Topic: Slavery
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Charleston Non-Importation Agreement
This 1769 document is an agreement in which the residents of Charleston agreed to boycott all goods imported from England. In protest against British policies, residents agreed to produce their...
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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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Cook’s Room
Image of the Cook’s Room where cook Edith Fossett lived with her family....
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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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Edith Hern Fossett, an enslaved cook
Edith Hern was born in 1787. Her father was David Hern, a carpenter. Her mother was Isabel, a housemaid and farm worker. Both were slaves. Edith married Joseph Fossett, and they had ten children.When Thomas Jefferson was president, he picked Edith to train to be a cook in the White House. For almost seven years,…
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