Search results
aotus.blogs.archives.gov
- The end of the Civil War in 1865 ushered in major changes in the U.S., including the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime. However, under U.S. law, people born into slavery were not considered citizens, which translated to a lack of crucial rights, including property ownership and voting.
nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/slavery-freedomFrom Slavery to Freedom | National Museum of African American ...
5 days ago · Dirty War, infamous campaign waged from 1976 to 1983 by Argentina’s military dictatorship against suspected left-wing political opponents. It is estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 citizens were killed; many of them were “ disappeared”—seized by the authorities and never heard from again.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Granville Sharp
- James Ramsay
- Thomas Clarkson
- William Wilberforce
- Olaudah Equiano
- Ignatius Sancho
- Josiah Wedgewood
- William Grenville
- John Newton
- James Stephen
Born the son of a clergyman in 1735, Granville Sharp’s interest in slavery with the Empire began in 1765 after he befriended a slave called Jonathan Strong in London, who had been badly beaten by his owner. Using his expertise in civil service, Sharp took a successful case to the lord mayor in London and Strong was freed. This would not be the last...
James Ramsey was a Scottish naval surgeon, who had been stationed in the West Indian colonies and had lived on the island of St Kitts from 1762 to 1777. The curate commented on the inhumane treatment he had personally witnessed whilst living in the Caribbean in his Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slavespublished in 1784. As an evan...
Like Sharp, Thomas Clarkson was also born the son of a clergyman in 1760. He became a central figure in the campaign against the slave trade from the moment he wrote his award-winning essay, On the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, in 1785 (later published in 1786) whilst he was a student at the University of Cambridge. He, Sharp and 9 oth...
By far the most well-known abolitionist, William Wilberforce became the figurehead of the abolition cause in Parliament. His position as the MP for Kingston upon Hull and subsequently Yorkshire in the late-18th and early-19th century meant that he was vital to the anti-slavery campaign in terms of lobbying for support of an abolition bill in the Ho...
Olaudah Equianohas been revered in history as one of the most influential abolitionist figures. Born sometime around 1745, Equiano had been kidnapped from his tribe in the former Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria) and sold into slavery at the young age of 11. For the next ten years of his life, Equiano went on quite the journey. Having experienced the infa...
Born in 1729 on a slave-ship bound for Grenada, Ignatius Sancho was an African composer, actor and writer who would later become a devoted supporter of the abolitionist cause in Britain. At the age of two, Sancho was brought to England by his owner, where he remained a slave for 18 years. Eventually Sancho ran way to the Montagu House, whose owner ...
Famed as the ‘Father of English Potters’, Josiah Wedgwood(b. 1730) led English pottery from a cottage craft to a prestigious art form sustaining an international business. He was also an abolitionist and an extremely important figure within the campaign to end the transatlantic slave trade. His interest in the anti-slavery cause derived from a frie...
Not only was Lord William Grenville the Prime Minister in 1807 when Britain abolished the slave trade, but he himself played an active and prominent part in ensuring the bill was passed in Parliament. Born in 1759, William Grenville was born into a family of elites. His father was a Whig politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kin...
An unlikely abolitionist, John Newton was a former slave ship master from London, born in 1725. At a young age, Newton worked on slave ships and became increasingly involved in the slave trade. Astoundingly, Newton was enslaved himself in 1745 when crew members of the slave ship Pegasus left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, a slave dealer. Clowe...
Born in Poole in 1758, James Stephen spent much of his youth in a debtors’ prison. Growing up, many described him as a volatile and bad-tempered child, traits which he didn’t seem to rid himself of as an adult. Although he was a prolific newspaper reporter and lawyer, Stephen foolishly involved himself with his best friend’s fiancé, resulting in hi...
Mar 7, 2019 · It’s a question shared by the families of up to 30,000 people “disappeared” by the state during Argentina’s “Dirty War,” a period during which the country’s military dictatorship turned...
- 2 min
The story of this mass flight, aptly characterized by historian Gary Nash as the Revolutionary War’s “dirty little secret,” is shocking in the best sense, in that it forces an honest and ...
Feb 17, 2011 · 'The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.'
A startling statistic emerged in the 1970s, when economists taking a hardheaded look at slavery found that on the eve of the Civil War, enslaved black people, in the aggregate, formed the...
Feb 17, 2011 · The history of British anti-slavery can be divided into a number of distinct phases. The first of these stretched from 1787 to 1807 and was directed against the slave trade. Of course,...
