Abolitionism

Abolitionism was a movement that wanted to end the practice of slavery in Christian countries and was active mainly during the 18th and the 19th centuries. Until the 18th century, few people criticized slavery, but thinkers of the Enlightenment started to criticize it because they viewed it as against human rights. Communities like the Quakers thought that slavery was against Christianity.

In the early 19th century, several countries abolished the Atlantic slave trade and later in the century, they abolished slavery itself.

Race-based slavery was established in the Americas in the early 16th century by the Portuguese and Spanish Empires. It soon spread to the parts of British North America, New France, and New Spain that would later become the United States. By the early 18th century, enslavement of black Africans was powering the economy in those areas.^[1] Most opposition to slavery was from the slaves themselves.

During the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, promised freedom to Virginia slaves and endentured servants who were "able and willing to take up arms" with the British. The proclamation would give freedom to indentured servants and slaves held by the rebelling colonists but not those held by the Loyalists. Many of the former slaves would die of disease; in fact, eight times more blacks died of disease than in battle. When the American Revolutionary War ended, most of those who had decided to fight with the British were returned to slavery.^[2] Some black Loyalists were taken to what is now Canada and elsewhere.

The Continental Army contained many blacks, most of them coming from New England. The most significant black regiment was the 1st Rhode Island. It was created in 1778 and consisted of mostly blacks. Upon joining the regiment, any slave was released from servitude by the commander, Colonel Christopher Greene.^[3]

When the new United States Constitution was instituted, most blacks in the country were slaves. Slavery began to decline. Most of the Northern United States outlawed the practice shortly after the American Revolution started, and in the Southern United States, tobacco, the primary cash crop, was losing value^[4]

However, in 1794, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. The new invention helped to increase the profitability of cotton by mechanically removing its seeds. After 1800 the amount of cotton produced in the United States would double every 10 years. By the mid-19th century, the United States produced three quarters of the world's cotton.^[5] That made slavery much more profitable and common.

The Haitian Revolution, a slave rebellion that lasted from 1791 to 1804, changed the whole direction of the slave system.^[6] In the next 100 years, slavery would be legally abolished in many of the colonies controlled by European empires.