LibGuides: African American History: The Institution of Slavery in the United States

Web Resources: Slavery

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Slaves to be sold

"Slavery was a complex and horrific system on many levels, not the least of which involved its social class dimensions. Plantation slavery stamped southern society with characteristics that persisted long after emancipation, such as the influence of planters in politics and a presumption of racial hierarchy. White racism had so thoroughly penetrated the region that it became a powerful tool for social control."

- From Slavery by Robert E. Weir, cited below

"Slaves to be Sold" 1858
(click on image to enlarge, cited below)

Online Collections

Not unlike the museums linked in the following tab, these online collections house many primary source resources including images, photographs, maps, letters, diaries, artifacts, and more.

American Slavery Documents - Duke University
"The American Slavery Documents Collection contains an assortment of legal and personal documents related to slavery in the United States. Nearly all of the documents are singular and otherwise unrelated to the other, but as a composite, the collection brings to light the details of the lives and deaths of free and enslaved African Americans during the Antebellum and early Reconstruction Eras. The type of materials include bills of sale, manumission papers, emancipation notes, bonds, auction notices and other assorted items."
Black Freedom Struggles in the United States
This website contains over 3,000 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom: Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement; The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era;Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression; The New Deal and World War II; The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements; The Contemporary Era
more...less...
1. Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860), 2.The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877) 3. Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932), 4.The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945), 5. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975),6. The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)
Hidden Voices: Enslaved Women in the Lowcountry and U.S. South
From the Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston - this exhibit focuses "on the experiences of enslaved women in the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry in both rural and urban contexts, the exhibit examines African American women’s labor, interconnected relationships, and cultural practices. It reveals the types of violence they were subjected to as well as the joys and triumphs they created for themselves"
Library of Congress: The African American Odyssey - A Quest for Full Citizenship
This Library of Congress collection features "more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, and plays in the largest black history exhibit ever presented by the Library."
more...less...
Includes the following sections: Slavery—The Peculiar Institution | Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period | Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy | The Civil War | Reconstruction and Its Aftermath | The Booker T. Washington Era | World War I and Postwar Society | The Depression, The New Deal, and World War II | The Civil Rights Era
Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Locations Map
An interactive may showing locations of the underground railroad across the United States
New-York Historical Society, Manuscript Collections Relating to Slavery
"The New-York Historical Society holds fifteen important manuscript collections relating to the institution of slavery in the United States and the Atlantic slave trade. They include account books and ship manifests documenting the financial aspects of the slave trade, records of educational institutions and anti-slavery organizations, correspondence and other personal papers of abolitionists, legal documents such as birth certificates and deeds of manumission, and political works."
Online Exhibit: Slavery and Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
A part of the "Black Freedom Struggle in the United States" collection, Search through primary source documents covering census info, legislation on race and slavery, slave rebellions, religion, the abolitionist movement, and more.
Online Exhibition: Slavery and Freedom
An online exhibition from the National Museum of African American History and Culture & the Smithsonian - search through secondary and primary sources featured in this interactive exhibit
Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade 1808-1865
From the Historic New Orleans Collection, this online exhibit features articles, resources, and many primary source materials related to chattle slavery in the south.
The Race and Slavery Petitions Project
"The Race and Slavery Petitions Project offers data on race and slavery extracted from eighteenth and nineteenth-century documents and processed over a period of eighteen years. The Project contains detailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites. These data have been painstakingly extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, and from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others. Buried in these documents are the names and other data on roughly 80,000 individual slaves, 8,000 free people of color, and 62,000 whites, both slave owners and non-slave owners."
Slavery & Freedom in Louisiana Collection
From the Xaiver University of Louisiana Library - this collection "contains hand-written manuscripts pertaining to a variety of slave records in Louisiana, dating from 1784 to 1860. These rare documents, including freedom papers, wedding certificates, affidavits on runaway slaves, slave revolts, police records, and slave sale receipts, expand the historical knowledge of slavery in Louisiana and surrounding states during this time period. Documents are in French, Spanish, and English. This collection compliments the already digitized Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection."

Featured Database: Slavery and Anti-Slavery

There are many databases that have resources on the topics addressed in this guide; however, we wanted to feature this one as it houses 71 collections of primary source documents relating to slavery and the slave trade.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Full-text primary sources about slavery and the international slave trade with focus on North and South America.

Slavery - Digital History
Search through a collection of articles and primary source materials addressing people, events, music, film, images, and more - in connection to slavery in the United States

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Digital Museum Exhibits

Many museums not only have online exhibitions, but they can also house a wealth of information accessed through articles, online publications, videos, images, and resources. Consider the museum websites linked below.

International Slavery Museum
"The International Slavery Museum increases the understanding of transatlantic, chattel and other forms of enslavement. Through our collections, public engagement and research, we explore their impact and legacies."
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum
"The Legacy Museum provides a comprehensive history of the United States with a focus on the legacy of slavery."
more...less...
From the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impact on the North and coastal communities across America through the Domestic Slave Trade and Reconstruction, the museum provides detailed interactive content and compelling narratives. Lynching, codified racial segregation, and the emergence of over-incarceration in the 20th century are examined in depth and brought to life through film, images, and first-person narratives.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
In partnership with the Smithsonian - "A place to explore history and culture through an
African American lens"
Searchable Museum Exhibition: Slavery and Freedom 1400-1877
From the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Searchable Museum is an interactive exhibit that allows you to read articles and view primary source materials.
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
Search online exhibits and learn about Jefferson and his relationship with US slavery at this museum website.
The Whitney Plantation Museum
Click on the "History" tab to find overview articles about the slave trade and and primary source images from this plantation museum located in Louisiana

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

"During the antebellum period, many slave owners placed advertisements in newspapers to alert people about escaped slaves, to provide information to identify the individuals who had run away, and to offer a reward to encourage whites to capture runaway slaves and return them to the advertisers. Details in the advertisements help 21st-century scholars learn about the attitudes of masters toward their slaves, the clothing worn by slaves, the material objects that enslaved laborers used, the skills that slaves possessed, the ties that enslaved laborers formed to family and friends, the reasons why some slaves escaped, and the ways in which slavery varied in the United States."

-From Runaway Slave Advertisements, by Julie Richter (cited below)

The Virginia Gazette; Williamsburg, September 14, 1769.
(click on image to enlarge, cited below)

Runaway & Missing Slave Advertisements

Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery
"Freedom on the Move is a database of fugitives from North American slavery" and provides images of slave ads and posts from historic newspapers.
The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
"...a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers."
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery
"Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery aims to identify, digitize, transcribe, and publish ads placed in newspapers across the United States (and beyond) by formerly enslaved people searching for family members and loved ones after emancipation. "
more...less...
Search ads, family stories, maps, teaching resources, and more
North Carolina Runaway Slave Notices, 1750-1865
"The North Carolina Runaway Slave Notices project provides online access to all known runaway slave notices (more than 5000 items) published in North Carolina newspapers from 1751 to 1865. These brief notices provide a glimpse into the social, economic, and cultural world of the American slave system and the specific experience within North Carolina."
Runaway Slave Ads
"Runaway Slave Ads cover the period from 1842 to 1863 and primarily advertise slaves that ran away from the Baltimore County, Maryland area."
Texas Runaway Slave Project
"The Texas Runaway Slave Project is a database of runaway slave advertisements, articles and notices from newspapers published in Texas, as well as materials from court records, manuscript collections, and books. It documents more than 2,500 fugitive slaves from Texas. The project is ongoing and new content is regularly added to the webpage."

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Featured Videos

African-American Lives: Searching for Our Names "The challenge of genealogical research is even more evident as Henry Louis Gates Jr. continues back through the Colonial period of American history in this program. The film takes us on a journey to fill in the family trees of each of the series participants, through war service records and various records of property during slavery's apogee—including inventories, sales, or gifts of slaves."
The Age of Slavery (1800-1860): The African Americans—Many Rivers to Cross Streaming video available from Films on Demand
more...less...
This film illustrates how black lives changed dramatically in the aftermath of the American Revolution. For free black people, these years were a time of opportunity, but for most African Americans, the era represented a new nadir. King Cotton fueled the rapid expansion of slavery into new territories and the forcible relocation of African Americans to the Deep South. Yet as slavery intensified, so did resistance. From individual acts to mass rebellions, African Americans demonstrated their determination to undermine and ultimately eradicate slavery.
Bill Moyers Journal: Slavery, Race, and Inequality in America Streaming on Films on Demand
more...less...
"The Pew Research Center recently reported that black Americans are more dissatisfied with their progress now than at any time in the past quarter century. In this edition of the Journal, Bill Moyers gets perspective from historical and cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson and Glenn C. Loury, an economist and expert on race and social division. Moyers also interviews the Wall Street Journal’s Douglas Blackmon about his book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. In addition, the program previews the POV documentary Traces of the Trade, an examination of racial inequality in America through the prisms of the legacy of slavery and the current socioeconomic landscape"
Cotton, Oil, and the Economics of History From Smart History, this "Seeing American" video from 2020 looks at economic history and the transatlantic slave trade
Crash Course: Slave Codes Number 4 in the Black American History series
Crash Course: Slavery - US History Number 13 in the US History Series
Crash Course: Slavery in the American Colonies Number 2 in the Black American History series
Crash Course: The Dred Scott Decision A 2021 video from Crash Course Black American History
Crash Course: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 From the Crash Course Black American History series
Crash Course: The Rise of Cotton A 2021 video from Black American History
Crash Course: The US Constitution, 3/5, and the Slave Trade Clause A video from the Black American History series from Crash Course
Crash Course: Women's Experience Under Slavery A video from the Crash Course series Black American History
Demonstration of a Slave Collar A 2012 video from C-Span with Historian Anthony Cohen
Eli Whitney - Inventor of the Cotton Gin A short 2014 biography video of Eli Whitney from Biography.com
Exterminate All the Brutes A four-part series streaming on Films on Demand " a visually arresting journey through time, into the darkest hours of humanity. Through his personal voyage, Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digging deep into the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism — from America to Africa and its impact on society today."
Fighting Intolerance and Slavery: Christianity in the 17th and 18th Centuries From the series: Two Thousand Years: The History of Christianity - streaming on Films on Demand
Invisible History: Middle Florida's Hidden Roots "The Emmy-nominated historical documentary Invisible History: Middle Florida’s Hidden Roots sheds light on the invisible history of plantations and the enslaved in North Florida. With visually compelling imagery, the film explores the history of a people who contributed so much to what the region is today" Streaming on Films on Demand
Genealogist Who Tracks Down Modern-Day Slavery Practices A 2018 video from Vice
more...less...
VICE's Akil Gibbons traveled to Louisiana to meet genealogist Antoinette Harrell, the “slavery detective of the South," who tracks down cases of modern-day slavery and abusive labor practices. They talk to a man whose family was held on a plantation against their will into the 1950s, and Antoinette explains how she uses decades-old records to uncover how slavery was perpetuated long after the Civil War ended.
New York Divided: Slavery, the Civil War, and King Cotton "Although slavery was abolished in New York State on July 4th, 1827, America’s slave-based cotton trade was not, as bales from the South continued to enter New York City for transshipment to Europe. In this program, James Oliver Horton, historian emeritus at the Smithsonian, talks with NewsHour correspondent Gwen Ifill about slavery’s impact on New York City during the first half of the 19th century." Streaming on Films on Demand
Second Middle Passage A short video from Black History in Two Minutes (or so)
Slavery & Racism in New York A virtual tour of the history of racism in NY state from TomDNYC
more...less...
"In the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd, tour guide and comedian, Tomas "Tom" Delgado, tells some of the important and lesser known history of slavery and racism in New York City, a place famous for diversity and acceptance."
Slavery America's Main Historical Event Streaming on Films on Demand, 2005
more...less...
It is estimated that millions of Africans died during the Atlantic slave trade. In this program from Tony Brown's Journal, historian Anne Bailey discusses oral histories she has collected oral histories to document the slave trade from both sides of the Atlantic, placing oral records at the center of a historical analysis of slavery.
Slavery and Freedom—American Passages: A Literary Survey Streaming on Films on Demand
more...less...
"How has slavery shaped the American literary imagination and American identity? This program turns to the classic slave narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass and the fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe. What rhetorical strategies do their works use to construct an authentic and authoritative American self?"
Slavery and the American Revolution A part of the "Issues and Controversies in American History Video Clip Collection" - Streaming on Films on Demand
Slavery and the Role of the North This video series consists of "Slavery's Biggest Secret" and "Southern Slavery, Northern Lies"
TED Talks: Slavery and the North: What You Didn't Learn in History Class A 2020 talk at TEDxStCloud by Christopher Lehman
more...less...
"American teachers teach the Civil War as pairs of opposites: The Union fought the Confederates. The North fought the South. Freedom versus slavery. Innocent versus guilty. But that’s not the whole truth. Historian Christopher Lehman revisits one of the biggest myths about slavery and explains why it matters today."
Wessyngton Plantation: A Family's Road to Freedom A 2014 video from Nashville Public Television
Whitney Plantation: A Story of Slavery From Show 88 and Weekends with Whitney, on YouTube

Holman Library

African American History

Web Resources: Slavery

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Online Collections

Featured Database: Slavery and Anti-Slavery

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Digital Museum Exhibits

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Runaway & Missing Slave Advertisements

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Featured Videos

Slavery in the United States, 1619-1865

Featured Articles

Background Articles

Popular and Scholarly Articles