Why did slavery end in the US?

Answer 1

Because the North won - having issued the Emacipation Proclamation (chiefly to keep out the British, rather than for pure Abolitionist sentiment), resulting in the liberation of many slaves by the Union armies. It turned out to be a wartime measure that could not have been rescinded afterwards.
The common misconception is that it ended (in the US) when Abraham Lincoln Signed and approved the emancipation Proclamation.

This is, however, wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation only officially ended slavery for slaves in "rebellious" states... i.e. just those that denied that the government of which Lincoln was president had any power over them.

It did have one immediate effect: the Union Army stopped treating captured slaves as "contraband enemy property" and began immediately freeing them. However, slavery didn't officially end in the US as a whole until December 6, 1865, when Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment pushing it over the requirement of ratification by at least 3/4 of the states and making it a part of the US Constitution.

It also might be noted that while the 13th amendment freed slaves in general, it expressly permits involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes. Slavery in that sense is technically still constitutional under US law, though it's since been abolished by all states individually with the last being Alabama in 1927.

It is still endemic in many parts of the world.

Answer 2

Slavery was not ended in the north in 1804. In fact it was still quite widespread in the northern states. Author Robert Steinfeld's deservedly praised book, "The Invention of Free Labor" (1991) sweepingly proclaims that "by 1804 slavery had been abolished throughout New England." Sounds very wonderful, but ignores the census records which show that in 1804 there were 1,488 slaves in New England. Pennsylvania, with its strong Quaker influence, had been the first to act to limit slavery. But even Pennsylvania's law provided for only gradual emancipation. Any slaves who were over the age of eighteen were not freed, and would not be under the law. They would die as they had lived, slaves. Slave children, including newly born slaves, would be freed when they reached the age of eighteen. This law would have produced the eventual extinction of slavery over the next fifty or more years. Most other northern states followed the Pennsylvania model of gradual emancipation, to one extent or another.

Most northerners sold their slaves to southerners, because large scale agriculture was not practiced in the north as it was in the south, and the slaves did not flourish in the cold northern winters, being in many cases only a few years removed from tropical Africa. And if they kept their slaves, they would eventually be freed by operation of the new northern anti-slavery laws. Much better to sell them and get the money they had cost back than allow them to become free. It was only after the northerners had safely recovered their investment in slaves by selling them to others that they began to agitate for the outlawing of slavery in large numbers, unconcerned about any financial loss this might cause their recent customers. No one suggested that the New England ship owners who had grown rich and fat in the slave trade should be stripped of their fortunes, or that the new class of wealthy northern mill owners who had grown rich on the cheap. slave-grown cotton feeding their mills should be penalized.

There were still some slaves in New Jersey in 1865 when the Civil War was over, who were freed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution.

It is a myth that slavery was completely ended in the north, though in large part slavery had been done away with in the north. It was not a complete abolition and the northern people were not all dewy-eyed over freeing the unfortunate slaves, now that they had safely sold most of their own.

The northern states after the war insisted that freed slaves in the south, who could not read or write, be allowed to vote. This seems fine in principal until you consider that free blacks in the north were most often not allowed to vote, even if they could read and write. Illinois had a law on the books which forbade black people to live anywhere in the state.

I dont know what they're teaching in schools these days, but the "facts" presented seem highly selective.

If you're actually interested look here for more reliable information:

http://www.slavenorth.com/

Answer 3

Lincoln made many reforms freeing slaves under the Confederacy, and most Northerners began to see how wrong slavery was. The individual states in the north eventually abolished slavery in their individual states.