About: Marriage of enslaved people (United States)

Marriage of enslaved people in the United States was generally not legal prior to the Civil War (1861–1865). Enslaved African Americans were considered chattel legally, and they were denied human or civil rights until slavery was abolished after the Civil War and with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Both state and federal laws denied, or rarely defined, rights for enslaved people.