When Lewis Tappan requested presentation of an abolitionist petition to the Senate, Johnson, still a slaveowner, declined the request.Įvidence suggests that at least four enslaved and free enslaved African Americans worked in the White House when Tyler was president. He acknowledged their two daughters as his children, giving them his surname, much to the consternation of some of his constituents. Unlike other upper-class planters and leaders who had African-American mistresses or concubines, but never acknowledged them, Johnson treated Chinn as his common law wife. He was later criticized for his interracial relationship with Chin. Johnson inherited Julia Chinn, an octoroon mixed-race woman (seven-eighths European and one-eighth African in ancestry), who was born into slavery around 1790. Later in life, Van Buren belonged to the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the Western territories, but not immediate abolition. Otherwise, Van Buren hired out free and enslaved African Americans to work at the Decatur House, a pattern he continued during his time in the White House. The only slave Van Buren personally owned, Tom, escaped in 1814, and Van Buren made no effort to find him. He also owned 70–80 enslaved African-Americans at his Fort Hill Plantation, comprising the area where Clemson University currently sits. His son John Pierre Burr became an abolitionist and civil rights activist.Ĭalhoun led the pro-slavery faction in the Senate, opposing both total abolitionism and attempts such as the Wilmot Proviso to limit the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Burr personally opposed to slavery, proposing a 1785 bill for immediate emancipation which failed in the New York State Assembly in favor of another bill which required gradual emancipation and was never passed a later bill for immediate emancipation was passed after Burr returned to the State Assembly in 1799. He became a slaveholder himself upon his marriage to Theodosia Bartow Prevost, who held slaves from her prior marriage to Jacques Marcus Prevost, and bought a servant named Carlos. See Thomas Jefferson and slavery for more details.īurr was born into a slaveholding family. As President, he oversaw the abolition of the international slave trade. Despite being a lifelong slave owner, Jefferson routinely condemned the institution of slavery, attempted to restrict its expansion, and advocated gradual emancipation. Most historians believe Jefferson fathered multiple slave children with the enslaved woman Sally Hemings, the likely half-sister of his late wife Martha Wayles Skelton. Thomas Jefferson was the first while Andrew Johnson was the last. The Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution formally abolished slavery in 1865, after the end of the American Civil War.Īt least nine vice presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives. Slavery was legal in the United States from its beginning as a nation, having been practiced in North America since early colonial days. This is a list of vice presidents of the United States who owned slaves.
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