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A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their owners), abolitionism (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing.
As a social class, freed slaves were liberti, though later Latin texts used the terms libertus and libertini interchangeably. Libertini were not entitled to hold Roman magistrate or state priesthoods, nor could they achieve legitimate Roman senate. During the early Empire, however, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. Any future children of a freedman would be born free, with full rights of citizenship.
The Claudius Civil Service set a precedent whereby freedmen could be used as in the Roman bureaucracy. In addition, Claudius passed legislation concerning slaves, including a law stating that sick slaves abandoned by their owners became freedmen if they recovered. The emperor was criticized for using freedmen in the Imperial Courts.
Some freedmen enjoyed enormous success and became quite wealthy. The brothers who owned House of the Vettii, one of the biggest and most magnificent houses in Pompeii, are thought to have been freedmen. A freedman who became rich and influential might still be looked down on by the traditional aristocracy as a vulgar nouveau riche. Trimalchio, a character in the Satyricon of Petronius, is a caricature of such a freedman.
The slaves of the Eastern slave trade came mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa, Northwestern Africa, Southern Europe, Slavic countries, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent, and were imported by the Arab-Muslim slave traders into the Middle East and North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the islands of the Indian Ocean. For centuries, Arab-Muslim slave traders took and transported an estimated 10 to 15 million native Africans to slavery throughout the Arab world-Muslim world. They also White slavery (known as Saqaliba), as well as Caucasian and Turkic peoples peoples, from coastal areas of the Mediterranean Region, the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Eurasian steppes.
The offspring of Mamluks were regarded as Muslim freedmen, and hence excluded from the Arab-Muslim slave trade; they were known as the awlād al-nās ("sons of respectable people"), who either fulfilled scribal and administrative functions or served as commanders of the non-Mamluk ḥalqa troops, serving the ruling Arab and Ottoman dynasty dynasties in the Muslim world.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared all enslaved peoples in the Confederacy—states in rebellion and not under the control of the Union—to be permanently free. It did not end slavery in the four border states that had stayed in the Union. African slavery elsewhere was abolished by state action or with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in December 1865. The Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed over the veto of U.S. President Andrew Johnson, gave the formerly enslaved peoples full citizenship in the United States, though this did not guarantee them voting rights. The 14th Amendment made "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" citizens of the United States. The 15th Amendment gave voting rights to all adult males; only adult males had the franchise among White Americans. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are known as the "Civil War Amendments" Constitution Annotated. or the "Reconstruction Amendments".
To help freedmen transition from slavery to freedom, including a free labor market, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln created the Freedmen's Bureau, which assigned agents throughout the former Confederate states. The Bureau also founded schools to educate freedmen, both adults and children; helped freedmen negotiate labor contracts; and tried to minimize violence against freedmen. The era of Reconstruction was an attempt to establish new governments in the former Confederacy and to bring freedmen into society as voting citizens. Northern church bodies, such as the American Missionary Association and the Free Will Baptists, sent teachers to the South to assist in educating freedmen and their children, and eventually established several colleges for higher education. U.S. Army occupation soldiers were stationed throughout the South via military districts enacted by the Reconstruction Acts; they protected freedmen in voting polls and public facilities from violence and intimidation by white Southerners, which were common throughout the region.
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