DEAR Blog
Disaster Experiential Activity and Reflection
Project by Noah Hass-Cohen, Psy.D., Alliant International University School of Professional Psychology
Contributors: Jeremy Arzt, M.A.; Joanna Clyde Findley, M.A.; Anya Kavanaugh, B.F.A;
Alliant International University, Couples and Family Therapy, Crisis and Trauma course students
1600s-1865: SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES
Background
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A form of slave labor which existed as a legal institution in North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865 following the American Civil War.
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From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas. Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.
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Slaves resisted the institution through rebellions and non-compliance, and escaped it through travel to non-slave states and Canada, facilitated by the Underground Railroad. Advocates of abolitionism engaged in moral and political debates, and encouraged the creation of Free Soil states as Western expansion proceeded.
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Slavery was a principal issue leading to the American Civil War. After the Union prevailed in the war, slavery was made illegal throughout the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Psychological Impact
The psychological impact of institutionalized slavery is so far-reaching and widespread, both on an individual and national/worldwide scale, that it cannot be summarized here. Its immediate impact included many generations, and long-term impact continues further to many more.