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Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person (see § Terminology ).
Under slavery, an enslaved person is considered by law as property, or chattel, and is deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons. Learn more about the history, legality, and sociology of slavery in this article.
Slavery was institutionalized by the time the first civilizations emerged (such as Sumer in Mesopotamia, [5] which dates back as far as 3500 BC). Slavery features in the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. [6]
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The outfitted European slave ships of the slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
Emancipation Proclamation, edict issued by U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that freed the slaves of the Confederate states in rebellion against the Union. It took more than two years for news of the proclamation to reach the slaves in the distant state of Texas.
Abolitionism, movement between about 1783 and 1888 that was chiefly responsible for creating the emotional climate necessary for ending the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. Between the 16th and 19th centuries an estimated total of 12 million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas.
The most spectacular, and perhaps best-known, forms of resistance were organized, armed rebellions. Between 1691 and 1865, at least nine slave revolts erupted in what would eventually become the United States. The most prominent of these occurred in New York City (1712), Stono, South Carolina (1739), New Orleans (1811), and ...
