The first person to own a slave in the U.S. was actually black. He took the name of Antony Johnson. Until 1861, people had called them “Indentured Servants”, paying them and giving them good food. Once they had worked for a certain amount of time, they were released and given land and some tools. Once he paid his “debt”, he went and got some indentured servants of his …show more content…
These slave trades lasted from 650 AD to 1900 AD. During this time, at least 18 million Africans were enslaved by the Arab’s. While this has nothing to do with the history of slavery in the United States, it proves that we were not the only country that enslaved Africans.
The majority of the northern states didn’t care for or agree with slavery; this led to some free blacks and whites starting the Underground Railroad. While this may be an estimate, it is said to have led anywhere between 40,000 to 100,000 slaves to freedom . This helped spread anti-slavery feelings, leading to political tension, which was a large factor in the Civil War.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, a compromise on the issue of slavery. It stated that all new territories were open to slavery. This led to a lot of bloodshed between anti-slavery people and pro-slavery people in Kansas. Eventually, the south reached a breaking point when Abraham Lincoln was elected as president the following year. Around seven southern states declared independence from the northern states. They called themselves The Confederate States of