There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the US in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in every six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 0.5 million free African Americans in all of the US. Of the 4.4 million African Americans in the US before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early sixteenth century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought captured African slaves to the New World, in order to work for them. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and (apart from some very rare cases) were born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States began gradually prohibiting slavery, and it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) were victorious in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states (including many free, black men), eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolishment of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration and the relationship between the police and the African-American community has taken the spotlight in recent years.

Between 1501 and 1866, it is estimated that over 12.5 million people were forced onto ships in Africa, and transported to the Americas as slaves. Furthermore, it is estimated that only 10.7 million of these slaves disembarked on the other side of the Atlantic, meaning that roughly 1.8 million did not survive the journey. The transatlantic slave trade was a part of the triangular trade route between Europe, Africa and the Americas, during the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Generally speaking, this route saw European merchants bring manufactured products to Africa to trade for slaves, then transport the slaves to the Americas to harvest raw materials, before taking these materials back to Europe where they would then be consumed or used in manufacturing. Slavery was an integral part in funding the expansion of Europe's colonial empires, which shaped the modern and highly globalized world in which we live today.

The Middle Passage As with trade, the slave journey was also broken into three parts; the First Passage was the stage where slaves were captured and transported to African ports, the Middle Passage was the journey across the Atlantic, while the Final Passage was where the slaves were transported to their place of work. The death toll in the First Passage is thought to be the highest of the three stages, as millions were killed or fatally wounded as they were captured, however a lack of written data and historical evidence has made this number difficult to estimate. In contrast, shipping records from the time give a much more accurate picture of the Middle Passage's death toll, and this data suggest that roughly 14.5 percent of slaves did not survive the journey. The reason for this was the harsh and cramped conditions on board; slave ships were designed in such a way that they could fit the maximum number of slaves on board in order to maximize profits. These conditions then facilitated the spread of diseases, such as smallpox and dysentery, while malnutrition and thirst created further problems. Generally, slavers aimed to keep slaves as healthy (therefore; profitable) as possible, although there are countless examples of mistreatment and punishment of slaves by their captors, and several cases where slaves were exterminated by the crew as provisions ran low.

Rise and fall of the transatlantic slave trade

The European arrival in the Americas also saw the introduction of virgin soil epidemics (new diseases being introduced to biologically defenseless populations) which decimated the indigenous populations. The abundance of natural resources, but lack of available labor led to the rise of the transatlantic slave trade. Until the mid-1600s, Portuguese traders had a near-monopoly on this trade, supplying slaves to the newly expanding Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America. As other European powers began to expand their empires in the Caribbean and North America, the slave trade grew dramatically, and during the eighteenth century, the number of slaves being brought to the New World increased from an annual average of thirty thousand in the 1690s to 87 thousand in the 1790s. The transatlantic slave trade reached its peak between the 1750 and 1850, and an average of 74 thousand slaves were brought to the Americas each year between these dates. The largest decline came as the slave trade was disrupted during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), although the trade became weakened as the abolitionist movement gained momentum in Europe and the Americas around the turn of the century. The most significant impacts came as the slave trade was abolished in Britain and the U.S. in 1807 and Brazil in 1831, and Britain then used its position as the global superpower to impose abolition on other nations and used the Royal Navy to enforce these measures. While most nations abolished the slave trade in the early 1800s, it would take decades before the actual practice of slavery would be abolished; today, slavery is illegal in almost every country, however modern slavery in the forms of forced labor, human trafficking and sexual exploitation continues to be prevalent across the globe.

From the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, Portuguese and Brazilian traders were responsible for transporting the highest volume of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade. It is estimated that, of the 12.5 million African slaves captured during this time, more than 5.8 million were transported in ships that sailed under the Portuguese and, later, Brazilian flags. British traders transported the second-highest volume of slaves across the Atlantic, totaling at almost 3.3 million; over 2.5 million of these were transported in the 18th century, which was the highest volume of slaves transported by one nation in one century.

This statistic shows the number of black men and women in the US from 1820 until 1880. Slavery was legal in the Southern States of the US until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the US Constitution after the American Civil War. Until that time all of the slaves included in this statistic were registered as living in the South, whereas the majority of the free, black men and women lived in the Northern States. From the data we can see that, while the slave experience was very different for men and women, there was relatively little difference between their numbers in each respective category. While female slaves were more likely to serve in domestic roles, they were also more likely to be working in the lowest and unskilled jobs on plantations, whereas men were given more skilled and physically demanding roles. As slavery was abolished in 1870, all black people from this point were considered free in the census data. It is also worth noticing that in these years the difference in the number of men and women increased, most likely as a result of all the black male soldiers who fell fighting in the American Civil War.

Note: Explore this map with the activity The Underground Railroad.This map shows which states and territories in 1850 permitted the enslavement of people, and which did not. Slavery had been practiced in North America since well before the United States was founded in 1776, and by 1850 it was a key part of the agricultural economy of the southern states. Large cotton plantations operated on the labor of enslaved people, particularly Black Africans. Meanwhile, the northern United States had a more industrial economy, and by 1850 had mostly prohibited slavery for economic, political, and moral reasons. Though these states were considered “free” states, in many cases this meant that slavery wasn’t widespread. Even in states and territories where slavery was technically illegal, there were many loopholes that kept people enslaved and restricted free Black people.

In the years before the American Civil War, which began in 1861, the question of whether new states would allow slavery caused a lot of disagreement and tension between the North and South. The United States was carefully balanced to have as many "slave" states as "free" states, giving both sides an equal number of senators. The South was worried that if more free states were added, this balance would be upset, and the North would be able to pass legislation banning slavery in the United States. The North didn't want slavery to spread to new areas, both for moral reasons and because they didn’t think it was fair that enslaved people couldn’t vote but counted as part of the population when assigning congressional delegates. They argued that this gave the South an unfair advantage when voting for new laws. To try to keep the peace, a series of compromises, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 were proposed to determine what states and territories would or would not permit slavery.

Another issue that caused tension between abolitionists in the North and slave owners in the South was the ongoing trade of enslaved people. The United States government had banned foreign slave trade in 1800, but this did nothing to free the people who were already enslaved in the United States. States in the upper South, such as Virginia, now profited from selling enslaved people to new states in the Deep South.

To escape enslavement, some enslaved people used an informal network of routes, places, and people known as the Underground Railroad to travel in secret to the Northern United States and into Canada, where slavery was illegal. The Underground Railroad was not a literal underground railroad, but because escaping from slavery and helping enslaved people escape was illegal, the network operated in secret. The “conductors” were the people leading enslaved people to freedom and the “station masters,” those who hid enslaved people on the way north. According to some estimates, between 1810 and 1850, the Underground Railroad helped to guide 100,000 enslaved people to freedom.

This map was made through the process of digitization, or tracing historical maps using modern geographic information system (GIS) software. These maps don’t always line up perfectly with modern boundaries, for many reasons. Over time, natural landmarks, such as rivers, can shift their paths, and human landmarks, such as buildings and roads, can be abandoned and demolished. There are also differences in the accuracy of hand-drawn maps compared to computer-drawn maps.

The original maps are published in Harper’s Atlas of American History, and are available through the Library of Congress:

Slavery and Slave Trade 1830-1850

Routes of the Underground Railroad 1830-1865

Fox, Dixon Ryan. Harper's atlas of American history, selected from "The American nation series," with map studies, by Dixon Ryan Fox. [New York, London, Harper & Brothers, 1920] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/32005827/

Between 1628 and 1860, it is estimated that almost 390 thousand Africans were transported as slaves to European colonies in Mainland North America. This figure refers only to those who survived the journey, as it is also thought that over 470 thousand captives embarked on these ships at African ports, however 84 thousand died en route (giving a mortality rate of 17.7 percent). The transportation of African slaves to the Thirteen Colonies was highest in the mid-18th century (although there was some fluctuation), before an observable decline around the time of the American Revolutionary War. Following independence, the importation of slaves remained lower than in previous decades, until it saw a sharp increase in the five years leading up to the slave trade's abolition. In 1807 alone, the year before the U.S. abolished the slave trade, almost 29 thousand slaves were imported from Africa into the U.S. Following this, activity declined greatly; the relatively small number of slaves imported from Africa to the U.S. were most likely into the Spanish territory of Florida. Smuggling also existed on a smaller scale; this accounts for the entries in 1858 and 1860.

Portuguese and Brazilian traders were responsible for transporting the highest volume of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade. Portugal held a near-monopoly on the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th century, due to their network of factories along the African coast, and also imported hundreds of thousands of slaves into Brazil and the Caribbean in the 19th century.

Emergence of other powers The rise of the British, French and Dutch empires in the 17th century was also fueled by profits made from slave labor, and, to a lesser extent, the slave trade. Throughout the 1700s especially, British ships transported more slaves across the Atlantic, as the empire expanded across the Caribbean and North America. Similarly to Britain, ships flying under the flag of the Thirteen Colonies or the U.S. saw relatively large growth from the mid-1700s onwards (apart from a brief disruption caused by the American Revolutionary War), with the number of slave imports peaking in the early years of the 1800s. However, both Britain and the U.S. abolished the slave trade in 1807 and 1808 respectively, which ended their official participation in the widespread importation of slaves. French imports of slaves peaked in the late 1780s, however the numbers then plummeted from 1790 onwards, due to the instability and turmoil caused by the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution.

The largest empire was one of the smallest slave importers While a significant number of slaves eventually ended up in the Spanish Americas, Spanish merchants did not explicitly transport slaves in the same quantities as other powers' merchants. The was rooted in the Spanish legacy of importing slaves through foreign powers (namely Portugal, largely due to the Treaty of Tordesillas), and the forced labor of indigenous societies. However this changed drastically in the 19th century, as independence movements swept across Spain's mainland colonies in the Americas, and Spain then invested heavily into its Caribbean colonies (particularly Cuba).

Human Trafficking Statistics: Human trafficking remains a pervasive global issue, with millions of individuals subjected to exploitation and abuse each year. According to recent statistics, an estimated 25 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking, with the majority being women and children. This lucrative criminal industry generates profits of over $150 billion annually, making it one of the most profitable illegal trades globally. As market research analysts, it's imperative to understand the scale and impact of human trafficking to develop effective strategies for prevention and intervention. Efforts to combat human trafficking have intensified in recent years, driven by increased awareness and advocacy. However, despite these efforts, the problem persists, with trafficking networks adapting to evade law enforcement and exploit vulnerabilities in communities. Through comprehensive data analysis and research, we can uncover trends, identify high-risk areas, and develop targeted interventions to disrupt trafficking networks and support survivors. In this context, understanding human trafficking statistics is crucial for informing policy decisions, resource allocation, and collaborative efforts to combat this grave violation of human rights. Editor’s Choice Every year, approximately 4.5 billion people become victims of forced sex trafficking. Two out of three immigrants become victims of human trafficking, regardless of their international travel method. There are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1000 people worldwide. An estimated 40.3 million individuals are trapped in modern-day slavery, with 24.9 million in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. Around 16.55 million reported human trafficking cases have occurred in the Asia Pacific region. Out of 40 million human trafficking victims worldwide, 25% are children. The highest proportion of forced labor trafficking cases occurs in domestic work, accounting for 30%. The illicit earnings from human trafficking amount to approximately USD 150 billion annually. The sex trafficking industry globally exceeds the size of the worldwide cocaine market. Only 0.4% of survivors of human trafficking cases are detected. Currently, there are 49.6 million people in modern slavery worldwide, with 35% being children. Sex trafficking is the most common type of trafficking in the U.S. In 2022, there were 88 million child sexual abuse material (CSAM) files reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) tip line. Child sex trafficking has been reported in all 50 U.S. states. Human trafficking is a USD 150 billion industry globally. It ranks as the second most profitable illegal industry in the United States. 25 million people worldwide are denied their fundamental right to freedom. 30% of global human trafficking victims are children. Women constitute 49% of all victims of global trafficking. In 2019, 62% of victims in the US were identified as sex trafficking victims. In the same year, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) grantees reported that 68% of clients served were victims of labor trafficking. Human traffickers in the US face a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison. In France, 74% of exploited victims in 2018 were victims of sex trafficking. You May Also Like To Read Domestic Violence Statistics Sexual Assault Statistics Crime Statistics FBI Crime Statistics Referral Marketing Statistics Prison Statistics GDPR Statistics Piracy Statistics Notable Ransomware Statistics DDoS Statistics Divorce Statistics

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Modern slavery is a term that includes any form of human trafficking, slavery, servitude or forced labour, as set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Potential victims of modern slavery in the UK that come to the attention of authorised ‘First Responder’ organisations are referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).

Adults (aged 18 or above) must consent to being referred to the NRM, whilst children under the age of 18 need not consent to being referred. As specified in section 52 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, public authorities in England and Wales have a statutory duty to notify the Home Office when they come across potential victims of modern slavery ('Duty to Notify' (DtN)). This duty is discharged by either referring a child or consenting adult potential victim into the NRM, or by notifying the Home Office via the DtN process if an adult victim does not consent to enter the NRM.

The Home Office publishes quarterly statistical bulletins and aggregated data breakdowns on the National Referral Mechanism webpage on the GOV.UK website regarding the number of potential victims referred each quarter. To allow stakeholders and first responders more flexibility in analysing this data for their own strategic and operational planning, the disaggregated, pseudonymised dataset used to create the aggregated published data is also available from the UK Data Service as 'safeguarded' data. (The UKDS data are available in SPSS, Stata, tab-delimited text and CSV formats.)

Latest edition information

For the 16th edition (May 2025), the data file was amended to include Quarter 1 2025 cases, and the Data Notes documentation file was also updated. Additional variables covering reconsideration requests have been added to the data. Further information on these can be found in the documentation and on the GOV.UK National Referral Mechanism webpage.

The UKDS version of the NRM dataset includes:

• Referral Year/Quarter
• Current decision status
• Gender
• Age group at exploitation (Adult/Child)
• Age at referral
• Age group at referral (Adult/Child)
• Nationality (including dual-nationalities)
• Exploitation type reported
• County lines involvement (Yes/No)
• Location of exploitation (UK/overseas)
• UK Country
  
• Police force sent NRM for investigation
• First responder (Local Authority, Police force, NGO, Government agency)
• Reasonable Grounds (RG) decision outcome
• Reason for negative RG decision
• RG decision Year/Quarter
• Difference in days between the referral date and date of RG decision
• Age of case: number of days between the referral date and the date of the end of the most recently published quarter
• Conclusive grounds (CG) decision outcome
• Reason for negative CG decision
• CG decision Year/Quarter
• Difference in days between the referral date and date of CG decision
• Overseas country (1-10)
• UK County (1-10)
• Competent authority
• Disqualification (DQ) outcome
• Disqualification (DQ) Year/Quarter
• Disqualification (DQ) reason
• Reconsideration - Reasonable grounds (RG)
• Reconsideration - Reasonable grounds (RG) Year/Quarter
• Reconsideration - Conclusive grounds (CG)
• Reconsideration - Conclusive grounds (CG) Year/Quarter
• Reconsideration - Disqualification decisions (DQ)
• Reconsideration - Disqualification decisions (DQ) Year/Quarter
• Date withdrawn
• Withdrawn or suspended

Worldwide, India was the country with the highest number of people living in modern slavery, either as forced laborers, sexual exploitation, forced marriages, or other forms of coercion. An estimated ** million people were living in modern slavery in India, followed by *** million in China. This may be no surprise as these are the two most populous countries worldwide. North Korea was the country with the highest number of people in modern slavery per 1,000 inhabitants.

Initially taken in 1838 to demonstrate the stability and significance of the African American community and to forestall the abrogation of African American voting rights, the Quaker and Abolitionist census of African Americans was continued in 1847 and 1856 and present an invaluable view of the mid-nineteenth century African American population of Philadelphia. Although these censuses list only household heads, providing aggregate information for other household members, and exclude the substantial number of African Americans living in white households, they provide data not found in the federal population schedules. When combined with the information on African Americans taken from the four federal censuses, they offer researchers a richly detailed view of Philadelphia's African American community spanning some forty years. The three censuses are not of equal inclusiveness or quality, however. The 1838 and 1847 enumerations cover only the "old" City of Philadelphia (river-to-river and from Vine to South Streets) and the immediate surrounding districts (Spring Garden, Northern Liberties, Southwark, Moyamensing, Kensington--1838, West Philadelphia--1847); the 1856 survey includes African Americans living throughout the newly enlarged city which, as today, conforms to the boundaries of Philadelphia County. In spite of this deficiency in areal coverage, the earlier censuses are superior historical documents. The 1838 and 1847 censuses contain data on a wide range of social and demographic variables describing the household indicating address, household size, occupation, whether members were born in Pennsylvania, status-at-birth, debts, taxes, number of children attending school, names of beneficial societies and churches (1838), property brought to Philadelphia from other states (1838), sex composition (1847), age structure (1847), literacy (1847), size of rooms and number of people per room (1847), and miscellaneous remarks (1847). While the 1856 census includes the household address and reports literacy, occupation, status-at-birth, and occasional passing remarks about individual households and their occupants, it excludes the other informational categories. Moreover, unlike the other two surveys, it lists the occupations of only higher status African Americans, excluding unskilled and semiskilled designations, and records the status-at-birth of adults only. Indeed, it even fails to provide data permitting the calculation of the size and age and sex structure of households. Variables for each household head and his household include (differ slightly by census year): name, sex, status-at-birth, occupation, wages, real and personal property, literacy, education, religion, membership in beneficial societies and temperance societies, taxes, rents, dwelling size, address, slave or free birth.

A range of available data from various organisations relating to modern slavery.

Series Name: Detected victims of human trafficking for forced labour servitude and slavery by age and sex (number)Series Code: VC_HTF_DETVFLRelease Version: 2020.Q2.G.03 This dataset is the part of the Global SDG Indicator Database compiled through the UN System in preparation for the Secretary-General's annual report on Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.Indicator 16.2.2: Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitationTarget 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of childrenGoal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levelsFor more information on the compilation methodology of this dataset, see https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/

At the beginning of the 19th century, the U.S. labor force was approximately 1.9 million people, with slaves making up over half a million (28 percent) of this number. The share of slaves then increased to almost one third of the overall workforce in the next decade, but dropped to roughly one fifth by 1860; the year before the American Civil War. While the total number of slaves grew by several hundred thousand in each decade, their share of the U.S. labor force decreased due to the high levels of European migration to the U.S. throughout the 19th century. This wave of mass migration was an influential factor in slavery's eventual abolition, as Europeans met the labor demands that had previously been fulfilled by slaves, and those fleeing persecution and oppression in Europe were often sympathetic to the plight of slaves. Nonetheless, the majority of European migrants arrived in the industrialized, northern states, most of which had already abolished slavery in the 18th century, and slave labor was concentrated in the agricultural south at this time; this divide would prove fundamental in the outbreak of the American Civil War.

PLEASE NOTE: This is an index of a historical collection that contains words and phrases that may be offensive or harmful to individuals investigating these records. In order to preserve the objectivity and historical accuracy of the index, State Archives staff took what would today be considered archaic and offensive descriptions concerning race, ethnicity, and gender directly from the original court papers. For more information on appropriate description, please consult the Diversity Style Guide and Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia: Anti-Racist Description Resources.

The Litchfield County Court African Americans and Native Americans Collection is an artificial collection consisting of photocopies of cases involving persons of African descent and indigenous people from the Files and Papers by Subject series of Litchfield County Court records. This collection was created in order to highlight the lives and experiences of underrepresented groups in early America, and make them more easily accessible to researchers.

Collection Overview

The collection consists of records of 188 court cases involving either African Americans or Native Americans. A careful search of the Files for the Litchfield County Court discovered 165 on African Americans and 23 on Native Americans, about one third of the total that was found in Files for the New London County Court for the period up to the American Revolution. A couple of reasons exist for this vast difference in numbers. First, Litchfield County was organized much later than New London, one of Connecticut's four original counties. New London was the home of four of seven recognized tribes, was a trading center, and an area of much greater wealth. Second, minority population in the New London County region has been tracked and tabulated by Barbara Brown and James Rose in Black Roots of Southeastern Connecticut.¹ Although this valuable work does not include all of Negro or Indian background, it provides a wonderful starting point and it has proven to be of some assistance in tracking down minorities in Litchfield County. In most instances, however, identification is based upon language in the documents and knowledge of surnames or first names.² Neither surname nor first name provides an invariably reliable guide so it is possible that some minorities have been missed and some persons included that are erroneous.

In thirteen of 188 court cases, the person of African or Native American background cannot be identified even by first name. He or she is noted as "my Negro," a slave girl, or an Indian. In twenty-three lawsuits, a person with a first name is identified as a Negro, as an Indian in two other cases, and Mulatto in one. In the remaining 151 cases, a least one African American or Native American is identified by complete name.³ Thirteen surnames recur in three or more cases.⁴ A total of seventy surnames, some with more than one spelling, are represented in the records.

The Jacklin surname appears most frequently represented in the records. Seven different Jacklins are found in eighteen cases, two for debt and the remaining sixteen for more serious crimes like assault, breach of peace, keeping a bawdy house, and trespass.⁵ Ten cases concern Cuff Kingsbury of Canaan between 1808 and 1812, all involving debts against Kingsbury and the attempts of plaintiffs to secure writs of execution against him. Cyrus, Daniel, Ebenezer, Jude, Luke, Martin, Nathaniel, Pomp, Titus, and William Freeman are found in nine cases, some for debt, others for theft, and one concerning a petition to appoint a guardian for aged and incompetent Titus Freeman.⁶ Six persons with the surname Caesar are found in seven court cases.

Sixty-one of 188 cases concern debt.⁷ Litchfield County minorities were plaintiffs in only about ten of these lawsuits, half debt by book and half debt by note. The largest single category of court proceedings concern cases of crimes against person or property. They include assault (32 cases), theft (30), breach of peace (5), and breaking out of jail (1). In cases of assault, the Negro or Indian was the perpetrator in about two thirds of the cases and victim in one third. In State v. Alexander Kelson, the defendant was accused of assaulting Eunice Mawwee.⁸ Minority defendants in assault cases included Daniel K. Boham, William Cable, Prince Comyns, Adonijah Coxel, Homer Dolphin, Jack Jacklin, Pompey Lepean, John Mawwee, Zack Negro, and Jarvis Phillips. One breach of peace case, State v. Frederic Way, the defendant, "a transient Indian man," was accused of breach of the peace for threatening Jonathan Rossetter and the family of Samuel Wilson of Harwinton.⁹

In cases of theft, African Americans appeared as defendants in 27 of 30 cases, the only exceptions being two instances in which Negroes were illegally seized by whites and the case of State v. William Pratt of Salisbury. The State charged Pratt with stealing $35 from the house of George Ceasor.¹⁰ More typical, however, are such cases as State v. Prince Cummins for the theft of a dining room table and State v. Nathaniel Freeman for the theft of clothes.¹¹

Another major category of lawsuits revolves around the subject of slaves as property. The number and percentage of such cases is much lower than that for New London County due to the fact that the county was only organized one generation before the American Revolution and the weaker grip the institution of slavery had in that county. The cases may be characterized as conversion to own use (4), fraudulent contract (3), fraudulent sale (3), runaways (3), illegal enslavement (2), and trespass (2).¹² The Litchfield County Court in April 1765 heard George Catling v. Moses Willcocks, a case in which Willcocks was accused of converting a slave girl and household goods to his own use.¹³ In the 1774 fraudulent contract case of Josiah Willoughby v. Elisha Bigelow, the plaintiff accused Bigelow of lying about York Negro's age and condition. Willoughby stated that York Negro was twenty years older that he was reputed to be, was blind in one eye, and "very intemperate in the use of Speretuous Lickor." He sued to recover the purchase price of £45, the court agreed, and the defendant appealed.¹⁴ Cash Africa sued Deborah Marsh of Litchfield in 1777 for illegal enslavement. He claimed that he was unlawfully seized with force and arms and compelled to labor for the defendant for three years.¹⁵ In another case, David Buckingham v. Jonathan Prindle, the defendant was accused of persuading Jack Adolphus to run away from his master. The plaintiff claimed that Adolphus was about twenty years old and bound to service until age twenty-five, when he would be freed under terms of Connecticut's gradual emancipation law.¹⁶

Other subjects found in Litchfield County Minorities include defamation, gambling, keeping a bawdy house, and lascivious carriage. The defamation cases all included the charge of sexual intercourse with an Indian or Negro. In one such case, Henry S. Atwood v. Norman Atwood, both of Watertown, the defendant defamed and slandered the plaintiff by charging that he was "guilty of the crime of fornication or adultery with [a] Black or Negro woman," the wife of Peter Deming.¹⁷ Three cases, two from 1814 and one from 1821, accuse several Negroes accuse Harry Fitch, Polly Gorley, Violet Jacklin, Betsy Mead, and Jack Peck alias Jacklin, of running houses of ill repute.¹⁸

The records on African Americans and Native Americans from Litchfield County are relatively sparse, but they do provide some indication of the difficulties encountered by minorities in white society. They also provide some useful genealogical data on a handful of families in northwestern Connecticut.

1. Barbara W. Brown and James M. Rose, joint authors, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1980).
2. The court cases often identify minorities by the words Negro, mulatto, colored, or Indian.
3. Two or more African Americans or Native Americans are found in 27 lawsuits, but a maximum of two people are included in the Litchfield County Minorities database.
4. Surnames with spelling variations: Boston (3), Botsford (4), Caesar (7), Coxel (3), Freedom (3), Freeman (9), Gauson (5), Jacklin (17), Kingsbury (10), Leopen (4), Mawwee (5), Quomenor (4), and Smith (3).
5. George, Harvey, Isaac, Jack, Philip, Violet, and William Jacklin. Also included is Jack Peck, alias Jack Jacklin.
6. For the last case, see Conservators and Guardians, Box 2, folder 42.
7. Fifty-seven suits for debt, the vast majority of which a minority was plaintiff or defendant, and four concerning writs of execution to recover debt owed.
8. Dec. 1836, Box 3, folder 16.
9. Sep. 1796, Box 3, folder 6.
10. David King v. Stephen Walton, Mar. 1791, Box 1, folder 17;Simon Mitchel v. Edward Hinman, Dec. 1793, Box 1, folder 18; State v. William Pratt, Oct. 1848, Box 2, folder 37.
11. Apr. 1828, Box 2, folder 23; Oct. 1837, Box 2, folder 29.
12. Three additional conversion cases concern livestock and hay.
13. Apr. 1765, Box 1, folder 5.
14. Dec. 1774, Box 1, folder 9.
15. Sep. 1777, Box 1, folder 9.
16. Dec. 1813, Box 1, folder 49.
17. Dec. 1814, Box 2, folder 2.
18. Sep. 1814, Box 2, folder 3, Sep. 1814, Box 2, folder 4; Sep. 1821, Box 2, folder 15.

If a record of interest is found, and a reproduction of the original record is desired, you may submit a request via <a

This dissertation examines the transition from the transatlantic to the transcontinental slave trade in Virginia from the colonial period to the antebellum era. It uses private correspondence and public discourse from various figures in order to explore the way in which contemporaries observed and made sense of this transition. It considers the bearing of economic, political, social, and moral aspects of slavery and the slave trade on Virginian policy toward both. Historians have long pointed to the obvious economic incentives in shutting down transatlantic importation of enslaved Africans for wealthy enslaving Virginians. Often, historians assume a rent-seeking effort to protect or even create a domestic slave trade explains the prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent shift to the transcontinental slave trade. This project argues that Virginian legislators and others invested in the political and economic development of both Virginia and the United States consistently framed their policy toward slavery and the slave trade in terms of their racist desire to control, restrict, and diminish the Black population.

Throughout the history of the transatlantic slave trade, approximately 5.7 million of the 12.5 million African slaves who embarked on slave ships did so in ports along the region of West Central Africa and St. Helena. Today, these regions are in the countries of Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo. The majority of the rest were taken from West Africa, embarking in ports between the present-day countries of Senegal and Gabon, while a smaller number of slaves were captured in the southeast of Africa. Senegambia and off-shore Atlantic islands had the highest number of captives taken from that region in the 16th century, however West Central Africa and St. Helena was the region where most slaves embarked on their journey across the Atlantic in the following centuries. As Portuguese traders were responsible for transporting the largest volume of slaves to the Americas, it is unsurprising that many of the busiest ports in the transatlantic slave trade were in Portuguese-controlled enclaves along the African coast.

This dataset is about book subjects. It has 2 rows and is filtered where the books is Sugar, slavery, & freedom in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. It features 10 columns including number of authors, number of books, earliest publication date, and latest publication date.

Petition subject: Slave trade Original: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:13906064 Date of creation: 1777-01-13 Legislator, committee, or address that the petition was sent to: Several names from a committee Selected signatures:Lancaster HillPeter BessPrince HallJack PeirpontJob LockBrister SlenserNero FuneloNewport Sumner Actions taken on dates: 1777-03-18 Legislative action: Committed on March 18, 1777 Total signatures: 8 Legislative action summary: Committed Males of color signatures: 8 Female only signatures: No Identifications of signatories: a great number of negroes who are detained in a state of slavery in the bowels of a free and Christian country, [males of color] Prayer format was printed vs. manuscript: Manuscript Additional archivist notes: [religious, additional documents in volumes, see pages 130-131] Location of the petition at the Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth: Massachusetts Archives volume 212, pages 132-132a Acknowledgements: Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-5105612), Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, Institutional Development Initiative at Harvard University, and Harvard University Library.