A post circulating on social media claims that the U.S. was the only country to abolish slavery, and that Black and white populations were equally involved in the institution of slavery worldwide. This fact check will focus on the primary claim made in these posts – whether the U.S. was the only country to abolish slavery, which is false. Other claims are outside the scope of this check. The primary claim is as follows: “Slavery used to be normal throughout the world. America was the ONLY country that ended it!” The post is visible here . This fact check will view the ending of slavery as the abolition within a given country and its territories, and not of the slave trade. The claim comes amid protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. The wave of demonstrations has exposed deep grievances over strained race relations worldwide ( here ). A Reuters chronology of slavery abolition around the world is visible here . The United States was not the only or even first country to end slavery. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “all persons held as slaves… shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free,” effective January 1, 1863. It was not until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, in 1865, that slavery was formally abolished ( here ). Effective August 1, 1834, in 1833 Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act granting freedom to enslaved people in most of the British Empire. The Act freed over “800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada.” ( here ) In Mexico, the institution of slavery was abolished in 1829 ( here ). Colonial Haiti, then called Saint-Domingue, the uprising known as the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was the “only instance of a successful slave rebellion in world history and the founding event of the first modern black republic,” according to Time. Led by Toussaint Louverture, the Haitian revolution “constitutes a landmark in the history of abolition” ( here ). This decision was confirmed by the French government in 1794 ( here ). Further reading and commentary on this revolt, the impact of which reverberated around the region, can be found here , here and here . Modern day slavery and illegal people trafficking are out of the scope of this fact check. VERDICTPartly false. The primary claim in these posts that U.S. was the only country to abolish the institution of slavery is false. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here . Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Within several decades of being brought to the American colonies, Africans were stripped of human rights and enslaved as chattel, an enslavement that lasted more than two centuries. Slavers whipped slaves who displeased them. Clergy preached that slavery was the will of God. Scientists "proved" that blacks were less evolved-a subspecies of the human race. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the importance of slavery to the South's economy. By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion, along with a growing anti-slavery movement in the North, provoked a national debate over slavery that helped precipitate the American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation's four million slaves, the legacy of slavery influenced American history, from the chaotic years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1950s. 1619 August"Twenty and odd" Africans, probably seized from a Portuguese slave ship, were carried to Jamestown, Virginia, and traded for provisions. They were classified as indentured servants. 1640 July 9 1641 1662 1676 1688 February 18 1705 1712 April 1770 March 5Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave, became an early casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Although Attucks was credited as the leader of the event, debate raged for over a century as to whether he was a patriotic hero or a trouble-making villain. 1775 April 14 1775 December 30 1776 July 4 1793 February 12Congress passed the first fugitive slave act, making it a crime to harbor an escaped slave or to interfere with the arrest of a slave. 1800 August 30 1808 January 1 1816 April 9 1816 December 28 1820 March 3 1831 August 21-22 1839 1850 1852 March 20The anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was published and, by year's end, 300,000 copies were sold in the United States. "Tom shows," dramatizations based on the plot of the novel, were widely performed by traveling companies into the 20th century, spreading common stereotypes of African Americans. 1854 1857 March 6In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the United States Supreme Court ruled that blacks were not citizens of the United States and denied Congress the ability to prohibit slavery in any federal territory. 1860-1861
1863 July 18The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry led a heroic attack on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The 54th was the first all-black regiment recruited in the North for the Union army. As many as 185,000 black soldiers fought on the side of the Union. 1865 December 6 |