Oglethorpe and the trustees had slavery banned during his first trip to England from the colony of Georgia. While slaves were present in the colony after 1742, they were not legal until George Whitfield and James Habersham requested that William Stevens, then President of Georgia, petition the Trustees to institutionalize (legalize) the practice. Although the petition presented it in light of cost of goods and competition with South Carolina, the simple fact was that it was very difficult to find whites who were willing to do the needed work.

The Trustees, in turn, petitioned the king, who granted the request. After its legalization, slaves began to arrive in unbelievable numbers. Rice growers required a huge number, since most would die within a few weeks of their arrival. Cotton, also a coastal crop, required a large number of slaves.

By the 1780's, slavery appeared to be dying. Vermont and Pennsylvania were first to outlaw the practice and men such as Elias Boudinot were working to outlaw the practice in New Jersey and other states. The Northwest Territories expressly forbade the practice. In the South, however, Georgia and South Carolina fought every proposal to limit slavery.

In 1793 Eli Whitney perfected a method of removing cotton seeds (the cotton gin). Before this invention cotton had to be removed by hand. With the gin cotton production expanded rapidly, since short-staple cotton, which could be grown inland, could now be processed easily.

William Ellery Channing first proposed that the government "purchase" the slaves from landowners, using money from the sale of Western lands in 1830. The government was underwhelmed. William Lloyd Garrison began publishing The Liberator, alone in his advocating abolition without payment. Slowly others came to his aid, and an Antislavery Society was founded.

It is commonly portrayed that the South was strongly pro-slavery while the North was anti-slave. Many northern businessmen were against abolition because they felt it would be bad for business. Others felt the slavery issue would divide the Union. Lower economic classes did not want competition for jobs. In the mid-1830's anti-abolition riots broke out in New York, Boston, New Jersey and New Hampshire.

Former United States Presdident John Quincy Adams began petitioning Congress to abolish slavery in Washington D. C. in 1836. By 1848 enough northerners had changed their mind to nominate Martin Van Buren for President running on the Free Soil party. The party did not win any electoral votes. In 1850 California demanded admission as a free state, setting in motion the Clay Comprimise (Compromise of 1850). This was the first of a series of compromises and judicial rulings that drove a wedge in the Union because of Slavery.

Northern resolve was being steeled by enforcement of the Fugitive Slave laws and books like Uncle Tom's Cabin more than the inflamatory oratory of Garrison. The Kansas-Nebraska problems resulted in the formation of the Republican Party, which carried all but four northern states. They fought the extension of slavery and proposed government-backed internal improvements.

During President Buchanan's term Georgians found support for their position from the Dred Scot decision, but both the Senate and House were now controlled by free states. Bloody Kansas, no matter who won, served to concern the entire U. S. as a picture of things to come. The nomination of Abraham Lincoln as Republican candidate also concerned the South, but it was his surprising victory in the 1860 election that sealed the South's withdrawal from the Union in spite of his promise to Alex Stephens that he would not interfer with slavery where it existed.

Two years later Lincoln ended slavery with the Emancipation Proclaimation.