Just a couple of comments regarding the 'sin of slavery'.
First of all, yes - it is a sin. Menstealers are condemned in the Bible. It is an affront to the command to love your neighbor as your self -- and also to the command to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Knowing that man is made in the image of God.
That said, Slavery has been around since the time of Nimrod. It exists today. Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame had been a slave to the Ottoman Turks - until he escaped. There is nothing 'unique' about America regarding the sin of Slavery. Those that are vehement about Slavery as an evil to end all evils should go to the Sudan, and Africa, and fight present day slavers.
And finally, had America not imported these slaves - what would have been the outcome for these slaves? Their forefathers apparently were weak, and allowed themselves to be captured by neighboring tribesmen. Without an outlet, their neighboring tribesmen would have just killed them. OR, they would have sold them to the other outlet: the Islamic world. The Islamic slavers typically castrated the males - so that would not have worked out too well either.
So I agree: Slavery is a heinous sin. But the alternative for those slaves would have been much worse. Sometimes God brings good out of evil.
That said, Slavery has been around since the time of Nimrod. It exists today. Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame had been a slave to the Ottoman Turks - until he escaped. There is nothing 'unique' about America regarding the sin of Slavery. Those that are vehement about Slavery as an evil to end all evils should go to the Sudan, and Africa, and fight present day slavers.
The reality of slavery is that no known peoples have not had any of it. St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon clearly illustrates the fact that slavery existed in the First Century A.D., and that the church did not abolish it immediately. Under the leadership of William Wilberforce, the British took a firm, and expensive, stand against slavery internationally, but not before the Nineteenth Century. But the point is not that there was slavery in Christendom, the real point is that it was Christian leadership - and only Christian leadership - which has ever produced any meaningful reduction in slavery in the world. And if it took a civil war in America to abolish slavery here, consider that while Christians with rifles were the slaveholders in that case, there was never any prospect of the abolition of slavery here - or anywhere else - except by the influence of other Christians with rifles.William Wilberforce