Topic: African Americans
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Jefferson to Robert Pleasants
Jefferson wrote this letter to Robert Pleasants, a Virginia Quaker and anti-slavery leader, in August 1796. Months earlier, another Virginian, St. George Tucker, had published a plan for the gradual...
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Jefferson to Thomas Humphreys
In this letter, Jefferson expressed support for the gradual abolition of slavery, so long as the freed people were forced to leave the U.S. In 1816, the American Colonization Society...
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Jefferson to William Short
In this self-serving letter to his former secretary, Jefferson contrasted the condition of slaves in the U.S. not with other slaves in other countries, but with European peasant laborers. He...
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John Jay to R. Lushington
In this letter, the New Yorker John Jay expressed hope that his state’s legislature would enact a law to abolish slavery. Between 1777 and 1804, every northern state took steps...
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Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences
This 1792 painting by Samuel Jennings was the first by an American artist to address the issue of slavery. Broken chains lay at the feet of Liberty, represented here by...
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Madison to Robert I. Evans
In this response to a Philadelphia abolitionist, James Madison made the case for a gradual approach to ending slavery. A lifelong member of the American Colonization Society, Madison argued that...
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Map of Africa
This 1725 map of Africa reflects a British understanding of the internal organization and divisions within the continent. Cloth, guns, and other goods were sold to Africans in exchange for...
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Map of Free and Slave States
As this map indicates, the further expansion of slavery into the West was the central issue in American politics by 1856. The map’s publishers showed free states in pink and...
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Map of the Most Inhabited Parts of Virginia (Detail)
This cartouche, or shield-shaped design, is from a map produced by two Virginia surveyors, Colonel Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson (father of Thomas Jefferson). By the mid-eighteenth century, British officials...
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