African American Slavery and Bondage: Difference between revisions

African American slavery, plantation and other related records available for researchers.  

In 1619 a Dutch ship blown off course came looking for fresh water near Jamestown, Virginia. At Jamestown the Dutch sold 20 of the African slaves they had captured from a Spanish ship originally bound for Mexico. These were the earliest known African immigrants to arrive in what is now the United States. It was the custom of that time to free servant-slaves after seven years.<ref>Wikipedia contributors, "Slavery in the United States," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (accessed February 5, 2009). Citing Alan Gallay, "Forgotten Story of Indian Slavery", Arab News (www.aljazeera.info), August 3, 2003.</ref><ref>Wikipedia contributors, "History of slavery," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery (accessed February 6, 2009).</ref>  

All 13 British-American colonies participated in the slave trade before 1780. In the 1750s a slavery abolitionist movement began and grew stronger. Vermont was the first to abolish slavery in 1777 and by 1804 all individual states north of the Mason-Dixon line had gradually ended slavery. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was a federal law that prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River. Slave labor works best when the assigned task is relatively simple, such as large scale agriculture. Slavery in increasingly industrialized America was becoming too expensive until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. A healthy young adult male slave was worth about two years wages, so most owners considered freeing slaves an economic hardship. The Constitution of the United States permitted the outlawing of the importation of slaves starting in 1808, but the internal slave trade continued until the end of the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibited chattel slavery in 1865.<ref>Wikipedia contributors, "Slavery in the United States," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States (accessed February 5, 2009).</ref>  

These records are the acts and laws of the following slave states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia  

=== Finding Plantation Records  ===

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:*Part 1: The Papers of James Henry Hammond, 1795-1865

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:*Part 1: Virginia

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:*Part 1: Virginia Plantations

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:*Part 1: The Deep South

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:*Part 1: Texas and Louisiana Collections

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:*Part 1: Louisiana Sugar Plantations

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| '''Series K''', Selections from the [http://research.history.org/JDRLibrary/Special_Collections/SpecialCollectionsDocs/ShirleyPP.cfm Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, The Shirley Plantation Collection, 1650-1888]  

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:*Part 1: Carter Papers, 1667-1882

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:*Part 1: Tayloe Family, 1650-1970

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| '''Series B''', Selection from [http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/shc/shcabout.html Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill]  

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:*Part 1: Mining and Smelting Industries

| align="center" | [http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/1575_SlavAnteBellSouthIndSerCPt1.pdf pdf1] [http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/1573_SlavAnteBellSouthIndSerCPt2.pdf pdf2]  

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:*Part 1: Mining and Smelting Industries

| align="center" | [http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/4577_SlavAnteBellSouthIndSerDPt1.pdf pdf1]  

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===== Indexes  =====

:*Location (alphabetical by city or county)

To use the above indexes you need to know either the location (slave's home town), the name of his plantation, or the slave owner's name. This information is sometimes found in [[African American Freedman's Savings and Trust Company Records|Freedman's Bank]], or in [[African American Freedmen's Bureau Records|Freedmen's Bureau]] records. Only about 15 percent of freed slaves used the family name of former owners.  

'''For plantation records not found in the above set''', search state and local historical societies, libraries, archives, museums, and:  

:*Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, ''[http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14692607 Index to personal names in the National Union Catalog of Manuscript collections 1959-1984]'', 2 vols. (Alexandria: Chadwyck-Healey, 1988)[{{FHL|518729|title-id|disp=FHL Book 016.091 1959-1984 index}}]. Look for the slave owner's name in this index in order to find planation records in the catalog above.

=== Registers of Slaves and Freedmen and Manumission Papers  ===

The Constitution allowed the outlawing of the importation of slaves to the United States after 1808. Between then and the Civil War the internal slave trade became an important business in the Southern United States. Most states regulated the slave trade. A few kept records of slave traders and their businesses. Look for such business registers at state libraries, archives, historical societies, or county courthouses.  

=== Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database  ===

=== Online Resources  ===

=== Other Sources  ===

*[[Beginning United States Civil War Research|Beginning United States Civil War Research]] gives steps for finding information about a Civil War soldier. It covers the major records that should be used. Additional records are described in ‘Louisiana in the Civil War’ and ‘United States Civil War, 1861 to 1865’ (see below).

*[[United States Civil War, 1861 to 1865|United States Civil War, 1861 to 1865]] describes and explains United States and Confederate States records, rather than state records, and how to find them. These include veterans’ censuses, compiled service records, pension records, rosters, cemetery records, Internet databases, published books, etc.

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