When was the slave trade abolished and what happened during the civil war?
Slave trade was abolished legally in 1808 which meant it was illegal to bring new slaves into America. That didn’t stop illegal importing of slaves, just like prohibition didn’t stop drinking. Slaves were still sold on the open market from one owner to another, they just couldn’t bring new slaves in from another country. Up to the Civil War, if someone could prove a black person was an escaped slave, they could legally be taken back to the owners. Proof could be someone just swearing that the person before the judge was who the bounty hunter said he was. That’s why the underground railroad went all the way to Canada. It didn’t do any good for escaping slaves to just get into a free state like Ohio, because the law of the land said that if an escaped slave was captured, they had to be returned. The problem was that if the captured black person didn’t have someone to vouch for them as being free, they could be returned. During the Civil War, blacks fighting with the Union Army, if captur
