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Vocabulary > USA > Slavery
Digital ID: cph 3g05950
Source: color film copy
transparency
Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-5950 (color film copy transparency) ,
LC-USZ62-89745 (b&w film copy neg.)
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Washington, D.C.
20540 USA
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g05000/3g05900/3g05950v.jpg
Images of African-American Slavery and Freedom
From the Collections of the Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html
slave
slavery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2013/jan/16/samuel-l-jackson-django-unchained-video
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/opinion/blow-escaping-slavery.html
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/statutes/slavery/slmenu.htm
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/slavery.htm
Born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, on
March 21, 1856,
Henry Ossian Flipper
is appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York
1873
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/featured_documents/henry_o_flipper/
Fourteenth Amendment
Amendment XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was
ratified on July 9, 1868,
and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United
States,”
which included former slaves recently freed.
In addition, it forbids states from denying any person
"life, liberty or property, without due process of law"
or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws.”
By directly mentioning the role of the states,
the 14th Amendment greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to all
Americans
and is cited in more litigation than any other amendment.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jul28.html
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brown-v-board/
slavery > Ghosts of a Christmas Past > Macon, Ga.,
Dec. 24, 1860
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/ghosts-of-a-christmas-past/
slave trade
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1957278,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1957355,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1957354,00.html
slave traders
trade
Library of Congress > Born in Slavery:
Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery
and 500
black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
These narratives were collected in the 1930s
as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration
(WPA)
and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
from Interviews
with Former Slaves.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
Library of Congress >Voices from the Days of
Slavery
Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
Library of Congress > Images of
African-American Slavery and Freedom
From the Collections of the Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slav2.html
Library of Congress > Conflict of Abolition
and Slavery
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam007.html
Library of Congress > From Slavery to
Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909
presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
published from 1822 through 1909,
by African-American authors and others who wrote about
slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aapchtml/aapchome.html
Library of Congress > Slaves and the Courts,
1740-1860
contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and
1889)
concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and
African-American slaves
in the American colonies and the United States.
The documents, most from the Law Library
and the Rare Book and Special
Collections Division of the Library of Congress,
comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports,
arguments, accounts,
examinations of cases and decisions,
proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html
slavery reparations
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-09-slavery-reparations_x.htm
slavery
1619-1865
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart3b.html
slavery in America
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-27-slavery_N.htm
http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/home.htm
slavery and the making of America > Timeline
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/index.html
The African Presence in the Americas
1492-1992
http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Schomburg/
abolish
abolition
abolitionist
emancipation
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/images-of-emancipation/
Timeline of Key Dates in African-American
History
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/blackhistorymonth/timeline.html
Frederick Douglass
1818-1895
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1539.html
http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/home.html
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASdouglass.htm
Nat Turner's rebellion
1831
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASturner.htm
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/natturner/slave_rebellions.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1667325
http://docsouth.unc.edu/turner/menu.html
http://docsouth.unc.edu/turner/turner.html
William Wilberforce
1759-1833
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REwilberforce.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/people/williamwilberforce_4.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml
http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/wilberforce.htm
http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/wilberforce2.htm
William Wilberforce's 1789 Abolition Speech
http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/wilberforce2.htm
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield
1705-1793
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/slave_free.htm
Somersett's Case (R. v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett)
1772
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett's_Case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Somersett
William Cowper
1731-1800
http://www.brycchancarey.com/slavery/cowperpoems.htm
http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/cowper/negroscomplaint.htm
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp01072
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/people/williamwilberforce_4.shtml
William Cowper > THE NEGRO'S COMPLAINT
[Written Feb. (?), 1788. Published in The Gentleman's Magazine, Dec., 1793;
afterwards in 1800.]
http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/cowper/negroscomplaint.htm
Abolition of Slavery Act
1833
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lslavery33.htm
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of
Congress 1841 to 1964
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/doughome.html
Dred Scott vs. John F. A. Sandford
1846
http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2932.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2933.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2933t.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/may21.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/aohome.html
Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery story >
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly
1851
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun05.html
Time Line of African American History
1852-1880
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/timeline.html
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act
1807
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lslavery33.htm
13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Abolition of Slavery 1865
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation.
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=40
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment13/
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxiii.html
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html
Abraham Lincoln > End to slavery
1862
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1888851,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1310160,00.html
Obama Visit to Slave Fort
Steeped in Symbolism
July 10, 2009
Filed at 11:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAPE COAST, Ghana (AP) -- From the rampart of a whitewashed fort once used to
ship countless slaves from Africa to the Americas, Cheryl Hardin gazed through
watery eyes at the path forcibly trodden across the sea by her ancestors
centuries before.
''It never gets any easier,'' the 48-year-old pediatrician said, wiping away
tears on her fourth trip to Ghana's Cape Coast Castle in two decades. ''It feels
the same as when I first visited -- painful, incomprehensible.''
On Saturday, Barack Obama and his family will follow in the footsteps of
countless African-Americans who have tried to reconnect with their past on these
shores. Though Obama was not descended from slaves -- his father was Kenyan --
he will carry the legacy of the African-American experience with him as
America's first black president.
For many, the trip will be steeped in symbolism.
''The world's least powerful people were shipped off from here as slaves,''
Hardin said Tuesday, looking past a row of cannons pointing toward the Atlantic
Ocean. ''Now Obama, an African-American, the most powerful person in the world,
is going to be standing here. For us it will be a full-circle experience.''
Built in the 1600s, Cape Coast Castle served as Britain's West Africa
headquarters for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which saw European powers and
African chiefs export millions in shackles to Europe and the Americas.
The slave trade ended here in 1833, and visitors can now trek through the fort's
dungeons, dark rooms once crammed with more than 1,000 men and women at a time
who slept in their own excrement. The dank air inside still stings the eyes.
Visiting for the first time, Hardin's 47-year-old sister Wanda Milian said the
dungeons felt ''like burial tombs.''
''It felt suffocating. It felt still,'' said Milian, who like her sister lives
in Houston, Texas. ''I don't know what I expected. I didn't expect to experience
the sense of loss, the sense of hopelessness and desolation.''
Those who rebelled were packed into similar rooms with hardly enough air to
breath, left to die without food or water. Their faint scratch marks are still
visible on walls.
Down by the shore is the fort's so-called ''Door of No Return,'' the last
glimpse of Africa the slaves would ever see before they were loaded into canoes
that took them to ships that crossed the ocean.
Today, the door opens onto a different world: a gentle shore where boys freely
kick a white soccer ball through the surf, where gray-bearded men sit in beached
canoes fixing lime-green fishing nets, where women sell maize meal from plates
on their heads.
Behind them is Africa's poverty: smoke from cooking fires rises from a maze of
thin wooden shacks, their rusted corrugated aluminum roofs held down by rocks.
Children bathe naked in a tiny dirt courtyard.
''I just can't wrap my mind around this,'' said Milian, who works at a Methodist
church. ''If it weren't for all this'' -- for slavery -- ''I wouldn't be
standing here today. I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't have the opportunities I
do. I wouldn't practice the religion I do.''
Milian also grappled with the irony that fort housed a church while the trade
went on, and that African chiefs and merchants made it all possible, brutally
capturing millions and marching them from the continent's interior to be sold in
exchange for guns, iron and rum.
''It's mixed up,'' Milian said. ''It's not an easy puzzle to put together.''
Though slavery in the U.S. ended after the Civil War in 1865, its legacy has
lived on. The U.S. Senate on June 18 unanimously passed a resolution apologizing
for slavery and racial segregation.
''This is part of our history,'' said Hardin, who first visited Ghana in the
late 1980s and later married a Ghanaian engineer she met in the U.S.
Her 15-year-old son was along for the first time. ''I want him to understand
what his liberty really means, who he really is,'' Hardin said.
But racism, both sisters agreed, would not end with Obama's visit.
''Let's not be naive. When your skin is darker, you are still going to be
treated differently,'' Hardin said. But Obama's trip ''will be a turning point,
not just for America but for the world.''
Milian said Obama's journey would also bear a message to those who organized the
trade.
''It will say they failed, it all failed,'' she said. ''The human mind is
capable of horrible things, but the fact that we're standing here, the fact
Obama will be standing here, proves we are also capable of great resilience.''
Obama Visit to Slave
Fort Steeped in Symbolism, NYT, 10.7.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/07/10/world/
AP-AF-Obama-Slaverys-Legacy.html
Saviours of the slaves:
the stories behind six stamps
that celebrate
abolitionists
Published:
23 March 2007
The Independent
Olaudah
Equiano 1745-1797, Former slave
Equiano's Life of Gustavus Vassa was the first autobiography of life as a slave,
and became a bestseller in late 18th-century Britain. At the age of 11, he was
captured from Igboland in Nigeria by the British and carried to Barbados. His
account of the "loathsomeness of the stench" and "brutal cruelty" on his passage
brought the plight of kidnapped Africans to public attention. Equiano bought his
freedom for £40 through his success as a businessman, and travelled to England.
His autobiography describes his work for the English government helping
impoverished Africans living in London resettle in Sierra Leone, a job in which
he felt he was unsuccessful. He died at the age of 52, and is buried in
Cambridgeshire. A decade after his death, Britain abolished slavery.
William
Wilberforce 1759-1833, Abolitionist MP
Wilberforce became a Tory MP in 1780, aged 21. His conversion to Christianity in
1785 influenced his approach to politics and Prime Minister William Pitt the
Younger suggested he become the parliamentary leader of the Abolitionist
campaign. The evidence collected by Thomas Clarkson persuaded him of the justice
of the Abolitionist cause, which became his life's work. His 1789 speech,
delivered to the House of Commons, was reported to have been one of the most
eloquent heard in the House. His bill to abolish the slave trade was finally
passed in 1807. He continued to campaign for the freedom of all slaves in
British colonies until he retired in 1825. He died in 1833, three days after
slavery was abolished throughout all British colonies.
Granville
Sharp 1735-1813, First chairman of the Abolitionist Movement
The son of an archdeacon, Sharp was the first Chairman of the Abolitionist
movement. His belief in the movement stemmed from a meeting in 1765. Sharp's
brother William was a doctor who gave free treatment to the poor in London. One
man queuing to see his brother was William Strong, who had been beaten almost to
death with the butt of a pistol, by his "master" David Lisle. The Sharps cared
for Strong for two years, but the injuries he had sustained led to his death at
the age of 25. Sharp spent the rest of his life campaigning through his writings
and the courts to have slavery made illegal in the UK. He sought the prosecution
of the captain of the slave ship Zong, where ill and dying slaves were thrown
overboard. He also published the first major anti-slavery work in English.
Ignatius
Sancho 1729-1780, Writer and former slave
Sancho was born on a slave ship sailing across the Atlantic from Africa. He was
brought to England, and his earliest memories were of working as a child slave
in domestic service. While living in the household of the Duke of Montagu,
working as their butler, he gained a passion for the arts, and composed and
published volumes of songs and music. He was the first African person recorded
to have voted in British elections, and his performances on stage to literary
London helped to gain his reputation as "the extraordinary Negro". He became the
first African writer to be published in Britain, although his book, The Letters
of Ignatius Sancho, an African, was not published until after his death. It was
to play a crucial part in bringing the evil of slavery to a wider public.
Hannah More
1745-1833, Writer
Widely regarded as the most influential female member of the Society for
Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, Hannah More, who was
educated in the slave trading port of Bristol, started publishing her writings
when she was a teenager. Her first play, The Inflexible Captive, was performed
in Bath in the mid-1770s. She turned to religious writings in her late thirties,
and became a close friend of William Wilberforce in the 1780s. She helped to run
the Abolition Society, and her 1788 poem Slavery, a Poem was an important work
from the abolition period. More's ill health led her to take a less active role
in the cause by the time of the 1807 Abolition Bill, though she continued a
correspondence with Wilberforce. She continued to write until her death in 1833.
Thomas
Clarkson 1760-1846, Collected evidence for anti-slavery movement
Clarkson researched slavery while studying at Cambridge, as part of an essay
that won the 1785 Cambridge University prize. Written in Latin, he addressed the
question: Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will? It was
published in English in 1786 and circulated widely, bringing him into contact
with Granville Sharp and other campaigners against slavery. In May 1787,
Clarkson was one of the 12 men who formed the Committee for Abolition of the
African Slave Trade. He travelled the country collecting evidence on the
inhumane conditions suffered by slaves. His evidence was presented to parliament
by William Wilberforce. In 1794, he suffered a breakdown from overwork and
retired from the movement. In 1803, he returned and continued writing pamphlets
into the 1840s.
Saviours of the slaves: the stories behind six stamps
that
celebrate abolitionists, I, 23.3.2007,
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2383895.ece
Op-Ed Contributor
Native Sons of Liberty
August 6, 2006
The New York Times
By HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.
Oak Bluffs, Mass.
ON June 11, 1823, a man named John Redman walked into the courtroom of Judge
Charles Lobb in Hardy County, Virginia, to apply for a pension, claiming to be a
veteran of the Revolutionary War. Redman, more than 60 years old, testified that
he had been in the First Virginia Regiment of Light Dragoons from Christmas 1778
through 1782, serving initially as a waiter to Lt. Vincent Howell.
The Light Dragoons fought mainly on horseback, using sabers, pistols, and light
carbines. They marched from Winchester, Va., to Georgia, where, in the fall of
1779, they laid siege to Savannah. The following year, they fought in
Charleston, S.C., narrowly escaping capture in a rout by the British. Redman’s
regiment fought the Creek Indians and the British early in 1782, ultimately
triumphing over them in June at Sharon, Ga., near Savannah. After the war,
Redman settled in Hardy County, where he and his wife kept a farm.
Four decades later, a neighbor and fellow veteran named John Jenkins affirmed
Redman’s court testimony. A few weeks later, Redman was granted his Certificate
of Pension, receiving the tidy sum of $8 a month until his death in 1836.
Yet standing before Judge Lobb in his courtroom that morning in 1823, John
Redman had every reason to be nervous, for his appeal was anything but ordinary.
Redman was the rarest of breeds: not just a patriot, but a black patriot — both
a free Negro in a nation of slaves and a black man who had fought in a white
man’s war.
In 1790, only 1.7 percent of Virginia’s population consisted of free people of
color; in the 13 former colonies and the territories of Kentucky, Maine and
Vermont, the combined figure was even smaller. Historians estimate that only
5,000 black men served in the Continental Army, whereas tens of thousands fled
slavery to join the British.
The story of John Redman is illuminating because it opens a window on an aspect
of the Revolutionary War that remains too little known: the contributions and
sacrifices of a band of black patriots. But it is particularly fascinating to me
because, as I learned just recently, John Redman was my ancestor.
I have been obsessed with my family tree since I was a boy. My grandfather,
Edward Gates, died in 1960, when I was 10. After his burial at Rose Hill
Cemetery in Cumberland, Md. — Gateses have been buried there since 1888 — my
father showed me my grandfather’s scrapbooks. There, buried in those yellowing
pages of newsprint, was an obituary, the obituary, to my astonishment, of our
matriarch, a midwife and former slave named Jane Gates. “An estimable colored
woman,” the obituary said.
I wanted to know how I got here from there, from the mysterious and shadowy
preserve of slavery in the depths of the black past, to my life as a 10-year-old
Negro boy living blissfully in a stable, loving family in Piedmont, W.Va., circa
1960, in the middle of the civil rights movement.
I peppered my father with questions about the names and dates of my ancestors,
both black and white, and dutifully recorded the details in a notebook. I wanted
to see my white ancestors’ coat of arms. Eventually, I even allowed myself to
dream of discovering which tribe we had come from in Africa.
More recently, in part to find my own roots, I started work on a documentary
series on genetics and black genealogy. I especially wanted to find my white
patriarch, the father of Jane Gates’s children. The genealogical research into
my family tree uncovered, to my great wonder, three of my fourth
great-grandfathers on my mother’s side: Isaac Clifford, Joe Bruce and John
Redman.
All were black and born in the middle of the 18th century; two gained freedom by
the beginning of the Revolutionary War. All three lived in the vicinity of
Williamsport, a tiny town in the Potomac Valley in the Allegheny Mountains, in
what is now West Virginia.
I am descended from these men through my maternal grandmother, Marguerite
Howard, whom we affectionately called “Big Mom.” When Jane Ailes, a genealogist,
revealed these discoveries to me, I could scarcely keep my composure. In
searching for a white ancestor, I had found — improbably — a black patriot
instead.
Frankly, it had never occurred to me that I, or anyone in the many branches of
my family — Gateses, Colemans, Howards, Bruces, Cliffords, and Redmans — had
even the remotest relationship to the American Revolution, or to anyone who had
fought in it. If anyone had told me a year ago that this summer I would be
inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution as the descendant of a black
patriot — 183 years almost to the day after John Redman proved his claim — I
would have laughed. I had long supposed that slavery had robbed my ancestors of
the privilege of fighting for the birth of this country.
Like most African-Americans of my generation, I had heard of the Daughters of
the American Revolution, unfortunately, because of their refusal in 1939 to
allow the great contralto, Marian Anderson, the right to perform at Constitution
Hall. Anderson responded to the group’s racism with sonorous defiance, holding
her Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial instead.
In part to make amends for their treatment of Anderson, the Daughters of the
American Revolution have begun counting the number of black patriots; so far
they have documented about 3,000. Harvard’s Du Bois Institute and the Sons of
the American Revolution are now researching the 80,000 pension and bounty land
warrant applications of Revolutionary War veterans to compare these names to
census records from 1790 to 1840.
Already, in just a few weeks, we have discovered almost a dozen
African-Americans who served in the war and whose racial identity had been lost
or undetected. With this systematic approach, we hope to expand substantially
our knowledge of African-Americans who served in the Continental Army and,
eventually, to reach a definitive number.
Once the research is completed, we will advertise for descendants of these
individuals and encourage them to join the Sons or Daughters of the American
Revolution, thus increasing the organizations’ black memberships beyond the
meager few dozen or so the two groups have now. (If all of my aunts, uncles and
cousins who are also descended from John Redman join, we will quadruple the
number of black members in both organizations!)
We want to establish the exact number of descendants of African-Americans who
served in the Continental Army, great American patriots, defenders of liberty to
which they themselves were not entitled.
OF course, it is perfectly irrelevant, in one sense, what one’s ancestors did
two centuries ago; but re-imagining our past, as Americans, can sometimes help
us to re-imagine our future. In doing so, it may help to understand that the
founding of this Republic was not only red, white and blue, it was also
indelibly black.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard University,
was an executive
producer of the PBS series
“African American Lives.”
Native Sons of Liberty, NYT, 6.8.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/opinion/06gates.1.html
October 6, 1862
Emancipation proclaimed by Lincoln
From the Guardian archive
Monday October 6, 1862
Guardian
Liverpool, Sunday. The royal mail steamship Australasian,
which sailed from New York on the 24th and called off Cape Race on the 27th
September, arrived in the Mersey about eleven o'clock this morning. The
Australasian called at Queenstown yesterday, and a summary of her news was
telegraphed from thence.
President Lincoln had issued the following most important
proclamation respecting the emancipation of the slaves:- September 22, 1862. I,
Abraham Lincoln President of the United States of America, and commander in
chief of the army and navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that
hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of
practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States and
the people thereof in which states that relation is, or may be, suspended or
disturbed; that it is my purpose upon the next meeting of Congress, to again
recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the
free acceptance or rejection of all the slave states, so called, the people
whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which states
may then have voluntarily adopted or thereafter may voluntarily adopt the
immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and
that the efforts to colonise persons of African descent, with their consent,
upon the continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the
governments existing there will be continued.
That, on the 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or any
designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion
against the United States, shall be then thenceforward and for ever free, and
the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval
authority thereof, will recognise and maintain the freedom of such persons, and
will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts
they may make for their actual freedom ...
That attention is called to an act of Congress, entitled, An act to make an
additional article of war, approved March 13, 1862:- ... All officers, or
persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited
from employing any of the forces under their commands for the purpose of
returning fugitives from service or labour who may have escaped ... and any
officer who shall be found guilty, by a court-martial, of violating this
article, shall be dismissed from the service.
From the Guardian
archive > October 6, 1862 > Emancipation proclaimed by Lincoln, G,
Republished
6.10.2006,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1888851,00.html
August 2, 1834
Negro
emancipation
From The Guardian archive
Saturday August 2, 1834
Guardian Unlimited
Throughout the British dominions the sun no longer rises on
a slave. Yesterday was the day from which the emancipation of all our slave
population commences; and we trust the great change by which they are elevated
to the rank of freemen will be found to have passed into effect in the manner
most accordant with the benevolent spirit in which it was decreed, most
consistent with the interests of those for whose benefit it was primarily
intended, and most calculated to put an end to the apprehensions under which it
was hardly to be expected that the planters could fail to labour as the moment
of its consummation approaches. We shall await anxiously the arrivals from the
West Indies that will bring advices to a date subsequent to the present time.
From The Guardian
archive > August 2, 1834 > Negro emancipation, G,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,,1010538,00.html
HM's ships
liberate 1,876 slaves in Africa
August
10, 1822
From the
Guardian archive
Saturday August 10, 1822
Guardian
On Wednesday morning we were surprised with the novel
circumstance of the arrival of a French brig, of 240 tons, called the Vigilante,
as a prize.
She [was] captured, with several others, in the act of
slave trading (having 343 on board), on 15th of April last, in the river Bonny
(northward of the line), by the boats of his Majesty's ships Iphigenia and
Myrmidon, manned with about 150 seamen, and commanded by Lieutenant G. Wm. St
John Mildmay, after a most severe contest, in which two seamen were killed and
seven were wounded.
It is not known how many of the slaves suffered in this vessel as they jumped
overboard, and were destroyed by the sharks; and the crew mixing with the slaves
in the hold, after our seamen were in the possession of the upper deck, several
slaves were also killed.
One poor girl, about 10 years of age, had both her legs amputated, and was doing
well.
This vessel, with six others, formed a little slave-trading squadron, which was
discovered by boats dispatched to reconnoitre the river Bonny, moored across the
stream of the river, with springs on their cables, all armed, with apparently
about 400 men on board, and perfectly prepared to resist the approach of
boarders.
Lieut. Mildmay pushed on with his boats, and as they got within range of the
slavers, they all opened a heavy fire of canister and grapeshot and musketry;
but as nothing could withstand the coolness and undaunted courage of our seamen,
all the vessels were soon in their possession.
The state of the unhappy slaves on board these vessels it is impossible to
describe; some were linked in shackles by the leg; some of them were bound in
chords [sic]: and many of them had their arms so lacerated that the flesh was
completely eaten through!
The crew of one of the captured vessels, which the slavers deserted, placed a
lighted match in the magazine in the hope that, so soon as our men had boarded,
the vessel would blow up with them, and the 300 slaves chained together in the
hold.
Providentially one of the men discovered it, very coolly put his hat under it,
and carried it safely on deck.
We regret very much to state, that on the passage of the prizes from the Bonny
river to Sierra Leone, the fine schooner Yeatam (drawing 17 feet water), with
500 slaves on board, and 23 seamen, upset in a tornado, and all on her perished
except eight seamen.
The number of slaves liberated by the capture of these vessels was 1,876, about
200 of whom died on the passage to Sierra Leone.
From the Guardian
archive > August 10, 1822 > HM's ships liberate 1,876 slaves in Africa, G,
Republished 10.8.2006,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1841124,00.html
How we saw the issues in
1791
From The Observer Archive
The Observer
William Wilberforce, born in 1759 and an MP at 21,
became leader of the anti-slavery movement in 1787.
The trade was abolished in
the British colonies in 1807,
slavery itself in 1833, the year he died.
This is how The Observer supported his campaign,
in an
editorial published on Christmas Day 1791.
With every argument in support of humanity, with every argument in support of
trade and commerce; with every argument in support of national honour; of
abstract improvement; and of individual advantage; Mr Wilberforce brings forward
his religious, moral, and politic Bill for the abolition of the odious slave
trade, early in the ensuing session of Parliament. That just, that merciful,
that benignant great Being, whose creatures of every colour, and of every
nation, are equally dear, will surely support this true patriot in a measure of
so sublime a nature; will, surely, inspire him with zeal, and eloquence, to
prostrate the opinions and sophistry of men, who, slaves themselves to temporary
interest, would persecute, torment, and entail perpetual slavery on others.
Should the divine Power, for the purpose of trying the virtue of a favoured
nation, suffer the intentions of this illustrious senator, to be delayed, can
there be a doubt, but associations will form in every part, and a great majority
unite in abstaining from the use of rum and sugar, until the object is
accomplished.
From The Observer
Archive > How we saw the issues in 1791, O,
Republished 26.11.2006,
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1957355,00.html
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