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Beginning in the 16th century millions of Africans were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, where they were sold as laborers on the sugar and cotton plantations of South and North America and the islands of the Caribbean Sea.
There were relatively few protests against the practice of slavery until the 1700s. Slowly but steadily, more and more people became opposed to the idea of holding human beings as private property.
Especially influential were Enlightenment thinkers, who argued that slavery was morally wrong.
Quakers and members of other religious groups also condemned slavery as a sin.
Though antislavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, they initially had little effect on the centers of slavery themselves—the West Indies, South America, and the southern U.S.
Formal organizations emerged to champion abolitionism.
The election of Lincoln as U.S. president in 1860 marked a turning point in the movement. Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the West. Convinced that their way of life was threatened, the Southern states seceded from the Union. The American Civil War (1861–65) soon followed.
Effects
In 1807 the importation of African slaves was banned in the United States and the British colonies.
By 1833 all enslaved people in the British colonies in the Western Hemisphere were freed.
Slavery was abolished in the French colonial possessions 15 years later.
In 1863 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that enslaved people in the Confederate states were free.
Thirteenth AmendmentThe Thirteenth Amendment (1865) to the Constitution of the United States formally abolished slavery.
NARAThe Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1865) prohibited slavery throughout the country.
