America's Long Struggle against Slavery

The long war against slavery begins centuries before the American Civil War; Professor Bell offers a survey of resistance among enslaved Africans in the 17th and 18th centuries; five generational periods in the long struggle to end slavery.

Slavery in the British Empire has its roots in the trading economy of the 16th century; the Englishman John Hawkins cuts into the Portuguese slave trade in the New World; the Royal African Company, a large slaving operation in the Atlantic.

The American slave trade begins in Africa; African rulers and merchants play a hand in supplying slaves to Europeans; the first strategies of resistance; defensively trying to elude capture; offensive efforts to get away from the hellish confinement.

Leaving the continent of Africa, the second place for resistance is aboard the slave ships as they depart for the Caribbean; this episode explores the suicides, runaways and revolts on slave ships; the efforts by Europeans to control the enslaved.

The Chesapeake tobacco economy in the 17th century; a time when colonial law changes in a way that promotes the slave economy; Anthony Johnson is a freed slave who in turn holds his own slaves; slave codes that change the social order in Virginia.

The moral voices among white Europeans speaking out against slavery; The American Quaker community has a long history of antislavery activism, from legal pamphlets to spiritual protests; the community's limitations in the early American economy.

In Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, the black slaves outnumber their white masters by a wide margin; whites use inhuman tactics to control the slave population; the Tacky's Revolt is one of the largest slave rebellions during the 18th century.

Among runaway slaves, men outnumber women nearly two to one; women do play a role in resistance; women practice several strategies for resistance, critically important because of the prevalence of assault on plantations; a woman named Phibbah.

There may have been several slave uprisings in British North America and the United States; delving into the Stono Rebellion of 1739, which is the only significant armed challenge to slaveholders' supremacy on the mainland before the 19th century.

Runaway slaves in Virginia and the Carolinas have limited options; they can head for the coast or down to Spanish-controlled Florida; some runaway slaves simply disappear into the backcountry; where these maroons go; the dangers they face.

Three important Quaker activists from the 17th and 18th centuries; a hermit writer named Benjamin Lay, a shopkeeper named John Woolman, and a schoolteacher named Anthony Benezet; the transformation in attitudes that occurs during the 18th century.

American colonists fight for independence against their British oppressors; free and enslaved African Americans get an opportunity to fight their war against slavery; black militiamen on both sides of the Revolutionary War; the setbacks they face.

The American Revolution is a watershed in the history of opposition to African slavery in America; Pennsylvania leads the charge in legal changes; abolition efforts fail in southern states; some slaves strike deals with their masters for manumission.

Many abolition efforts gain traction after the American Revolution; an equally powerful revolution to secure the slave system; the reprehensible three-fifths clause and other pro-slavery measures; taking antislavery activists decades to undo.

Between 1791 and 1804, the Haitian Revolution tears apart a French Caribbean colony; one of the single largest slave revolts in the history of the world; the only one that has succeeded so far; uncovering what happens in these 13 astonishing years.

There is more to fighting slavery than achieving legal liberty; the first generation of free black leaders discover this truth in the post-Revolutionary War; the free black population in Philadelphia and New York look for ways to help themselves.

At the turn of the 19th century, social and economic conditions shift; Jefferson passes an act prohibiting the importation of slaves; the mass migration of slaves from Virginia into the Deep South of Louisiana; this migration transforms the country.

The colonization movement rises in the 1810s to send black people from America to Africa; the questions this movement poses for African Americans; where is their home and are they African or American; both sides of this controversial movement.

David Walker and Nat Turner transform the debate about slavery in America; their immediate words and deeds terrorize southern slaveholders; forcing legislators to articulate just how far they will go to protect slavery; witnessing their actions.

David Walker's words and Nat Turner's actions have a galvanizing effect upon white abolitionists; Garrison and others shift from an attitude of slow change to a stance of immediacy; a campaign to challenge slaveholders' moral authority in the 1830s.

The mass migration of the Second Middle Passage changes the nature of resistance to slavery; the threat of separation from families and opposition to their sale to the Deep South; slaves participate in unrelenting resistance; surveying this struggle.

The confounding life of Roger Taney, who turns his back on his family's tobacco plantation and manumits many of his own slaves; as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he dramatically expands the rights of slaveholders through infamous decisions.

In the wake of a financial crash in 1837, Garrison's abolition movement is sidelined; the 1840s and 1850s see the rise of a more radical phase of American abolitionism; Frederick Douglass's writings; the depictions of suicide in antislavery writing.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is a blockbuster novel that depicts the flight to freedom; two very different vantages; the world of the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe; the life of Harriet Tubman, who is at the center of decisive steps taken by enslaved people.

John Brown's failed raid on Harpers Ferry is a famous antislavery action before the Civil War; why this raid is important; whether it is an act of revolution or terrorism; the irony that he achieves in death what he fails to achieve in life.

From the war's start, enslaved people assume it to be a war to destroy American slavery; President Lincoln's charge is simply to preserve the union; how this tension plays out on plantations, in Congress and in the White House, during the Civil War.

A look at the role of black soldiers; what life is like for them in a predominantly white army; the role of black women during the war, many of whom serve as cooks and nurses in Union hospitals; the incredible wartime career of Harriet Tubman.

The end of the Civil War brings legalized slavery in the United States to an end; 3.5 million freed slaves in the South step into an uncertain future; the many challenges Americans (white and black, southern and northern) face in the coming years.

The 13th Amendment outlaws race slavery in America; the Civil War is far in the past; the fight for equal representation among black Americans is an ongoing struggle; the effects of Jim Crow movement; the state of race relations in America today.

The history of the early 21st century may show racism is alive and so is slavery; around the world, 20 to 40 million people are enslaved; surveying case studies of slaves around the world and in the United States; lessons to draw from history.