouri to become a slave state, establishes Maine as a free state, and bans slavery in the territory west of Missouri.

South Carolina announces penalties for introducing any written anti-slavery material into the state.

In Charleston, South Carolina, slaves are required to wear distinctive identification tags. This law is later extended to free blacks in the city as well.

The first organized emigration of U.S. blacks back to Africa from New York to Sierra Leon

New Jersey Quaker born Benjamin Lundy establishes the first American anti-slavery newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. From September 1829 until March 1830, William Lloyd Garrison assists the paper. In 1836-1838 Lundy establishes and another anti-slavery weekly in Philadelphia, The National Enquirer. This paper becomes The Pennsylvania Freeman with John Greenleaf Whittier as one of its later editors.

Liberia is founded as a colony for blacks fleeing America.

Denmark Vesey, an enslaved African American carpenter who had purchased his freedom, plans a slave revolt with the intent to lay siege on Charleston, South Carolina. The plot is discovered, and Vesey and 34 co-conspirators are hanged. Others are sold out of the state.

Segregated public schools for blacks open in Philadelphia.

Alexander Lucius Twilight graduates from Middlebury College, making him the first black college graduate in the U.S.

Pennsylvania passes an anti-kidnapping law to protect free blacks.

Tennessee officially bans slave trading.

Texas requires that one tenth of the slaves inherited by any estate be freed.

Texas permits slaves to be sold between individuals.

John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish establish the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in New York. The paper circulates in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada.

Sarah Mapps Douglass, a black educator and contributor to The Anglo African, an early black paper, establishes a school for black children in Philadelphia. Mapps becomes an important leader in the Female Anti-Slavery Society and is a life-long friend of Angelina and Sarah Grimke. After the Civil War, she becomes a leader in the Pennsylvania Branch of the American Freedman’s Aid Commission, which worked to protect and provide services to the former enslaved in the South.

In Boston, Massachusetts, David Walker publishes his widely read vociferous condemnation of slavery, An appeal to the colored citizens of the world, and Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles. Walker’s Appeal, arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents, causes a great stir with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters and its protest against colonization.

Mexico abolishes slavery and becomes a refuge for American fugitive slaves.

The slave population in the U.S. numbers more than two million, making the ratio of free to enslaved Americans approximately 5.5:1.

Virginia legislature launches an intense debate on abolishing slavery.

In response to Ohio’s Black Laws restricting African American freedom, blacks migrate north to establish free black colonies in Canada, which becomes an important refuge for fugitive slaves.

The first National Negro Convention convenes in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hosts the 1st annual Convention of People of Color.

The Underground Railroad is given its name.

William Lloyd Garrison founds The Liberator, the most famous anti-slavery newspaper.

The New England Anti-Slavery Society is founded.

Maria W. Stewart, a free black woman in Boston, Massachusetts, speaks out against slavery, becoming the first African-American woman to deliver a public lecture in the U.S.

Debates in Virginia concerning emancipation mark the beginning of the last antebellum movement toward abolition in the South.

North Carolina passes a law enforcing prohibition against teaching slaves to read and write as well as against providing slaves with reading materials like books or pamphlets.

Nat Turner, an enslaved African American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his band of followers launch a short, bloody, rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. The militia quells the rebellion, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.

Virginia passes a law enforcing prohibitions against slaves congregating for religious service at night, regardless of whether black or white preachers hold those services.

Alabama removes restraints on interstate slave trade.

Kentucky forbids residents from buying and importing slaves.

Britain abolishes slavery in all of its colonies.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hosts the 1st American Anti-Slavery Society Convention.

Louisiana removes restraints on the interstate slave trade.

American Antislavery Society, led by William Lloyd Garrison, is organized in Philadelphia. For the next three decades, the Society campaigns that slavery is illegal under natural law, and sees the Constitution as a covenant with hell.

August 1 becomes another black American and abolitionist holiday when Britain abolishes slavery in its colonies.

Anti-abolition riots break out in major cities across the Northeast.

In the Second Seminole War, blacks again fight alongside Native Americans in opposition to U.S. forces.

Both North and South Carolina make formal requests to other states to suppress abolition societies and anti-slavery literature.

Female antislavery societies are organized in Boston and Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society was an integrated group of white and black middle class women, led by Lucretia Mott, Harriett Forten Purvis, and Grace Bustill Douglass.

Abolitionists launch a campaign flooding Congress with antislavery petitions.

Texas wins independence from Mexico and legalizes slavery. Free blacks and mulattos are forbidden from entering the state.

Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama request that other states suppress abolitionist activities.

Faced with a deluge of abolitionist petitions, the U.S. House of Representatives adopts a Gag Rule by which abolitionist materials are automatically tabled. The rule is renewed numerous times.

New York City hosts the first National Anti-Slavery Society Convention.

New York City hosts the first Convention of the Anti-Slavery Society of American Women, an event attended by both black and white women.

Blacks in Pennsylvania and Mississippi lose the right to vote. In New York, they petition for continued voting rights.

Philadelphia blacks, under the leadership of well-to-do Robert Purvis, organize the Vigilance Committee to aid and assist fugitive slaves. Purvis’ wife, Harriett Forten Purvis, the daughter of successful black businessman James Forten, leads the Female Vigilant Society. By his contemporaries, Robert Purvis is referred to as the President of the Underground Railroad.

First gathering of the Antislavery Convention of American Women, an inter-racial association of various female antislavery groups, becomes the first independent women’s political organization.

Founding of the Institute for Colored Youth, which later became Cheyney University, one of the earliest historically black colleges in the United States.

Philadelphia is plagued with anti-black and anti-abolitionist violence, particularly from Philadelphia white workers who feared that they have to compete with freed slaves for jobs. Second meeting of the Antislavery Convention of American Women, gathered in Philadelphia at the newly built Pennsylvania Hall, is attacked by a mob. The mob burns down the hall, as well as sets a shelter for black orphans on fire and damages a black church.

Pennsylvania blacks are disfranchised in the revised state Constitution.

A Maryland slave named Fred runs away and later becomes Frederick Douglass.

The second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women takes place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Proslavery mobs riot in response.

The Portuguese slave ship Diligente, which was engaged in the illegal slave trade, was captured by a British ship.

In Albany, New York, a committed political action group called the Liberty Party holds its first National Convention in the name of abolition.

Africans aboard the Spanish slave ship, Amistad, commit mutiny. When the ship lands off the coast of Long Island, the slaves plea for freedom in court.

Abolitionists form the Liberty Party to promote political action against slavery.

Pope Gregory XVI condemned slavery and the slave trade.

American Anti-Slavery Society splits over the issue of the public involvement of women. Dissidents opposed to women having a formal role form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

Aged and venerable abolitionist Thomas Clarkson chairs the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

Martin Delany publishes The Mystery, the first Black-owned newspaper west of the Alleghenies and he later serves as co-editor of the Rochester North Star with Frederick Douglass.

Texas forbids unauthorized trading with slaves and prohibits slaves from carrying weapons without written permission.

South Carolina enacts a Black Code by which slaves are denied the rights to assemble, produce food, earn money, learn to read, and to possess any clothing but low-quality garments.

The U.S. Supreme Court declares that the mutinous Africans from the slave ship Amistad are now free.

Texas gives its citizens the right and responsibility to apprehend runaway slaves and turn them over to the law so that they may be returned to their owners or sold at auction.

Africans revolt aboard the ship Creole and flee to Bahamas.

In the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the 1793 Fugitive Slave law is constitutional, while state personal liberty laws make unconstitutional demands on slave owners. Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law is declared the federal government’s responsibility, not the states.

The Georgia legislature declares that it will never recognize free blacks as citizens.

An angry mob of whites in Philadelphia attacks a black temperance parade celebrating West Indian Emancipation Day. A riot ensues with mayhem lasting three days and resulting in numerous injuries to blacks, who are dragged from their homes and beaten and several homes, an abolitionist meeting place, and a church are set afire.

In reaction to the decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Ohio pass personal liberty laws.

Connecticut passes a personal liberty law.

North Carolina denies citizenship to free blacks.

Oregon prohibits slavery.

Texas enters the Union as a slave state.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is published in Boston.

War with Mexico adds significant western territory to the United States and opens a new arena in the fight to check the spread of slavery.

Missouri removes restraints on interstate slave trade.

Texas creates a system for patrolling slaves.

The Wilmot Proviso, introduced by Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War. The proviso is blocked by Southerners, but continues to inflame the debate over slavery.

Pennsylvania passes a personal liberty law.

Frederick Douglass breaks with William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, to found a black abolitionist paper called The North Star.

Anti-slavery groups organize the Free Soil Party.

Seneca Falls, New York, hosts the first Women’s Rights Convention. Women’s rights activists, such as Amy Post, Angelina Grimke, and Susan B. Anthony, become outspoken opponents of slavery.

Rhode Island passes a personal liberty law.

Connecticut law prohibits slavery entirely.

South Carolina removes restraints on interstates slave trade.

Free Soil Party is organized to stop the spread of slavery into the Western territories.

Slavery is abolished in all French territories.

Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. She becomes a major conductor on the Underground Railroad, as well as an advocate for Women’s Rights.

Liberia is recognized as a sovereign state by Britain. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the son of free Virginian blacks, becomes the first president.

Virginia passes a law permitting the emancipation of any slave by will or deed.

Kentucky removes restraints on interstate slave trade.

Blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, protect themselves against attacks by white mobs.

Approximately 300 Seminoles and blacks in Texas head to Mexico, where enslavement is prohibited.

The Compromise of 1850 admits California to the Union as a free state, allows the slave states of New Mexico and Utah to be decided by popular sovereignty, and bans slave trade in D.C.

A second fugitive slave law, enforced by the federal government, strengthens the rights of slave owners and threatens the rights of free blacks. Many states pass personal liberty laws in response.

Maryland removes restraints on interstate slave trade.

Virginia demands that emancipated slaves leave the state within a year and forbids the legislature from freeing any slave.

Sojourner Truth gives her famous Ain’t I a Woman speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

Federal marshals and Maryland slave hunters seek out suspected fugitive slaves in Christiana (Lancaster County), PA. In the ensuing struggle with black and white abolitionists, one of the attackers is killed, another is seriously wounded, and the fugitives all successfully escape. Thirty-six black men and five white men are charged with treason and conspiracy under the federal 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and brought to trial in federal court at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in which they were found innocent in a jury trial.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.

Congress repeals the Missouri Compromise, opening western territories to slavery and setting the stage for a bloody struggle between pro and anti-slavery forces in Kansas Territory.

William Wells Brown’s Clotel is published in London by an African-American.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act creates sovereignty to decide the slave status of each. It also repeals the anti-slavery clause of the Missouri Compromise and renews tensions between anti- and pro-slavery factions.

Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) is chartered in April 1854 as Ashmun Institute. It becomes a higher education institution providing an education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent. Thurgood Marshall and Langston Hughes are among its esteemed alumni.

Martin Delany leads 145 participants in the 4-day National Emigration Convention in Cleveland, OH. His arguments appeal to some educated and successful northern freed blacks and are defiantly opposite the position held by Frederick Douglass and others. In 1865 Major Delany becomes the first black commissioned as a line field officer in the U.S. Army.

Connecticut, Maine, and Mississippi pass personal liberty laws. Massachusetts and Rhode Island renew personal liberty laws first enacted in the 1840s.

Georgia and Tennessee remove restraints on interstate slave trade.

John Mercer Langston is elected to political office in Ohio, making him the first black to serve in the U.S. government.

With the assistance of others, William Still, a leader in the Philadelphia Underground Railroad, and his white colleague Passmore Williamson, intercept slave owner John Weaver, his slave Jane Johnson and her two sons as they are leaving town. The two help Jane and her children leave their master for freedom.

The Republican Party is formed out of the Free Soil Party.

Pro-slavery groups in Kansas attack the free soil town of Lawrence. Radical abolitionist John Brown and his followers strike in retaliation, initiating a wave of violence and destruction, known as Bleeding Kansas.

The Republican Party, newly formed from various groups opposing the extension of slavery, holds its first convention in Philadelphia.

Wilberforce University, named for English statesman and abolitionist William Wilberforce, opens in Ohio as a private, coeducational institution affiliated with The African Methodist Episcopal Church. This is the first institution of higher education owned and operated by African Americans.

Senator Charles Sumner delivers a stinging speech in the U.S. Senate, “The Crime against Kansas,” in which he attacks slavery, the South, and singles out his Senate colleague, Andrew Butler of South Carolina, for criticism. In retaliation, Butler’s nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, attacks Sumner with a cane while the Massachusetts senator is seated at his desk on the floor of the Senate. The injuries he sustains cause Sumner to be absent from the Senate for four years.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford denies citizenship to all slaves, ex-slaves, and descendants of slaves and denies Congress the right to prohibit slavery in the territories.

New Hampshire declares that no one shall be denied citizenship on account of African descent and, along with Vermont, repeals laws against the enlistment of blacks in state militia.

Richmond, Virginia, passes a comprehensive slave code that, among other stipulations, prohibits self-hiring by slaves, restricts blacks from entering certain parts of the city, specifies street etiquette, and forbids slaves from smoking, carrying canes, standing on the sidewalk, and using provocative language.

Ohio and Wisconsin pass personal liberty laws.

Vermont passes a personal liberty law and declares that no one shall be denied citizenship on account of African descent.

Kansas enters the Union as a free state.

Harriet E. Wilson, author of Our Nig, becomes the first African-American novelist published in the U.S.

White workers in South Carolina petition for relief against competition from slave and free black workers.

New Mexico enacts a slave code.

Arizona declares that all free blacks in the territory will be considered slaves on the first day of the New Year.

The last slave ship to bring slaves into the U.S. lands in Mobile Bay, Alabama.

John Brown and 21 followers capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia.), in an attempt to launch a slave revolt to free and arm slaves. His effort fails and he is executed.

Kentucky Senator John Crittenden proposes six amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The amendments, contained in the Crittenden Compromise, specifically addressed slavery.

The British-operated slave trade across the Atlantic was one of the biggest businesses of the 18th century. Approximately 600,000 of 10 million African slaves made their way into the American colonies before the slave trade – not slavery – was banned by Congress in 1808.

By 1860, the US census recorded nearly 4 million enslaved black people (3,953,760) and 488,070 free – 13% of the population – in the country as the American-born population grew.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

Arizona passes an Expulsion Act, banishing all free blacks from the state.

Texas prohibits manumission.

South Carolina secedes from the Union, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Later in the year, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina also secede.

The Union of Confederate States is formed. Jefferson Davis is elected its president.

Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the life of a slave girl is the first published autobiography of an African-American woman.

The Civil War begins in Charleston, South Carolina.

75,000 blacks volunteering for the U.S. army are rejected.

Slaves seeking refuge with Northern forces are considered contraband of war. The First Confiscation Act is passed, declaring all property used in support of rebellion, including slaves, subject to capture.

Southern states secede and start Civil War between the free and the slave states.

The Secretary of the Navy authorizes enlistment of contrabands (slaves) taken in Confederate territories.

Ida B. Wells Barnett begins her campaign against the lynching of blacks, a common practice by white racists and the Klan to instill fear in the black community. She later writes Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and becomes a tireless worker for women’s suffrage.