The end of slavery did not bring equality to African Americans. Constitution, one of which, the 15th Amendment, promised black men the right to vote.īlack Troops in Union Blue | 15th Amendment One of the fruits of victory was the passage of the so-called Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Black men made a significant contribution to the eventual Union victory by providing some 180,000 troops out of the approximately 2.2 million men who served the Northern cause. She became a celebrity in her lifetime and a hero of the Civil War.ĭuring the Civil War, the future of the Union and African Americans hung in the balance. Nicknamed the ‘Moses of her People’ for leading runaway slaves to freedom in the north, Harriet Tubman was the most famous member of the Underground Railroad. The idea of returning fugitive slaves to their owners originated at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. ![]() Sometimes, free Blacks and sympathetic whites joined to rescue captured fugitive slaves. government enforced this law, but some Northern states passed laws to resist it. In 1850, Southerners succeeded in getting a new federal law passed to return fugitive slaves who had escaped to the North. Garrison believed it was a pro-slavery document from its inception. Two great abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, once allies, split over the Constitution. Victims of a vicious system of slavery, they endured, resisted, and made many contributions to the United States, but the struggle for freedom and equality had just begun.Īn Overview of the African American Experience | The Constitution and Slavery | Slavery in the American South | Moving Toward Equality Under Law ![]() ![]() As such, the promises of the Declaration of Independence for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were denied them and except for purposes of state representation, they were ignored by the original Constitution. The ancestors of many Black Americans came to America not as willing immigrants, but as captured slaves. Lessons on the Historic Election of Barack Obama
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