Guineamen

Across the seas, human cargo ships carrying slaves traveled the Atlantic ocean from the west coast of Africa to South America, the Caribbean, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and the colonies that became the United States. Men and women who had been brought by canoe after being sold into slavery in Africa, by people in their community, crammed into the hulls of these great ships called Guineamen for the month long journey. Leaving their families behind, the slaves found a life of misery and anguish in a new land. But many of them also found opportunity. Thirty-years after becoming its own nation, The United States of America abolished, or put an end, to legal slavery. It took another fifty-five years and a war to abolish the illegal slave trade in the United States. In less than 100 years, the United States government put an end to the legal and practical practice of slavery, ending a thousands-year tradition of exploitation of people for profit. This is the story of how America did it.