Topic: African Americans
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Bannaker’s Almanac
This 1795 almanac was the fourth in a six-year series published by Benjamin Banneker, a free African American scientist, surveyor, and mathematician from Baltimore. Banneker helped survey the land for...
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Codicil to Will
In this amendment to his will, Jefferson freed 5 of his 162 slaves. Two of the five were Madison and Eston Hemings, his sons by his enslaved mistress, Sally Hemings,...
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Conference Committee Report on the Missouri Compromise
This report from a committee representing both houses of Congress paved the way for the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Missouri became a slave state and Maine became a free state,...
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Crisis No. 1 or Thoughts on Slavery
In this early anti-slavery pamphlet, William Hillhouse of Connecticut strongly opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. The controversy over slavery in Congress in 1820 resulted in the...
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Decks of a Slave Ship
This image of a slave ship reflects conditions aboard slave-trading vessels. Although the U.S. had banned the importation of slaves after 1807, other nations continued to engage in the slave...
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Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention
This document is the Declaration of Sentiments issued in Dec. 1833 by the first meeting of the National Anti-Slavery Society. It was later published in William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper,...
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Executor’s Sale
This newspaper notice announced the sale of Thomas Jefferson’s personal property in 1827. Because Jefferson owed roughly $110,000 when he died, his estate had to be sold to pay his...
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Francis Kinloch to Jefferson
This South Carolina planter reacted to Jefferson’s view that “the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation.” In the Carolina low country, slaves vastly outnumbered their...
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Frederick Douglass
When he posed for this portrait, Frederick Douglass was one of the most well-known men in America. Douglass escaped slavery to become a leading abolitionist writer and orator. In one...
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