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The petitioners, who fear that the free black population of Currituck County will join with enslaved people in a revolt against the white people of the county, request that the North Carolina General Assembly to remove all free black people from the county. They suggest this can be done either by forcing them from their homes or by condemning them into slavery. The petitioners also advise the assembly to boost the number of enslavers in Currituck.

In this excerpt, Robinson describes "the four classes of men" who played pivotal roles in the system of chattel slavery.

This is a political cartoon satirizing the secession of South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana in an attempt to show the disunity of the new Confederacy.

In his cartoon, Thomas W. Strong turns southern arguments in favor of slavery against the South. He creates an anti-secessionist message by depicting South Carolina as an enslaved woman (likely a reference to Topsey from Uncle Tom’s Cabin) incapable of making her own decisions.

In this excerpt, Robert Rhett addresses the consequences of southern states not seceding. In the speech he touches on the topics of emancipation, northern rule and westward expansion.

This image is of enslaved black people working on a sugar mill in Antilles as part of the moral and natural history of the Antilles.

The Fugitive Slave Law, passed September 18, 1850, denied a jury trial to any individual accused of escaping from slavery.

This is an 1853 newspaper account of Solomon Northup’s experiences and the trials of those involved in his kidnapping and enslavement.

This table compares southerners and British people using 1860 census data.

This brief newspaper article represents the commonplace practice of selling land, animals and goods while including enslaved people in the same listing in the United States before emancipation. Serving as primary source evidence of a pending sale, the article simplifies the transactions as purely economic.