Slavery How It Build The New World

My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken aback."

The end of Reconstruction saw the abrupt termination of nearly every from of political progress for freed slaves--the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, the denial of the right to vote, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the revival of nightrider terror.

He sailed the world with the British Navy and later became a leader in the English antislavery movement of the 1780s.

He was the youngest child of an embrenche, or chieftain, of the Ibo people, and he was his mother's pride and joy.

The economic legacy of slavery has been blight--a pattern of chronic underdevelopment that even today retards social progress through much of Latin America and the Caribbean.

John Gabriel Stedman, a young British adventurer who went to Surinam in 1771 to help suppress one of many slave revolts there, was appalled by the Dutch planters' casual use of torture to discipline their slaves.

Brazilian authorities repeatedly sent military expeditions to attack huge settlements of runaway slaves called quilombres, and they were forced to suppress three major slave revolts in Bahia during the 1830s.

By the 1840s, when Douglass took up his political and literary career, slavery seemed to be a dying institution.

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

"The centrality of slavery in the development of the New World can't be stressed enough," Foner says.

Frederick Douglass, the great American abolitionist, was not inclined to finesse.

Frederick Douglass, the great American abolitionist, was not inclined to finesse.

Shipped to Barbados, sold at auction and renamed Gustavus Vassa by his first master, he eventually earned the money to buy his freedom.

In much of the rural South, for example, the end of slavery meant the rise of sharecropping, a new form of peonage.

Slavery thus became a vast, highly regimented labor system that stripped captive Africans of their dignity and personal identities, subjected them to merciless deprivation and brutality and sent them to die by the millions from disease, malnutrition, injury and abuse.

The historian Eugene Genovese quotes a white Southerner, Mary Boykin Chesnut, to make the point.

Brazilian authorities repeatedly sent military expeditions to attack huge settlements of runaway slaves called quilombres, and they were forced to suppress three major slave revolts in Bahia during the 1830s.

Sometime in 1756, when he was 11 years old, Olaudah was kidnapped by rival tribesmen and sold to European slavers.

Slavery thus became a vast, highly regimented labor system that stripped captive Africans of their dignity and personal identities, subjected them to merciless deprivation and brutality and sent them to die by the millions from disease, malnutrition, injury and abuse.

An 18th-century Jamaican document offers a glimpse of the tremendous human cost.

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

The slaves themselves left relatively few accounts of their lives in captivity, and slaveholders tended for obvious reasons to be reticent about the realities of the system they controlled.

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

"We are landless and homeless," the freedmen of Edisto Island, S.C., protested during the Reconstruction Era.

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

The end of Reconstruction saw the abrupt termination of nearly every from of political progress for freed slaves--the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, the denial of the right to vote, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the revival of nightrider terror.

"Slave resistance included carelessness, feigned stupidity, insolence, satire, deliberate evasion and refusal to work," says historian David Barry Gaspar of Duke University.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

The end of Reconstruction saw the abrupt termination of nearly every from of political progress for freed slaves--the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, the denial of the right to vote, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the revival of nightrider terror.

That fact has engendered considerable debate among historians, and it has led (or misled) some scholars to talk of a "Sambo" slave personality--the stereotypical, happy-go-lucky slave.

In recent years this theory has prompted sharp dissents from scholars who argue that slaves fought back in myriad subtle ways.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

Simply put, the Sambo theory maintains that slaves were "infantilized" by systematic oppression and selective brutality and that, more often than not, they were psychological accomplices in their own subjugation.

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

It was a mainspring of early economic development and the source of enormous wealth, in the form of unpaid labor, for white colonists and their political masters in Europe.

"We are landless and homeless," the freedmen of Edisto Island, S.C., protested during the Reconstruction Era.

From slavery times onward--from Stepin' Fetchit stereotypes to the rise of "scientific" racism--millions of white Americans have clung to the notion that blacks are inferior as a group.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

Uncovering the whole truth about slavery is a difficult task for scholars even today.

As Stedman knew, slave uprisings were a continual threat not only in Surinam, where black rebels eventually overthrew the Dutch, but in almost every slaveholding colony and region of the Americas.

The conquistadors brought African bondsmen to the island of Hispaniola as early as 1505, and slavery was not finally abolished, in Brazil, until 1888.

Shipped to Barbados, sold at auction and renamed Gustavus Vassa by his first master, he eventually earned the money to buy his freedom.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The stench of the hold, while we were on the coast, was so intolerably loathsome that it was dangerous to remain there for any time ....

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

The conditions of slavery varied dramatically from place to place and from century to century: depending on circumstances and the attitudes of white colonials, the treatment of slaves ranged from relatively benign paternalism to almost unimaginable brutality.

The end of Reconstruction saw the abrupt termination of nearly every from of political progress for freed slaves--the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, the denial of the right to vote, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the revival of nightrider terror.

"Slave resistance included carelessness, feigned stupidity, insolence, satire, deliberate evasion and refusal to work," says historian David Barry Gaspar of Duke University.

It is a compelling account of a young slave's survival against the odds and a vivid description of human bondage in the late 18th century, the heyday of the "peculiar institution" that built the New World.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

The end of Reconstruction saw the abrupt termination of nearly every from of political progress for freed slaves--the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, the denial of the right to vote, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the revival of nightrider terror.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

The conquistadors brought African bondsmen to the island of Hispaniola as early as 1505, and slavery was not finally abolished, in Brazil, until 1888.

Is it any wonder, Stedman mused, "that the Negro Slaves rise up in rebellion against their masters?

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

Spectacular insurrections--like the ones in Haiti in 1794, Guyana in 1823 and Jamaica in 1831alarmed slaveholders everywhere.

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

The historian Eugene Genovese quotes a white Southerner, Mary Boykin Chesnut, to make the point.

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

It is a compelling account of a young slave's survival against the odds and a vivid description of human bondage in the late 18th century, the heyday of the "peculiar institution" that built the New World.

The boy's name was Olaudah, and he was born in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin, in what is now part of Nigeria.

We can not resist it in any way without being driven out homeless upon the road.

To be sure, John Brown had failed to fire their hearts here, and they saw no cause to rise and burn and murder us all ....

"We are landless and homeless," the freedmen of Edisto Island, S.C., protested during the Reconstruction Era.

Great Britain and the United States outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, and Parliament formally abolished slavery in Britain's Caribbean colonies in 1833.

Shipped to Barbados, sold at auction and renamed Gustavus Vassa by his first master, he eventually earned the money to buy his freedom.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

Of 676,276 Africans who arrived in Jamaica between 1655 and 1787, a legislative committee found, 31,181 died on board ships waiting to unload in Jamaican ports.

It was a mainspring of early economic development and the source of enormous wealth, in the form of unpaid labor, for white colonists and their political masters in Europe.

In the United States, Lincoln and his generals drove the slave-owning South to ruin through five years of civil war--and America's bloody example, combined with British diplomatic and economic pressure, ultimately led to abolition in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

Slavery is sometimes regarded as a tragic anomaly of history--a dark cloud, threatening but small, on the receding horizon of the past.

The end of Reconstruction saw the abrupt termination of nearly every from of political progress for freed slaves--the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, the denial of the right to vote, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the revival of nightrider terror.

Slavery is sometimes regarded as a tragic anomaly of history--a dark cloud, threatening but small, on the receding horizon of the past.

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

John Gabriel Stedman, a young British adventurer who went to Surinam in 1771 to help suppress one of many slave revolts there, was appalled by the Dutch planters' casual use of torture to discipline their slaves.

But it is nevertheless true, as David Brion Davis observes, that 18th-century political thinkers generally saw no contradiction in espousing a radical view of liberty for whites while denying it to blacks and Indians.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

The conditions of slavery varied dramatically from place to place and from century to century: depending on circumstances and the attitudes of white colonials, the treatment of slaves ranged from relatively benign paternalism to almost unimaginable brutality.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

He was the youngest child of an embrenche, or chieftain, of the Ibo people, and he was his mother's pride and joy.

Great Britain and the United States outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, and Parliament formally abolished slavery in Britain's Caribbean colonies in 1833.

From slavery times onward--from Stepin' Fetchit stereotypes to the rise of "scientific" racism--millions of white Americans have clung to the notion that blacks are inferior as a group.

The boy's name was Olaudah, and he was born in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin, in what is now part of Nigeria.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

The conditions of slavery varied dramatically from place to place and from century to century: depending on circumstances and the attitudes of white colonials, the treatment of slaves ranged from relatively benign paternalism to almost unimaginable brutality.

The boy's name was Olaudah, and he was born in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin, in what is now part of Nigeria.

Is it any wonder, Stedman mused, "that the Negro Slaves rise up in rebellion against their masters?

Between 1505 and 1870, when the last vestiges of the Atlantic slave trade were finally suppressed, at least 10 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in chains.

Brazilian authorities repeatedly sent military expeditions to attack huge settlements of runaway slaves called quilombres, and they were forced to suppress three major slave revolts in Bahia during the 1830s.

"Slave resistance included carelessness, feigned stupidity, insolence, satire, deliberate evasion and refusal to work," says historian David Barry Gaspar of Duke University.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

It was, in all probability, the first example in history of a morally committed minority reversing an entrenched social judgment with propaganda and political pressure.

"Slaves handled some of these forms with such finesse that whites tended to accept them as part of the black stereotype."

It was, in all probability, the first example in history of a morally committed minority reversing an entrenched social judgment with propaganda and political pressure.

Mrs. Chesnut was wrong: slaves in the United States saw many reasons to rise up, and they did so on several memorable occasions.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

Covey called another white man for help, but Douglass disabled the second man with a kick to the ribs.

African slavery is fundamental to the history of the Americas.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

Frederick Douglass, the great American abolitionist, was not inclined to finesse.

As a young slave in Maryland, Douglass rebelled one day and fought his master, a Mr. Covey, to a bloody standstill.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

"The truth was," Douglass observed laconically, "he had not whipped me at all"--and Covey never again "laid the weight of his finger on me in anger."

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Sometime in 1756, when he was 11 years old, Olaudah was kidnapped by rival tribesmen and sold to European slavers.

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

Between 1505 and 1870, when the last vestiges of the Atlantic slave trade were finally suppressed, at least 10 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in chains.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

Mrs. Chesnut was wrong: slaves in the United States saw many reasons to rise up, and they did so on several memorable occasions.

If there is any redemptive meaning in the history of slavery, it lies in the idea of freedom.

"Even in the United States, in the South, slavery permanently distorted the economy."

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

Sometime in 1756, when he was 11 years old, Olaudah was kidnapped by rival tribesmen and sold to European slavers.

Prior to 1820, the number of Africans crossing the ocean outstripped the combined total of all European immigrants by a ratio of 5 to 1.

John Gabriel Stedman, a young British adventurer who went to Surinam in 1771 to help suppress one of many slave revolts there, was appalled by the Dutch planters' casual use of torture to discipline their slaves.

Spectacular insurrections--like the ones in Haiti in 1794, Guyana in 1823 and Jamaica in 1831alarmed slaveholders everywhere.

The conditions of slavery varied dramatically from place to place and from century to century: depending on circumstances and the attitudes of white colonials, the treatment of slaves ranged from relatively benign paternalism to almost unimaginable brutality.

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

Prior to 1820, the number of Africans crossing the ocean outstripped the combined total of all European immigrants by a ratio of 5 to 1.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

"The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered it a scene of horror almost inconceivable ....

The historian Eugene Genovese quotes a white Southerner, Mary Boykin Chesnut, to make the point.

France and Denmark billowed suit in 1848; the Dutch in 1863.

Slavery thus became a vast, highly regimented labor system that stripped captive Africans of their dignity and personal identities, subjected them to merciless deprivation and brutality and sent them to die by the millions from disease, malnutrition, injury and abuse.

From slavery times onward--from Stepin' Fetchit stereotypes to the rise of "scientific" racism--millions of white Americans have clung to the notion that blacks are inferior as a group.

"Slaves handled some of these forms with such finesse that whites tended to accept them as part of the black stereotype."

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

As a young slave in Maryland, Douglass rebelled one day and fought his master, a Mr. Covey, to a bloody standstill.

Great Britain and the United States outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, and Parliament formally abolished slavery in Britain's Caribbean colonies in 1833.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

Brazilian authorities repeatedly sent military expeditions to attack huge settlements of runaway slaves called quilombres, and they were forced to suppress three major slave revolts in Bahia during the 1830s.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

In the United States, Lincoln and his generals drove the slave-owning South to ruin through five years of civil war--and America's bloody example, combined with British diplomatic and economic pressure, ultimately led to abolition in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

In recent years this theory has prompted sharp dissents from scholars who argue that slaves fought back in myriad subtle ways.

The slaves themselves left relatively few accounts of their lives in captivity, and slaveholders tended for obvious reasons to be reticent about the realities of the system they controlled.

The persistence of that belief may well be the central tragedy of American history, and its bitterness surely contaminates the national dialogue today.

He sailed the world with the British Navy and later became a leader in the English antislavery movement of the 1780s.

"Even in the United States, in the South, slavery permanently distorted the economy."

Between 1505 and 1870, when the last vestiges of the Atlantic slave trade were finally suppressed, at least 10 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in chains.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

Covey called another white man for help, but Douglass disabled the second man with a kick to the ribs.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

"The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered it a scene of horror almost inconceivable ....

By the 1840s, when Douglass took up his political and literary career, slavery seemed to be a dying institution.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

Olaudah--plucky, resourceful and highly intelligent--was a remarkable young man who became an even more remarkable man.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

In the United States, Lincoln and his generals drove the slave-owning South to ruin through five years of civil war--and America's bloody example, combined with British diplomatic and economic pressure, ultimately led to abolition in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

He sailed the world with the British Navy and later became a leader in the English antislavery movement of the 1780s.

Slavery and racism are chicken and egg.

Between 1505 and 1870, when the last vestiges of the Atlantic slave trade were finally suppressed, at least 10 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in chains.

Shipped to Barbados, sold at auction and renamed Gustavus Vassa by his first master, he eventually earned the money to buy his freedom.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

Great Britain and the United States outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, and Parliament formally abolished slavery in Britain's Caribbean colonies in 1833.

Sometime in 1756, when he was 11 years old, Olaudah was kidnapped by rival tribesmen and sold to European slavers.

That fact has engendered considerable debate among historians, and it has led (or misled) some scholars to talk of a "Sambo" slave personality--the stereotypical, happy-go-lucky slave.

That fact has engendered considerable debate among historians, and it has led (or misled) some scholars to talk of a "Sambo" slave personality--the stereotypical, happy-go-lucky slave.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

To be sure, John Brown had failed to fire their hearts here, and they saw no cause to rise and burn and murder us all ....

That fact has engendered considerable debate among historians, and it has led (or misled) some scholars to talk of a "Sambo" slave personality--the stereotypical, happy-go-lucky slave.

But it is nevertheless true, as David Brion Davis observes, that 18th-century political thinkers generally saw no contradiction in espousing a radical view of liberty for whites while denying it to blacks and Indians.

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

Sometime in 1756, when he was 11 years old, Olaudah was kidnapped by rival tribesmen and sold to European slavers.

The stench of the hold, while we were on the coast, was so intolerably loathsome that it was dangerous to remain there for any time ....

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The most malign legacy of slavery, in short, was racism.

To be sure, John Brown had failed to fire their hearts here, and they saw no cause to rise and burn and murder us all ....

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

Actually, free labor was the aberration.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

Olaudah--plucky, resourceful and highly intelligent--was a remarkable young man who became an even more remarkable man.

Mrs. Chesnut was wrong: slaves in the United States saw many reasons to rise up, and they did so on several memorable occasions.

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

"Slave resistance included carelessness, feigned stupidity, insolence, satire, deliberate evasion and refusal to work," says historian David Barry Gaspar of Duke University.

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

Sometime in 1756, when he was 11 years old, Olaudah was kidnapped by rival tribesmen and sold to European slavers.

Uncovering the whole truth about slavery is a difficult task for scholars even today.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

In the United States, Lincoln and his generals drove the slave-owning South to ruin through five years of civil war--and America's bloody example, combined with British diplomatic and economic pressure, ultimately led to abolition in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

By 1865, Americans and Europeans alike accepted the premise that freedom could not be restricted to the few.

Slavery, as old as mankind, was virtually eradicated less than a century after the founding of the first antislavery societies in the United States and Britain.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

"The truth was," Douglass observed laconically, "he had not whipped me at all"--and Covey never again "laid the weight of his finger on me in anger."

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

"Slave resistance included carelessness, feigned stupidity, insolence, satire, deliberate evasion and refusal to work," says historian David Barry Gaspar of Duke University.

In much of the rural South, for example, the end of slavery meant the rise of sharecropping, a new form of peonage.

"I seized Covey hard by the throat and as I did so, I rose.

Brazilian authorities repeatedly sent military expeditions to attack huge settlements of runaway slaves called quilombres, and they were forced to suppress three major slave revolts in Bahia during the 1830s.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

Slavery is sometimes regarded as a tragic anomaly of history--a dark cloud, threatening but small, on the receding horizon of the past.

Brazilian authorities repeatedly sent military expeditions to attack huge settlements of runaway slaves called quilombres, and they were forced to suppress three major slave revolts in Bahia during the 1830s.

He was the youngest child of an embrenche, or chieftain, of the Ibo people, and he was his mother's pride and joy.

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

Like Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass escaped bondage to become a crusader in the antislavery cause.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

Without slavery, the New World would not have been developed."

He sailed the world with the British Navy and later became a leader in the English antislavery movement of the 1780s.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

"The truth was," Douglass observed laconically, "he had not whipped me at all"--and Covey never again "laid the weight of his finger on me in anger."

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

To be sure, John Brown had failed to fire their hearts here, and they saw no cause to rise and burn and murder us all ....

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

Spectacular insurrections--like the ones in Haiti in 1794, Guyana in 1823 and Jamaica in 1831alarmed slaveholders everywhere.

It is a compelling account of a young slave's survival against the odds and a vivid description of human bondage in the late 18th century, the heyday of the "peculiar institution" that built the New World.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

In the United States, Lincoln and his generals drove the slave-owning South to ruin through five years of civil war--and America's bloody example, combined with British diplomatic and economic pressure, ultimately led to abolition in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

Of 676,276 Africans who arrived in Jamaica between 1655 and 1787, a legislative committee found, 31,181 died on board ships waiting to unload in Jamaican ports.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

We can not resist it in any way without being driven out homeless upon the road.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

By 1865, Americans and Europeans alike accepted the premise that freedom could not be restricted to the few.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

The worst was yet to come.

My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken aback."

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

If there is any redemptive meaning in the history of slavery, it lies in the idea of freedom.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

"We can only do one of three things: Step into the public road or the sea or remain on [the plantations], working as in former time and subject to [the white man's] will ...

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

But how long would they resist the seductive and irresistible call: 'Rise, kill and be free!'"

He sailed the world with the British Navy and later became a leader in the English antislavery movement of the 1780s.

This turnabout reversed a tradition in Western moral philosophy dating back to the Greeks--and its implications affect all of us today.

Then he and Covey fought for nearly two hours until Covey, "saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much," finally let him go.

Between 1505 and 1870, when the last vestiges of the Atlantic slave trade were finally suppressed, at least 10 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in chains.

To be sure, John Brown had failed to fire their hearts here, and they saw no cause to rise and burn and murder us all ....

The stench of the hold, while we were on the coast, was so intolerably loathsome that it was dangerous to remain there for any time ....

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

It began earlier, lasted longer and played a larger role in shaping modern societies than most Americans realize.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

The golden age of exploration, says Columbia University historian Eric Foner, was in reality a commercial enterprise, and slave labor made it profitable.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

John Gabriel Stedman, a young British adventurer who went to Surinam in 1771 to help suppress one of many slave revolts there, was appalled by the Dutch planters' casual use of torture to discipline their slaves.

Racism contributed much to Europe's willingness to enslave Africans, and the need to rationalize and defend the institution of slavery played a very large part in the growth of modern racism.

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

Shipped to Barbados, sold at auction and renamed Gustavus Vassa by his first master, he eventually earned the money to buy his freedom.

The persistence of that belief may well be the central tragedy of American history, and its bitterness surely contaminates the national dialogue today.

The boy's name was Olaudah, and he was born in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin, in what is now part of Nigeria.

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

His memoir, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African," was published in England in 1789.

"Their faces were like so many of the same sort at home.

The conditions of slavery varied dramatically from place to place and from century to century: depending on circumstances and the attitudes of white colonials, the treatment of slaves ranged from relatively benign paternalism to almost unimaginable brutality.

Olaudah--plucky, resourceful and highly intelligent--was a remarkable young man who became an even more remarkable man.

An 18th-century Jamaican document offers a glimpse of the tremendous human cost.

An 18th-century Jamaican document offers a glimpse of the tremendous human cost.

In recent years this theory has prompted sharp dissents from scholars who argue that slaves fought back in myriad subtle ways.

This total--for only one sugar colony--does not include the loss of life during the Atlantic crossing, nor does it include the huge numbers of slaves who died during what was quaintly known as seasoning.

"The truth was," Douglass observed laconically, "he had not whipped me at all"--and Covey never again "laid the weight of his finger on me in anger."

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

"Slave resistance included carelessness, feigned stupidity, insolence, satire, deliberate evasion and refusal to work," says historian David Barry Gaspar of Duke University.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

It is a compelling account of a young slave's survival against the odds and a vivid description of human bondage in the late 18th century, the heyday of the "peculiar institution" that built the New World.

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

Slavery thus became a vast, highly regimented labor system that stripped captive Africans of their dignity and personal identities, subjected them to merciless deprivation and brutality and sent them to die by the millions from disease, malnutrition, injury and abuse.

But it is nevertheless true, as David Brion Davis observes, that 18th-century political thinkers generally saw no contradiction in espousing a radical view of liberty for whites while denying it to blacks and Indians.

John Gabriel Stedman, a young British adventurer who went to Surinam in 1771 to help suppress one of many slave revolts there, was appalled by the Dutch planters' casual use of torture to discipline their slaves.

The boy's name was Olaudah, and he was born in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin, in what is now part of Nigeria.

Simply put, the Sambo theory maintains that slaves were "infantilized" by systematic oppression and selective brutality and that, more often than not, they were psychological accomplices in their own subjugation.

My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken aback."

I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, and I began to hope that death would soon put an end to my miseries."

He was the youngest child of an embrenche, or chieftain, of the Ibo people, and he was his mother's pride and joy.

"We can only do one of three things: Step into the public road or the sea or remain on [the plantations], working as in former time and subject to [the white man's] will ...

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

Of 676,276 Africans who arrived in Jamaica between 1655 and 1787, a legislative committee found, 31,181 died on board ships waiting to unload in Jamaican ports.

"We can only do one of three things: Step into the public road or the sea or remain on [the plantations], working as in former time and subject to [the white man's] will ...

The form of slavery that sprang up in the Americas was vastly unlike serfdom in medieval Europe or slavery anywhere else in the world.

The conquistadors brought African bondsmen to the island of Hispaniola as early as 1505, and slavery was not finally abolished, in Brazil, until 1888.

Prior to 1800, slave-mortality rates in the Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean were so high that only the continued importation of more and more Africans kept the colonial economies thriving.

Through 350 years of continuous operation along both coasts of Africa, European and American slavers brought about one of the largest forced migrations in recorded history--the African diaspora, whose result today is an African-American population of hundreds of millions of people distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Olaudah--plucky, resourceful and highly intelligent--was a remarkable young man who became an even more remarkable man.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

Of 676,276 Africans who arrived in Jamaica between 1655 and 1787, a legislative committee found, 31,181 died on board ships waiting to unload in Jamaican ports.

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

Mrs. Chesnut was wrong: slaves in the United States saw many reasons to rise up, and they did so on several memorable occasions.

In his book "Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam," Stedman quotes a white colonist who described the torture execution of a slave: "Not long ago," this colonist told Stedman, "I saw a black man hang'd alive by the ribs, between which with a knife was first made an incision, and then clinch 'd an Iron hook with a chain.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

The historian Eugene Genovese quotes a white Southerner, Mary Boykin Chesnut, to make the point.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us ....

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

The colonizing powers recognized almost from the beginning that African slaves were the only possible remedy for the labor shortages that plagued their New World dominions; slaves mined the precious metals and harvested the sugar, indigo and tobacco that made colonization worthwhile.

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

In this manner, he kept living three days, hanging with head and feet downwards and catching with his tongue the drops of water, it being the rainy season, that were flowing down his bloated breast, while the vultures were picking in the putrid wound."

Then he and Covey fought for nearly two hours until Covey, "saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much," finally let him go.

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

"The truth was," Douglass observed laconically, "he had not whipped me at all"--and Covey never again "laid the weight of his finger on me in anger."

My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey seemed taken aback."

"What a thrill of terror ran through me as those yellow and black brutes came jumping over the parapets,'' Mrs. Chesnut wrote in her diary, after seeing a play about the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in India.

From slavery times onward--from Stepin' Fetchit stereotypes to the rise of "scientific" racism--millions of white Americans have clung to the notion that blacks are inferior as a group.

John Gabriel Stedman, a young British adventurer who went to Surinam in 1771 to help suppress one of many slave revolts there, was appalled by the Dutch planters' casual use of torture to discipline their slaves.

He never forgot the terror of that moment, and his account of his delivery to the white man is a rare and indisputably authentic description of the slave trade as seen by Africans: "I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country," Olaudah wrote, "and my present situation.., was filled with horrors of every kind ....

Shipped to Barbados, sold at auction and renamed Gustavus Vassa by his first master, he eventually earned the money to buy his freedom.

Olaudah--plucky, resourceful and highly intelligent--was a remarkable young man who became an even more remarkable man.

The stench of the hold, while we were on the coast, was so intolerably loathsome that it was dangerous to remain there for any time ....

The average survival rate of a mining slave during the great 18th-century gold rush in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was no more than two years; the survival rate of a field hand in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil was only about seven years.

Of 676,276 Africans who arrived in Jamaica between 1655 and 1787, a legislative committee found, 31,181 died on board ships waiting to unload in Jamaican ports.

To say the struggle over abolition led Americans to a deeper understanding of freedom is perhaps too simple: it took 100 years, and the passion of Martin Luther King Jr., to hold the nation to the promise of the Bill of Rights.