Lesson 13 — Activity 3: Slavery

As difficult as conditions were for workers during the Industrial Revolution and for the early settlers to Canada, there was another group of people for whom things were worse. These were the people brought as slaves from Africa to work in America and in the many colonies in the Caribbean.

In this activity, you will learn about the working conditions of this group of people.

The Door of No Return is a memorial to the slave trade. It is housed at the House of Slaves Museum in Senegal, Africa. It is said that many slaves walked through this door and were placed in ships that took them to America.

These people were sent to work on plantations — large farms that grew crops like tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane. Slaves did not leave Africa by choice; they were captured by slave traders and chained up to be brought across the ocean in boats.

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The people who were captured and made into slaves were black. White people who owned the slaves or supported slavery thought of these slaves as property, not people. Since slaves were thought of as property, they did not have any of the rights that other people enjoyed. Slaves provided the labour to make their owners wealthy, but they did not get anything in return for this work.

In 1863, the president of the United States was Abraham Lincoln. In that year, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

But the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the United States. Lincoln recognized that the Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery.

There were two branches of government that needed to pass such an amendment, the Senate and Congress. The amendment was passed by the Senate in April, 1864, but the House of Congress did not pass it. At that point, Lincoln took an active role to ensure passage through Congress. He insisted that passage of the amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming presidential elections. His efforts met with success when Congress passed the bill in January, 1865, with a vote of 119 – 56.

The 13th Amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, was now law. On February 1, 1865, President Lincoln approved that Congress should send the proposed amendment to every state government in the United States. The necessary number of states passed it by December 6, 1865.

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

What President Lincoln Said ...

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“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”
― Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works - Volume XII

Slavery is defined as work done under the threat of violence and without any payment. Today, slavery still exists on almost every continent. Although it is now known as human trafficking, for those involved, working conditions are still very much like the working conditions of those slaves in the southern United States.