Slavery is the involuntary servitude of one person to another or one group to another.
The Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian code of law of ancient Mesopotamia (c. 1760 BC), prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.
In ancient Rome slaves were not allowed to cover their heads. When a slave was freed, he at once put on the small cone-shaped Phrygian cap as a sign of his freedom. French revolutionists revived this "liberty cap" as the bonnet rouge (red cap).
Publius Vedius Pollio, a friend of the Emperor Augustus, was famous for feeding his slaves to moray eels. When Augustus (who was his guest at the time) witnessed him attempt this method of execution to a slave who broke a crystal cup, he had the slave freed and all of Pollio's valuable drinking vessels deliberately broken as punishment. He would go on to demolish Pollio's mansion in Rome for the incident.
During the ancient Roman winter festival of Saturnalia, slaves and their owners swapped roles.
The English word "slave" comes from the medieval word for the Slavic peoples of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, because these were the last ethnic group to be captured and enslaved in Central Europe.
The words ‘slave’ and ‘slaves’ occur only once each in the King James Bible. However newer versions of the Bible literally replaced the word "servant" with the words "slave" and "slaves."
The word "Ciao!" comes from the Venetian dialect, "s-ciào vostro" which meant "I am your slave."
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull allowing the King of Portugal to enslave pagans.
On March 8, 1655, an African John Casor became the first person to be legally declared a slave for life in England's North American colonies. His master Anthony Johnson, a tobacco planter, consequently became the first legally recognized slave holder in American history, setting the precedent for lifelong slavery. Casor did indeed remain in Johnson’s service until his death.
Slaves in Virginia were banned on September 23, 1667 from obtaining their freedom by converting to Christianity.
Fearing that slaves would use them to organize revolts, colonial officials in Barbados banned slave dances in 1688, as well as the use of drums and horns. 138 years later, in 1826, the Slave Consolidation Act reaffirmed the ban on Barbadian slaves using the horn or drums, or participating in dances.
The picture below is an 18th-century painting of Dirk Valkenburg showing plantation slaves during a Ceremonial dance.
The Haitian Revolution in the early 19th century was the only slave revolt in history in which enslaved people successfully drove out their European oppressors to form a new nation.
The Slave Bible, an abridged version of the Bible made for the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua in 1807 was first published. In this very abridged version of scripture, the enslaved Israelites never left Egypt and lines that condemn slave owners were removed.
Thanks largely to the efforts of William Wilberforce, the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807. However, all existing slaves were still bound to their masters.
Jane Minor (abt 1792-1858) was a slave who was freed because of her healing work during an 1825 epidemic in Virginia. She spent the rest of her life buying the freedom of other slaves. Minor succeeded in freeing at least sixteen, some costing over $2000, on a salary of around $2-$5 per medical visit.
Slavery was abolished in the UK in 1833 but the Modern Slavery Act, outlawing human trafficking and forced labor, was only passed in 2015.
The French author Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was afraid of travelling to the USA because he feared being sold into slavery. He was the grandson of a woman slave from the Saint Domingue island (later renamed, Haiti), where his French father was born in 1762, and lived a large part of his life.
Ellen Craft (1826–1891) and William Craft (September 25, 1824 – January 29, 1900) were slaves from Macon, Georgia who escaped to the North in December 1848 by traveling openly by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Ellen, who was light skinned, dressed as a white male printer with a sling to hide the fact that she could not write and passed as William's slave owner. Eventually, they fled to Liverpool, England.
The Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian code of law of ancient Mesopotamia (c. 1760 BC), prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.
In ancient Rome slaves were not allowed to cover their heads. When a slave was freed, he at once put on the small cone-shaped Phrygian cap as a sign of his freedom. French revolutionists revived this "liberty cap" as the bonnet rouge (red cap).
Publius Vedius Pollio, a friend of the Emperor Augustus, was famous for feeding his slaves to moray eels. When Augustus (who was his guest at the time) witnessed him attempt this method of execution to a slave who broke a crystal cup, he had the slave freed and all of Pollio's valuable drinking vessels deliberately broken as punishment. He would go on to demolish Pollio's mansion in Rome for the incident.
During the ancient Roman winter festival of Saturnalia, slaves and their owners swapped roles.
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| Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market |
The English word "slave" comes from the medieval word for the Slavic peoples of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, because these were the last ethnic group to be captured and enslaved in Central Europe.
The words ‘slave’ and ‘slaves’ occur only once each in the King James Bible. However newer versions of the Bible literally replaced the word "servant" with the words "slave" and "slaves."
The word "Ciao!" comes from the Venetian dialect, "s-ciào vostro" which meant "I am your slave."
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull allowing the King of Portugal to enslave pagans.
On March 8, 1655, an African John Casor became the first person to be legally declared a slave for life in England's North American colonies. His master Anthony Johnson, a tobacco planter, consequently became the first legally recognized slave holder in American history, setting the precedent for lifelong slavery. Casor did indeed remain in Johnson’s service until his death.
Fearing that slaves would use them to organize revolts, colonial officials in Barbados banned slave dances in 1688, as well as the use of drums and horns. 138 years later, in 1826, the Slave Consolidation Act reaffirmed the ban on Barbadian slaves using the horn or drums, or participating in dances.
The picture below is an 18th-century painting of Dirk Valkenburg showing plantation slaves during a Ceremonial dance.
The Haitian Revolution in the early 19th century was the only slave revolt in history in which enslaved people successfully drove out their European oppressors to form a new nation.
The Slave Bible, an abridged version of the Bible made for the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua in 1807 was first published. In this very abridged version of scripture, the enslaved Israelites never left Egypt and lines that condemn slave owners were removed.
Thanks largely to the efforts of William Wilberforce, the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807. However, all existing slaves were still bound to their masters.
Jane Minor (abt 1792-1858) was a slave who was freed because of her healing work during an 1825 epidemic in Virginia. She spent the rest of her life buying the freedom of other slaves. Minor succeeded in freeing at least sixteen, some costing over $2000, on a salary of around $2-$5 per medical visit.
Slavery was abolished in the UK in 1833 but the Modern Slavery Act, outlawing human trafficking and forced labor, was only passed in 2015.
The French author Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was afraid of travelling to the USA because he feared being sold into slavery. He was the grandson of a woman slave from the Saint Domingue island (later renamed, Haiti), where his French father was born in 1762, and lived a large part of his life.
Ellen Craft (1826–1891) and William Craft (September 25, 1824 – January 29, 1900) were slaves from Macon, Georgia who escaped to the North in December 1848 by traveling openly by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Ellen, who was light skinned, dressed as a white male printer with a sling to hide the fact that she could not write and passed as William's slave owner. Eventually, they fled to Liverpool, England.
Henry "Box" Brown was a 19th-century Virginia slave who became famous for escaping slavery by shipping himself in a wooden crate from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On March 23, 1849, Brown was successfully delivered to the Anti-Slavery Office in Philadelphia, after a 27-hour journey. The daring escape attracted widespread attention, and Brown became known as "Box" Brown due to his unusual mode of transportation. After gaining his freedom, Brown went on to become a prominent abolitionist, traveling throughout the United States and England to speak out against slavery.
Below is The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia, a lithograph by Samuel Rowse published in 1850
In 1860 the Crafts published a written account, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, which reached wide audiences in Great Britain and the United States
In the mid 19th century, there was a mental diagnosis called "drapetomania" for slaves who had the urge to flee captivity.
Four years after he was freed in 1853, Solomon Northrup of 12 Years a Slave disappeared. To this day, historians don't know what happened to him.
Only 388,000 slaves out of a total 12.5 million that crossed the Atlantic were sold in the US. The rest (10.7 million) went to Mexico and South America.
Even after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation there were still several hundred thousand slaves in the US.
Immediately after the end of slavery was declared in America, there was a surge in Wanted Adverts placed in newspapers across the country. African-Americans used them to search for family members sold or escaped, sometimes decades earlier.
Redoshi was a West African woman who was taken captive in warfare at age 12 from the Slave Coast of West Africa in around 1860. She was sold to Americans and transported by ship to the United States. Redoshi was enslaved on the upcountry plantation of the Washington Smith family in Dallas County, Alabama. After emancipation, Redoshi and her husband continued to live on the plantation, working as sharecroppers. She died in 1937, the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade.
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