In the United States between 1783 and 1815, only white adult males enjoyed the full range of privileges of citizenship that almost all U.S. citizens take for granted in the twenty-first century. Neither African Americans nor women had the right to vote. Women were legally subordinate (lesser or inferior) to their husbands. African American slaves essentially had no rights or privileges. They were considered property, not human beings.

Slaves made up a large percentage of the population in early America. Of the four million inhabitants counted in the nation's first census in 1790, some seven hundred thousand, or almost 18 percent, were African American slaves. Most slaves lived in the Southern states, the largest numbers in Maryland and Virginia.

Black slaves were brought from Africa beginning in the 1600s. They primarily worked the tobacco and rice fields of the Southern Colonies—Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia...