This KS3 History quiz takes a second look at abolition of slavery in the USA. The majority of slaves in the USA were Africans. Slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Today, slavery in any form is illegal in most countries. In the USA, the road to the abolition of slavery was long and hard. There was a lot less slavery in the northern states and by the nineteenth century, many people living in the north wanted slavery to be abolished. A strong abolition movement developed. One leading figure of the movement, Frederick Douglass, was born as a slave but escaped to freedom when he was 20 years old. He became a writer and speaker against slavery.
By the end of the 18th century, free slaves and northerners who were against slavery were helping slaves escape from the south. They did this via a network of safe houses that were termed the Underground Railroad. This was one of the things that caused tension between the north and the south even before the Civil War began - the southerners saw this as being an attempt to take away a system that supported their way of life.