American slavery refers to the institution of chattel slavery as it existed within the territory of what is now the United States, from the first permanent African labor arrangements in the early 17th century through the legal abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. At its core, the institution involved the ownership of human beings as property, the compelled labor of enslaved persons without compensation, and the hereditary transmission of enslaved status through the maternal line. American slavery was racially structured: the overwhelming majority of enslaved persons were of sub-Saharan African descent, and legal codes in slave-holding jurisdictions defined enslaved status in explicitly racial terms. The institution shaped the economic, political, social, and demographic development of the United States and remains a subject of active historical, legal, and political debate.

Africans were first brought to English colonial North America at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 - a date whose historical significance is itself a matter of interpretive debate (see Viewpoints below). The institution expanded across the southern colonies and, after independence, the southern states, becoming legally entrenched through slave codes that defined enslaved persons as real or personal property. At the time of the first federal census in 1790, approximately 700,000 enslaved persons were counted in the United States. By 1860, that number had grown to nearly four million. The transatlantic slave trade to the United States was formally prohibited by federal statute in 1808, though illegal importation continued at reduced levels. After 1808, the domestic slave trade - including the forced migration of enslaved persons from the Upper South to the Lower South and the Gulf states - became a major institution in its own right. Estimates suggest that between 1820 and 1860, more than one million enslaved persons were relocated through the domestic trade, frequently separating families.

Slavery was not uniformly distributed across the United States. It was concentrated in states where plantation agriculture - particularly tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton - was economically central. By 1860, cotton produced by enslaved labor in the Deep South constituted approximately half of all U.S. exports by value. Slavery also existed in urban and domestic contexts, and a smaller number of enslaved persons worked in skilled trades and industries.

The legal history of American slavery involves colonial-era statutes, federal constitutional compromises, and the eventual abolition of the institution. The U.S. Constitution of 1787 included several provisions bearing on slavery without naming it directly, including the Three-Fifths Clause (Article I, Section 2), the Slave Trade Clause (Article I, Section 9), and the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2). These compromises are interpreted differently by historians and legal scholars with respect to their intent and effect. The sectional conflict over slavery's expansion into western territories dominated American politics from the 1820s onward and is among the causes most commonly cited for the Civil War (1861-1865); the relative weight of slavery versus other factors remains a matter of historical debate. For further detail, see American Civil War.

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified 6 December 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime throughout the United States.

A full treatment of the origins, development, legal codification, economics, resistance, and abolition of American slavery is available at American Slavery - History.

Substantial consensus exists among historians on the basic factual record of American slavery - its chronology, legal structure, geographic extent, and economic significance. Consensus among economists and historians also exists that enslaved labor was central to the antebellum southern economy and contributed substantially to national economic growth. Points of active scholarly debate include the precise mechanisms by which slavery shaped post-emancipation racial inequality, the relative weight of slavery versus other factors in causing the Civil War, and the appropriate frameworks for understanding slavery's long-term social and political legacy. See American Slavery - Historical Consensus and American Slavery - Economics Consensus.

Debates about American slavery extend beyond historical description into interpretation, causation, and legacy. Major viewpoints include:

• 1619 Project framework - The argument, associated with the New York Times project of the same name, that 1619 should be understood as a foundational date in American history and that slavery and its legacy are structurally determinative of American institutions and racial inequality today. See 1619 Project Viewpoint.

• Traditional historiographical framework - The view that slavery, while central to American history, must be understood within the full context of the founding period, the Constitution, and the eventually successful abolitionist movement; critics of the 1619 framework argue it overstates slavery's role, understates other formative influences, and misrepresents the significance of 1619 as an origin date. See Traditional Historiography Viewpoint.

• Economic determinist interpretations - The view, associated with scholars such as Edward Baptist and the “New History of Capitalism” school, that enslaved labor was not merely incidental but constitutive of American and global capitalism. This interpretation has been challenged by other economic historians on methodological grounds. See New History of Capitalism Viewpoint.

• Reparations - A range of positions on whether the U.S. government, corporations, or other institutions bear compensatory obligations to the descendants of enslaved persons. See American Slavery - Reparations Debate.

• Confederate memorialization - Debate over the appropriate public status of monuments, place names, and symbols associated with the Confederacy, intersecting with questions about how the Civil War and slavery are remembered. See American Civil War - Memorialization Debate.

• American Slavery - History
• American Civil War
• American Slavery - Reparations Debate
• American Civil War - Memorialization Debate
• 1619 Project Viewpoint
• Traditional Historiography Viewpoint
• New History of Capitalism Viewpoint
• Reconstruction
• American Slavery - Historical Consensus
• American Slavery - Economics Consensus
• Jim Crow

1. Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Harvard University Press, 1998.
2. Fogel, Robert W., and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Little, Brown, 1974.
3. Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Basic Books, 2014.
4. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery: 1619-1877. Hill and Wang, 1993.
5. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864.
6. Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. Oxford University Press, 2005.
7. Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery. Oxford University Press, 2001.
8. Hannah-Jones, Nikole, et al. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. One World, 2021.
9. Wilentz, Sean. “American Slavery and the Relentless Unforeseen.” New York Review of Books, 19 November 2019.