San Antonio College Library

Slavery can be traced back to the start of Western civilization. Meltzer explains slavery in the ancient world and discusses the influence of Christianity. He points out that slavery did not develop its racial aspects until the Renaissance, and provides details of the day-to-day lives of history's many slaves.

Introduction: Mr. Mellon's illuminating presentation of the views of some of the founding fathers on slavery and the Negro exposes the raw nerve of American democratic society. If the central theme of the American Revolution was freedom and equality, the impact of that epochal struggle upon the black man was at best peripheral. The Declaration of Independence had dedicated the Revolution to the proposition that "all men are created equal." There were...

If any single event may be said to have triggered the Negro revolt, it is the publication of David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World in September, 1829. The slaveholding South saw in it only incitement to servile rebellion, and went to fantastic lengths to suppress it. Even in the North, where slavery was generally opposed in principle, moderates insisted that the time for abolition had not yet come and agreed that the pamphlet...