E X T E N S I O N SLAVERY When Poe wrote his stories, slavery was still legal in the uSA. one of the characters of The Gold Bug is a black man, called Jupiter. the relationship between legrand, the main character of the story, and Jupiter is a master-slave one, but legrand treats his servant well and Jupiter seems happy to serve his master. Edgar Allan Poe was born in virginia, a southern state and he inherited1 a slave and decided to free2 him. At the time, freeing a slave was very expensive and complicated.White people that wanted to free a slave could also sell him to a free black individual or family. this is what Poe did. Slavery in America began in the early 17th century and continued for the next 250 years. About 10-15 million African people were put onto crowded ships and brought to the new World as slaves. they worked in the production of tobacco crops3 and later, in cotton plantations in the South of the united States. the use of slaves in southern states became fundamental to the economy of the country. in the late 18th century, the abolitionist movement4 began in the north and the country was divided into two different parts: the states that wanted slavery (the southern ones) and the states which wanted its abolition (the northern ones). in 1820, the Missouri Compromise banned5 slavery in all new western territories. in 1857, the Supreme court, with the Dred Scott Decision, said that Negroes (the word used to describe the African ethnical group) were not citizens. this meant that slaves who escaped to free states were not free, but were the property of their owners and had to go back to them. the election of Abraham Lincoln a member of the anti-slavery republican Party to the presidency in 1860 convinced many Southern people that slavery had to be abolished. During the civil War, Abraham lincoln s famous Emancipation Proclamation, freed slaves in all areas of the country where there were rebellions. the Thirteenth Amendment6, which abolished slavery, was passed by the Senate in April 1864, and by the House of representatives in January 1865.the amendment was not valid until it was accepted by three fourths of the states, which happened on December 6, 1865. on that date, all slaves became officially free. 1. inherited: received something from someone after they have died. 2. free: liberate. 3. crops: large quantity of tobacco or fruit. 4. abolitionist movement: a group of people who want the official end of something. 5. banned: prohibited. 6. amendment: a small change made to a law. 54