By michael vivar
The vile and cruel treatment of people of color came most egregiously in the form of slavery. This goes back to the arrival of Europeans on the continent in the 1400s.
For centuries, slavery was the backbone of economy in the Americas. This ranged from grueling work on sugar plantations in Haiti and tobacco cultivation in the United States South to domestic servitude in New England.
During the 19th Century, the movement to end slavery began in America. It was mostly fomented in Northern states and the cause's members identified themselves as "Abolitionists."
One reason abolition took hold more readily in the North is because its wealth wasn't dependent on agriculture as the South's was. An agrarian society, even today, hinges on the availability of cheap or free labor.
Another factor in the Northern anti-slavery movement was the participation of prominent families such as the Adamses and Cabots in Massachusetts and the Cadys in New York. They commanded the sway of public opinion.
Religion played a part on both sides of the slavery issue. Unitarians and Quakers in the North supported a Christian biblical interpretation of human equality. In the South, Baptists and Methodists used the Bible to justify slavery.
The North's closer diplomatic relationship with England also contributed to anti-slavery sentiment as the UK abolished the practice in 1834. It didn't preclude Britain from being neutral on the Civil War and purchasing the South's goods.
The North didn't have clean hands with regards to race relations. Many working class Northerners resented conscription to fight in a war whose cause they didn't believe. This violently exploded in the New York Draft Riots in 1863.
Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which ended slavery. The Civil War would rage until 1865. The last slaves were freed in Texas on June 19, 1865 and is marked by Juneteenth.
After the Civil War, many prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton went on to work toward equity for both people of color and women including the right to vote.
"I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." - Harriet Tubman, former slave and abolitionist