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America Without Slavery

For newly freed men, women, and children in the South and African Americans throughout the nation, the end of the Civil War brought feelings of joy and hope, as well as turmoil and uncertainty.

What would America be like without slavery? How would people’s lives change?

As the institution of slavery came apart, newly freed people began reconstructing their families and communities. Freedom offered new possibilities—some positive, some frightening.

What was certain was that things would not remain the same.

This 1865 illustration presented a vision of what life would be like for African Americans without slavery, including the freedom to get an education and the ability to provide a safe home for one’s family.

We spent all the day in praying to God that he might grant us and all of our race a 4th of July in this country when we would be able to dwell under the bright and genial rays of universal liberty, enjoying the right of suffrage, and the rights and immunities accorded to others.

James H. Payne, U.S. Colored Troops, 1865

The 13th Amendment

The Triumph of Freedom Over Slavery

The Freedman, John Quincy Adams Ward, 1863

Ratified in December 1865, the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed slavery and gave Congress the power to pass new laws to protect citizens’ rights. Abolitionists celebrated the amendment as a moral victory over the inhumanity of slavery and a redemption of the nation’s founding promise of freedom. But outlawing slavery alone would not be enough to secure full freedom—the government would have to recognize African Americans as equal citizens under the law.

The Triumph of Freedom Over Slavery

The Freedman, John Quincy Adams Ward, 1863

Facing Freedom

Family on plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862

Family in front of their log cabin in Florida, ca. 1870

The coming of freedom was a jubilant time for newly freed African Americans. It also generated new questions about how to reconstruct lives, communities, and families in a world with new rules and challenges. It left African Americans with many questions in need of answers.

Family on plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862

Family in front of their log cabin in Florida, ca. 1870

Reaction and Resistance

Not everyone celebrated the end of slavery. Many white Americans rejected the idea of equal rights for African Americans. Some violently resisted the changes brought about by slavery’s end.

This is a country for white men and, by God, as long as I am president it shall be a government for white men.

President Andrew Johnson, 1865

As to recognizing the rights of freedmen . . . I will say there is not one man or woman in all the South who believes they are free, but we consider them as stolen property—stolen by the bayonets of the damnable United States government.

T. Yancey, Mississippi, 1865

This jubilant scene of African American troops marching through Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1865 depicted the Civil War as a war of liberation and victory over slavery.

This is your country, but it is ours too; you were born here, so were we; your fathers fought for it, but our fathers fed them.

Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia, 1866

The Promise of Reconstruction

With the abolition of slavery, the United States entered a moment of possibility where the nation might live up to its ideals of freedom, fairness, and equality. Reconstruction grappled with the most fundamental questions of American democracy. Who gets justice? What does citizenship mean? How is the nation defined? It was a period of time when the process of America’s reunification held the promise of a more equitable future for African Americans.

This is the nation’s golden hour,
Nerve every heart and hand,
To build on Justice, as a rock,
The future of the land.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1865