How did slaves come into freedom?

In January, the Emancipation Proclamation abolished the institution of slavery and permitted African Americans to join the military. A search ... of a draft. This ability to purchase a deferment heightened the resentment of many in the lower class who felt that they were being forced to fight for the freedom of African Americans. read more

Some slaves also sought freedom through revolt against their masters, but this almost invariably failed. The purchase option usually involved purchase of the slave by a free black person or by a white person who then freed the former slave. read more

But opposition to slavery did not develop into an organized effort until the age of the Revolutionary War. As colonists demanded the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they were forced to question and come to terms with the hypocrisy of slaveholding in their emergent free nation. read more

In 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court (involving a slave who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery. read more