Abolition of Slavery
Abolition of Slavery DBQ Essay Slavery in the United States first started in 1619, when African slaves were transported to Jamestown, a settlement in the colony in Virginia. These slaves were brought to the United States primarily to help with the making of crops, especially tobacco. The practice of slavery remained present throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in other colonies of the United States, which helped build and strengthen the American economy as a whole. In 1793, the cotton gin was invented, which triggered the immense importance of the practice of slavery towards the success of the economy in the southern parts of the United States. On the other hand, the northern parts of the United States experienced a rapid growth and dispersal of abolitionist laws and activities, which displayed a great amount of hatred towards the practice of slavery in the United States. The United States Congress made African slave trade or international slave trade illegal in 1808, but it did not hold back the practice of domestic slavery that was becoming even larger in the United States. The act of trading between the colonies in the United States flourished, and by 1860, the amount of slaves in the United States unfortunately tripled, and reached to four million. The expansion of pro-slavery beliefs in the western parts of the United States in addition to the increase in abolitionists in the northern parts of the United States soon caused a tremendous debate over slavery, which practically tore the United States apart. The movement to clear away all of slavery in the United States, known as the abolitionist movement, was led by a free black man, known as Frederick Douglass, as well as whites who supported the movement, such as William Lloyd Garrison, who founded an abolitionist newspaper called “The Liberator”, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published a famous antislavery novel called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852. Abolitionist first argued that the