Discover the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the 13th Amendment

This painting depicts a scene on the African coast where captives are being bought and sold. The painting also serves as a protest against slavery during a time when it was still legal in the French colonies in the Americas, especially in the Caribbean islands. 

This plan was a detailed description of the ship, information about its trading history, and how men, women and children were transported. 

A slave tag like this one was used to identify enslaved people who were available to hire out for servant work.  Issued between the late 18th century until 1865, the tag consisted information such as a registered badge number, the enslaved person's line of work and the year. 

The document included the following: location of the slave owner, the name/location of the buyer, the amount of the enslaved person was sold for, and the gender/name/age of the enslaved person.

Route 68 was also the road to freedom for freedom seekers and their allies in the Underground Railroad. 

This painting by Feelings depicts images of the interstate slave trade which includes the confinement of an individual in the Mason County Slave Pen, the arrival in America and a slave auction.

Sojourner Truth was among the few of many enslaved individuals who became important black abolitionists. Born into slavery in New York, Truth escaped to freedom and became an advocate in fair treatment for African Americans and African American women.

Disappointed by the betrayal of his master to not sell his wife and children, Brown mailed himself in a wooden crate in 1849 at the age of 33 from Virginia to Philadelphia to seek freedom. He spent the rest of his life fighting against slavery. 

This law was an attempt of keeping the institution of slavery intact while abolitionist leaders were fighting hard against the inhumane treatment of African Americans in the 19th century.