Foreword

Introduction

Rise and fall of American slavery : a brief overview

Origins of American slavery

Atlantic slave trade / Daniel C. Littlefield ; Establishing slavery in the southern colonies / John B. Boles ; Slavery in the northern colonies / Donald R. Wright

Slavery and the American Revolution

American slavery : the American Revolution (the demise of slavery in the North) / Peter Kolchin ; Failure of gradual emancipation in the South / Gary B. Nash

House divided : American slavery in the Antebellum era

Missouri Compromise of 1820 / Roger L. Ransom ; John C. Calhoun and the Southern defense of slavery / Nathaniel Weyl & William Marina ; Abolitionist movement provokes the South / William W. Freehling ; Social tensions within Southern plantation society / Ronald Takaki ; Fugitive slaves exacerbate the sectional crisis over slavery / James Oakes ; Slavery and sectional tensions in the 1850s / John Hope Franklin & Albert A. Moss Jr.

Civil War and the end of American slavery

Slaves seek freedom in the Civil War / Merton L. Dillon ; Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation / James M. McPherson ; How slaves responded to their emancipation / Leon F. Litwack ; Reconstruction : the aftermath of emancipation and Civil War / David W. Blight

Was the Civil War necessary to end slavery?

War was not necessary to end American slavery / Jeffrey Rogers Hummel ; Significance of America's Civil War and abolition of slavery in world history / Robert W. Fogel.