Slavery in America, part of our ongoing series Sources in U.S. History Online, is a digital collection of over 600 documents in 75,000 pages selected by Vernon Burton and Troy Smith from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and drawn from the Sabin collection and other Gale sources. This project documents key aspects of the history of slavery in America from its origins in Africa to its abolition, including materials on the slave trade, plantation life, emancipation, pro-slavery and anti-slavery arguments, the religious views on slavery, etc.
This digital archive provides access to a wide variety of documents-personal narratives, pamphlets, addresses, political speeches, monographs, sermons, plays, songs, poetic and fictional works published between the 17th and late 19th centuries.
There are several ways to find sources in this product: You can click on the large illustrations on the opening page to explore essays and documents on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, the Secession, and the Fifteenth Amendment. You can also click on the thumbnails at the bottom of the page to receive a structured access to the contents via topics identified by our scholars. Here you will find introductory essays that provide important historical background and educational structure and contain links to documents. Or, choose to go to the key subjects and link to the documents from there.
Finally, to access all the documents or those most targeted to your research assigments or personal interest, you can browse subjects, authors, or works, or search by keyword, subject, author, title or full-text.