Project Description
Quite the contrary. America was not alone in the great sin of slavery. Even the notion that slavery is a sin is a fairly recent development in human history. Slavery had been practiced across the globe since the dawn of human existence ten thousand years ago. From ancient Mesopotamia through the Greek and Roman Empires, and into Medieval Europe and Africa, slaves were common, “normal,” and accepted practice across all religions, people groups, and ethnicities for most of world history.
For example, Cornell researcher Sandra E. Greene points out that while millions of Africans were exported as slaves from West Africa, millions more remained enslaved in Africa by other Africans. “Slavery in the United States ended in 1865,” says Greene, “but in West Africa it was not legally ended until 1875, and then it stretched on unofficially until almost World War I.”
It is still being practiced today. Chinese labor camps use slaves to make clothing and shoes for American retailers which are then worn by pampered Marxist college kids who write papers critical of slavery. Young women and boys are traded and sold globally as sex slaves. Anti-Slavery International, an organization founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce in 1839, has been fighting slavery for more than 180 years. They estimate 40 million people across the globe are still suffering under the yoke of slavery.
Even though we still have much work to do, the American ideal, from the Bible, that “All men are created equal” was the final nail in the coffin of the legalization of this evil practice. While many want America to be held up as the worst offenders of slavery, it was indeed America’s application of Christian doctrine that was instrumental in the destruction of it.