Between the 1500s and the mid-1800s, about 12.5 million enslaved African people were forced to travel the Middle Passage. This portion of an Atlantic Ocean trade route was used to violently transport people from Africa to colonies--including those that became the United States--where they were made to labor under brutal conditions. Slavery resulted in the fast growth of the US economy, but it came at a heavy moral cost. Learn about the perspectives of enslaved people and enslavers, from the early days of slavery to its official end in the 1860s.