Southerners’ fear of the impact of the Somerset decision was justified, because Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1833, more than 30 years before the end of the American Civil War.

When the British took control of Florida from Spain in 1763, they brought with them the system of slavery that had thrived in other Southern colonies. Slavery had begun in the New World in Florida,… ...

The Southern colonies had no reason to put their lives, their families’ lives, their property and their legacy on the line until a single decision at the Court of King’s Bench in London on ...

Had a coalition of abolitionist-minded Northern leaders demanded an end to the slave trade or even a gradual plan for emancipation, some of the Southern states, if not all, would have seceded from ...

Southern colonies wanted slaves to be counted as one person. Northern delegates to the convention, and those opposed to slavery, wanted to count only free persons of each state for the purposes ...

The southern colonies feared that Somerset would eventually apply to them and abolish their way of life. In their view, the only way to preserve slavery was to become independent of Britain.

Slavery never took hold in the northern colonies as it did in the southern colonies mostly because there were no labor-intensive cash crops — no tobacco, indigo, rice or cotton.