Click Map to Enlarge In 1860, on the eve of the War Between the States, every state and territory in the United States, like virtually place on earth, had a history of slavery. This map shows the dates in which slavery was abolished in the northern states. These states established laws to gradually end slavery over a period of many decades, and with compensation paid to former slaver owners. So gradual was the process that some of the northern states still had remnant slave populations even up to and during the War Between the States.
I find it very interesting that places such as Minnesota did not officially end slavery until just a couple of years before they raised an army to invade, vanquish and plunder the Confederate States of America. This simply makes no sense if one believes that the war was fought over slavery, which of course it was not. It was a War to Prevent Southern Independence, motivated by greed and lust for power and empire.
The dates above show that slavery in America first ended in the New England States, however, one should also consider that Massachusetts became the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and Connecticut became the second colony to make the practice legal in 1650. New York and New Jersey joined the ranks of slave colonies in 1864. By contrast, a Georgia law prohibited slavery until it was repealed in 1749, which means that for more than a century slavery was legal in Massachusetts but not in Georgia. Slavery was legal in Connecticut for 190 years, compared to about 116 years in Georgia.
While visiting Boston recently I took a tour of the African American National Historic Site. The young black tour guide spoke gushingly of the way the virtuous Bostonians had led the way in crusading against slavery, never hinting that Slavery was legal in Boston for 140 years, and practiced there for even longer. She implied that it was only the evil Southerners who owned slaves. Her self righteousness was totally unjustified. Her ignorance of history, as a National Park Guide, was inexcusable.
Virtually everyone in America today agrees with Robert E. Lee who wrote, years before his native state of Virginia seceded from the Union, "Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." To speak of the evil of slavery as only a southern problem shows, at best, a gross ignorance of American history. At worst, it reveals a hypocritical agenda to vilify and slander the South. Could that agenda be motivated by a desire to justify an unnecessary war which killed more than 620,000 Americans and destroyed countless southern towns, cities, homes and farms?
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