Slavery in the North: The History and Legacy of American Slaves in the North Before the Civil War

Most Americans know that slavery is a central part of the nation’s history, but the common perception of that history is selective because the general understanding is that slavery was characteristic of the states that seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy, and that slavery ended with the North’s victory in the Civil War. People with a more thorough knowledge of the history of slavery are aware of the Emancipation Proclamation, the amendments that made slaves citizens and gave them the right to vote, the complex history of Reconstruction and its ultimate failure, the long history of Jim Crow and white supremacy, and the Civil Rights Movement.

However, slavery was not simply a Southern phenomenon, but a national one. In fact, slavery was recognized legally first in Massachusetts, not in the South, and the belief that Puritans and Quakers were always abolitionists is wrong, as both groups owned slaves for generations. There were slaves in Vermont, New Hampshire, and the other New England colonies, including Native American slaves and then African slaves. Plantations that had gangs of slaves growing commodities for the market are associated with the South, but there were some plantations like that in New Jersey and in the Narragansett region in Rhode Island. Some slave rebellions in the South are well-known, like Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia, but slave rebellions occurred in New York City twice and were punished with barbaric severity. The North had only a fraction of the slaves the South did, but slavery existed in all 13 colonies, and for decades there were more slaves in New York City than any other city except Charleston, South Carolina. Yet another overlooked aspect of American slavery is its economic importance to the North. After independence was won, ships from Rhode Island dominated the American slave trade, trading in rum for slaves.