1700s

Near the Stono River, South Carolina, a man known as Jemmy (also called Cato), likely a literate Kongolese Catholic, led 60–100 enslaved people south toward Spanish Florida, which promised freedom to escapees. They killed approximately 20 whites, burned plantations, and marched with drums and a banner. Colonial militia killed 40–50 of the rebels. It was the largest slave revolt in colonial British North America.

On November 29–December 1, 1781, Captain Luke Collingwood of the slave ship Zong ordered 132 living enslaved Africans thrown into the Atlantic. He claimed the ship was short of water and that killing the captives — rather than allowing them to die of illness — would allow the ship's owners, Gregson & Co., to collect insurance on the 'cargo.' The owners filed a claim; underwriters refused. The case went to court in 1783.

James Madison's notes record the Three-Fifths Clause debate at the Constitutional Convention. Southern delegates demanded enslaved people count fully for apportionment; Northern delegates argued they should not count at all. The compromise counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person for representation purposes, giving slaveholding states 25 extra congressional seats and distorting national politics until 1865.

On August 22, 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) launched a revolution that would produce the only successful large-scale slave revolt in history and the first Black republic in the Americas. News reached the United States within weeks. American slaveholders reacted with terror; the Virginia legislature convened emergency sessions. The revolution reshaped American slave policy for the next three decades.

On the night of August 22, 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) launched a coordinated uprising that began at the Bois Caïman ceremony led by Dutty Boukman. Within weeks 100,000 enslaved people had risen, burned over 1,000 plantations, and killed hundreds of white colonists. The revolution continued for 13 years under leaders including Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe. It terrified American slaveholders and triggered emergency measures. South Carolina suspended slave imports; Congress later banned immigration of free Black people from the Caribbean. France was forced to abolish slavery in 1794; Haiti declared full independence in 1804.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin made short-staple cotton profitable, transforming slavery from perceived decline to explosive growth. US cotton production grew from 3,000 bales in 1790 to 4 million by 1860, dramatically increasing demand for enslaved labor and accelerating westward expansion of slavery.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin, patented in 1794, made short-staple cotton commercially viable across the interior South. U.S. cotton output grew from 3,000 bales in 1790 to 73,000 bales in 1800 and 178,000 bales by 1810. Rather than reducing the need for enslaved labor, the gin massively increased it: more cotton required more hands for planting, picking, and processing. As Virginia and Maryland tobacco farms declined, they became suppliers of enslaved people to the booming cotton states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This internal slave trade would forcibly relocate approximately 1 million enslaved people between 1790 and 1860.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin made short-staple cotton cultivation vastly profitable, transforming slavery from a system in perceived economic decline to one with explosive growth potential. Cotton production in the US grew from 3,000 bales in 1790 to 4 million bales by 1860. The gin dramatically increased demand for enslaved labor, accelerated westward expansion of slavery, and made the internal slave trade the dominant form of forced migration in America.

By 1700 the transatlantic slave trade had transported an estimated 1.5 million Africans to the Americas since 1500. In the first half of the eighteenth century volume surged: approximately 2 million more were transported between 1700 and 1750. English, Portuguese, French, and Dutch merchants competed for supremacy, transforming West African politics and depopulating entire coastal regions.

Between 1700 and 1750, mortality rates on slave ships averaged 15–20% per voyage. Captives resisted through hunger strikes, suicide by jumping overboard, and insurrection. Crews were instructed to shoot those attempting suicide, revealing how common self-liberation through death had become.

Between 1700 and 1750, mortality rates on slave ships averaged 15–20% per voyage. Enslaved Africans were chained below decks in spaces less than 18 inches high. Dysentery, smallpox, and dehydration were primary killers. Captives resisted through hunger strikes, suicide by jumping overboard, and insurrection. Ship crews were instructed to shoot those attempting suicide, revealing how common the act of self-liberation through death was.

Virginia consolidates decades of piecemeal legislation into a comprehensive slave code. Enslaved people are declared real estate, cannot own property, cannot testify against white people, and may be dismembered for running away. The code also bars free Black people from holding public office and strips previously granted rights. Serves as a model for other colonies.

On April 6, approximately 25 enslaved Akan and Coromantee Africans set fire to a building in lower Manhattan and ambushed whites who came to extinguish it, killing 9 and wounding 6. Colonial militia suppressed the revolt. In the aftermath, 21 enslaved people were executed — some burned at the stake, broken on the wheel, or hung in chains — and 6 died by suicide before capture.

In the wake of the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina formalized the slave patrol system — organized groups of white men with legal authority to police enslaved movement, search quarters, and punish violations. Similar systems existed in Virginia and other colonies. These patrols are widely regarded by historians as the direct institutional predecessor of modern American policing, embedding racial surveillance into law enforcement from its origins.