Between 1525 and 1866 10.7 million Africans were shipped to the West. Of these only about 388,000 came directly to North America, with 450,000 ended up in what would become the US. The remaining 10 million ended up in South America and the Caribbean.
The US banned the importation of slaves and slave trading in 1808. So slaves were legally imported into the US from 1787 to 1808. A total of 21 years.
Slavery existed in the United States from 1787 when we became an independent country to 1865, yet the world acts like we started the slave trade.
Cuba emancipated its slaves in 1886. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to emancipate all its slaves in 1888.
And yet slavery still exists in many parts of the world.
I’m not denying the existence of slavery in those areas, but the slaveholders wanted those territories to enter the Union for that exact purpose. Look at the Ostend Manifesto, which wanted the Union to first try to buy Cuba and then invade it if Spain refused, for the explicit purpose of adding another slave state. Look at the filibustering campaigns of William Walker as another example or George Fitzhugh’s defense of filibustering.
I agree that slavery didn’t start in the US and it didn’t end in 1865. Chattel slavery, that is, the trading of human beings as property, was first started on an industrial scale by Carthage- an ancient civilization in NORTH AFRICA that the historical revisionists try to claim is black (it was founded by the descendants of Phoenician/Lebanese settlers, so it probably wasn’t). Egypt practiced slavery of the Jews. The Barbary slave trade was far worse than anything in the United States and Islamic slavery is still practiced in Africa today.
in fact, even in the US, the Democrats have not shifted their tone on slavery. just look at how they want us to keep importing cheap labor to replace Americans. That cheap labor has no means of switching jobs (for instance, H-1b visas are forced to work in one job, meaning they accept one bad wage or be deported, meaning Americans competing for that position have ot accept and even worse wage). The Democrats are just like the slaveholders of the South- they want to bring in cheap foreign labor to supplant American labor for their own economic and political power.