Of course: Slavery was a dominant feature of the antebellum South, but it was also pervasive in the pre-Civil War North the New England states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island all have a history of slavery. In the early colonial period, Europeans invaded these lands and enslaved the Native people who lived there.

As New England colonists drove Native nations out of their homes, they replaced these enslaved Native people with enslaved Africans and invested heavily in the slave trade to power their economy.

Rhode Island addressed its history of slavery on June 22, 2020 when Governor Gina Raimondo announced that the state official name Rhode Island and Providence Plantations would no longer appear on state documents. Instead, the state will just identify itself as Rhode Island.