Slavery was no one's fault. It was the end product of necessity.
The first slaves were no doubt captured women from a conquered tribe,and they were damn lucky to become slaves because the other option was they would become lunch and dinner.
This also benefitted the tribes because it brought fresh blood into their gene pool and kept such evils as the Democratic Party,retardation,and diseases at bay and kept the early tribes from just disappearing.
It continued for thousands of years because everything was created by manual labor,and the work needed to be done.
Once again,the slaves benefitted from it because being able to work kept them out of the soup pot at first,and kept them alive and able in some cases to earn their freedoms by being clever and/or brave they were seen as being more of an asset to the tribe as a free man than as a laborer.
The women,of course,were rarely freed,but being a woman had it's advantages even if they were old because by the time they were old,they were still useful as babysitters and housekeepers.
And,of course,even after some mechanical devices had been invented that made the need for slave labor not as neccessary,slaves were still useful as soldiers,and this even benefitted the slaves as a good slave soon became a good soldier,and a free man leading other slaves into battle. In some cases they even became commanders.
And in MOST cases the slaves were treated well in early America because their labor was valuable and their owners couldn't afford to lose them. I suspect this was true in most/all other western nations because it just made good economic sense,and once again,if that person had not become a slave,chances are they would have become a corpse in their home country.
Once actual slavery became unacceptable,what I call "economic slavery" emerged. Under this system,the newly freed slaves were free to either starve to death,or work for what became known as "slave wages" at the factories and in the farms of the northern industrialists. There is some debate about if this was actually a step up,or not.
BUT......,there can be NO doubt about slavery becoming a necessity once farming became popular because early farming was entirely dependent on massive amounts of laborers.
Once mechanical machines were invented that would do the work of many slaves,cheaper and quicker,the need for slaves dropped and it should have been obvious to anyone that it would soon end due to economic reasons more than moral reasons. The Northern Industrialists saw the need for cheap labor in their factories because the ignorant and desperate immigrants from Europe were starting to get "uppity' and demand more money,shorter hours,and better treatement,so the Industrialists lobbied their representatives to free the slaves so they would once again have access to cheap and desperate labor they could exploit for profits.
BTW,the very FIRST black man enslaved in the New World that was later called America was a black man that was enslaved by ANOTHER black man that came to America as an indentured servant who has worked off his obligation,and once GIVEN the FREE farm land that was a part of his contract,ended up taking his own indentured servant to court and legally enslaved him by court order. This happened in the Virginia Colony, and the first slave owner eventually ended up as the wealthy owner of a horse farm in Maryland when he died.
