At the time, people felt differently.

For a preacher that felt Africans were bound for hell, anything that brought them face to face with the Gospel was a good thing. I went to church once, where the minister wrote his doctoral thesis on the sermons delivered within the same denomination in the north and south during the 1850s as the issue of slavery was coming to a head.

There is no doubt even ministers that owned no slaves were convinced that slavery was a human institution that existed for thousands of years.

You keep wanting to view things from the European abolitionist perspective. I share your view of slavery, but many people did not see it that way. In the US or in Africa.

Keep in mind, the idea that God (the Creator) endowed humans with human rights was a radical idea at the time. Today, it is core value of our nation, but not the world, including in many parts of Africa today.

While we have human and sex trafficking today in this country, it is illegal, and efforts are made to end the practice. And yet it thrives. Actual slavery, human trafficking, and sex trafficking are even more prevalent in Africa today.

I do this not to condemn Africa or excuse America, but again once you allow the idea of treating people "differently" based on the gender, race, or other factors, you open the door to discrimination.

The strange thing is after the Civil War, many former slaveowners learned that relatively speaking slavery was expensive compared to renting their land to freed slaves. Freed slaves worked hard earning more for themselves and the former slaveowner... the wonders of capitalism.

The question of whether slaves "benefited" is so controversial that people cannot answer it without bias. There is no doubt that slaves learned skills that they put to good use once they were emancipated. Less talked about is that slaves brought ideas from Africa that benefited southern society. Even today, much of what we think of as "southern" bears the influence of Africans and their culture.

A more accurate assessment is that while the slaveowners benefited from the skills learned by slaves and the slaves did not. There is no doubt that the slaves were in a better position to support themselves once emancipated then before.

Measured in pure economic terms, the slaveowners wealth increased due to the work of slaves in that sense, while the slaves learned skills the slaveowners harvested the benefit. But the fact that they learned skills is demonstrated by their ability to support themselves once emancipated.

Before you argue this point. The simple question you have to answer is would an African tribesmen transported to America and released in America have survived without some period of assimilation. No one is suggesting that it had to be slavery, but it was. Unlike Europeans they were entering an entirely different world. No is arguing that they wanted that... perhaps they would have preferred being slaves in the Middle East or one of the other nations to which the African Empires were selling slaves to fund their economic and political expansion.

Perhaps the African slaves would have been better off in the Carribean or South America, though frankly records show life expectancy was far lower in those parts of the New World. Sadly, slaves were a "currency" used by African kingdoms to finance their growth and there were buyers from all parts of the world, because slavery was a global institution.

Again worth remembering only 6% of slaves that came to the New World arrived in what would become the USA, 94% went elsewhere in North and South America. And many millions more went elsewhere in the world. So, the real comparison for the slave brought to North America is where would they have been better off as a slave. That does not justify it, it is simply a point to consider.

Even more relevant is what became of the various black slaves across the world including those that remained in Africa. In virtually all cases, they remained slaves, but from the perspective of generational progress, the descendants of slaves in the USA have prospered far more than their counterparts.

This is not my assessment, but that of black social economist, Thomas Sowell. You might enjoy reading some of his writing on the subject.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/dont-tread-on-anyone/the-truth-about-slavery-thomas-sowell-ph-d/

Curious why do you use a map of Africa as your symbol, when it seems like you're thinking and philosophy more closely align with western civilization not African. Do you define yourself by where your ancestors came from or by what you believe.

I ask this because one of my black grandsons, defines himself as German/Shona... not European/African American. In his mind, he is defined based on genes that flow through his blood (German being an ethnicity rather than a nation of citizenship). He gets bothered by the fact, that I define myself as American because I embrace American values not German (75%) or Caribbean (one of my ancestors came from the Caribbean). I point out that I celebrate the 4th of July and Thanksgiving, I speak American (not even English), I like the diveristy of American food, the diversity of American music, I like people for who they are, I have never joined a German club (I have been made an honorary Italian on Columbus Day... good for one day, so I could enjoy a pasta dinner with my Italian friends at the Italian club where I lived in New England). He says I have abandoned my culture and traditions, I agree with him, which troubles him. He says I have no roots; I tell him I have family and friends; those are my roots. Obviously, he is a separatist. He wants to join a German club and wishes there were a Shona club.

He thinks schools in America should be required to teach German history and African history more than American black history which he does not relate to, since his mom is directly from Africa. It does seem many people need to feel connected to their past and you have clearly studied black history and feel that connection. I have love history and have studied the history of most countries finding every history fascinating... I tend to go down a rabbit hole reading everything I can find on a country's history before I visit it.

I went to visit a history museum in Indonesia where my wife comes from with my father-in-law in the 1990s. We had to wake the guy up in charge of "selling tickets" to enter. We were the only ones there. I asked my father-in-law how the country's national history museum can be so "empty". He said at the time, that most people don't identify as Indonesians, the country has only existed since WW2. Before that they were all independent tribes and after that most people thought of themselves as still members of those tribes, not as Indonesians.

The challenge of MLK's dream will continue and people truly integrate. Until then people will continue to identify based on skin color, religion, gender, and any other things that sets them apart from others. Once identified, they will advocate on behalf of that group arguing that based on history they deserve this or that. But the fact that the fastest growing "identity" group in America are "mixed race" people most of whom (not all as my one grandson represents) identify as Americans means the dream of one nation under God is still the dream.