emancipated slaves
Former chattel, now free
Emancipated slaves were enslaved people who gained freedom through legal decree, self-purchase, or escape.
In American history, the term typically refers to those freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 or the Thirteenth Amendment: Emancipated slaves faced enormous challenges rebuilding their lives after the war.
The phrase emphasizes the transition from bondage to freedom rather than the condition of enslavement itself.
- freedom papersLegal proof of emancipation
- abolitionFormal discontinuation of practice
- manumissionFormal freeing of enslaved
- hiring outRenting to others
- tenant farmingAgriculture on leased property
land redistribution · Black churches · 13th Amendment · Dred Scott decision · oral histories · Reconstruction Era · Underground Railroad · Civil War · colored troops · abolitionist societies · family separation · storytelling traditions · racial identity · freedmen · Juneteenth · African diaspora · sharecropping · literacy programs
- Reconstructionfreedmen, Freedmen's Bureau, Fourteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, carpetbaggers
emancipated slaveschattel slaves
Persons owned as movable property
bondsmen · bondspeople · bondservants · indentured servants · serfs
emancipated slavesslaveholders
Owners of enslaved people
slave owners · plantation owners · enslavers · masters · slave traders
emancipate, emancipation, emancipator, emancipatory, slave, slaves, slaver, slavers, slavery