Then I see another problem - people using the word "slavery" to describe various periods in history when what they mean is the "American-style black on cotton plantations type of slavery". Slaves in history had various amounts of rights and, particularly in Ancient Egypt, Israel and Rome, there were much closer to employees than many think today. The American version of slavery seems to be more of a historical aberration.
I think we focus too much on those rights and less on the overall big picture. US slavery was bad, but Caribbean slavery was much, much worse, what made it worse was the conditions the people labored under.
Personally, if I were in a minor outlying area of the Roman empire, I perhaps would have preferred to become a Roman slave rather than be free out in the boondocks. I've read that a Roman conquest would always start with a call for anyone in the opposing army who wanted to be part of the empire to defect now and become a Roman slave, that was supposedly a better fate than losing in battle. In Rome I could, by hook or by crook, earn my freedom and perhaps even become emperor.
If I were in Africa, and I had a choice, I would perhaps choose to become a slave on James Madison's plantation rather than stay in Africa. You should read the book written about one of his slaves, he was truly extraordinary.
What made US slavery so bad wasn't so much the slavery but the racism. Roman slaves looked just like their masters. But when US slaves earned their freedom through manumission or simply buying themselves off their masters, a somewhat common practice in the run-up to the Civil War, they had to be careful or fall prey to slavers capturing them and re-enslaving them.
If it weren't for the racism, you could make a credible argument that enslavement in the US was, on the whole, better for the people involved, going by the standard of, if you had all the relevant information, would you prefer to stay home or go to the US as a slave.
Of course, American intellectuals made this argument at the time as a justification for slavery. The practice of indentured labor where people willingly sold themselves into bondage to escape their homeland lends some credence to this, but in my opinion the racism blacks experienced and still experience places it solidly in 'wrong' territory.
My Grandmother grew up in the West Indies, and had a particularly horrible expression to describe the disappointed feeling at the end of school holidays: freepaper burn.
In her grandparents time, that was the term for the more than disappointed feeling freed slaves had when slavers seized their 'free papers', burned them, and then enslaved them once more.
