This HeinOnline collection brings together, for the first time, all essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Our cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery. To give one example, as late as 1901 Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had to decide if a man, both of whose parents had been slaves, could be the legitimate heir of his father, because under southern law, slaves could never be legally married. The library has hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slavery—defending it, attacking it or simply analyzing it, including an expansive slavery collection from Buffalo Erie County Public Library. The cooperation of this institution was central to developing this collection. We have also gathered every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, which includes many essays and articles in obscure, hard-to-find journals in the United States and elsewhere. We have provided more than a thousand pamphlets and books on slavery from the 19th century. We have also included many modern histories of slavery. Within this library is a section containing all modern law review articles on the subject. This library will continue to grow, not only from new scholarship but also from historical material that we continue to locate and add to the collection.

-Paul Finkelman, General Editor

For the last half century, scholars in the United States and elsewhere have focused enormous attention on the impact of slavery on the development of the modern world. Scholars in many disciplines agree that, to a greater or lesser extent, the modern industrial economy was in part (some would say a large part) a result of the system of Atlantic slavery that began in the 1450s and ended in the 1880s. Historians have of course long been interested in slavery. But today slavery scholars are found in law schools, business schools, public policy schools, and medical schools. In universities we find slavery scholars (and courses on slavery) in various departments including economics, political science, literature, sociology, anthropology, fine arts, art history, and archeology. Movies, television programs, best-selling novels, and museum exhibits illustrate how slavery has become a fixture in American popular culture. Universities have sponsored scholarly investigations into whether their history was tied to human bondage. Slavery comes up in political debate over issues of flying the Confederate flag, building monuments, and reparations.

While browsing Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law, you’ll notice gold stars next to some of the titles. These are known as “Editor’s Picks”. Paul Finkelman, the general editor of this collection has chosen what he thinks are the most important titles that are found in this collection.

Some Editor’s Picks:

Use the Slavery Quick Finder Tool to locate sources based on their position, document type, jurisdiction and topic.

You can browse this collection by Periodicals, Slavery Statutes, Bibliography, Judicial Cases, UNC Press Publications and Scholarly Articles & Other Relevant Documents.

Sorted by state, and including the United States as a whole, this section includes slavery acts back to the 1600’s. In the future this will include all of the free states as well. States include:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Kentucky
• Louisiana

This subcollection includes Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the Negro (1926-1937) as well as all slavery cases from 1800-1879 derived from Federal Cases Comprising Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Federal Reporter, Arranged Alphabetically by the Titles of the Cases, and Numbered Consecutively (1894-1897). Also includes U.S. Supreme Court Slavery Cases from 1786 to 1880.