Slavery

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. 
 Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.
The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South's economy. 

By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation's 4 million slaves, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the tumultuous years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.

How many slaves were taken from Africa?

Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. They were brought by English and French Traders.

THE 3/5^TH COMPROMISE 1787

The 3/5 Compromise dealt with the principle of congressional representation in the infant American nation, after the "Connecticut Compromise" established a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with equal representation. States ideally wanted to have more representation in the House of Representatives, in order to have more voice in the federal government. However, southern states, which refused to give Blacks the slightest of rights (due to the already entrenched ideals of slavery) wanted to make the most of their black populations to achieve greater representation. It was eventually decided (in part because of Southern threats to not join the new nation) that each slave would count as "3/5 of a person" for representation purposes.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world.

Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the cost of 625,000 lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which this country has fought combined.

13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

1865 - The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery to this day.

1868 - The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens including African Americans.

1870 -The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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