"American by birth southern by the grace of God"

[Uncle Joe]

104. Leopold II wiped out roughly half the population of the Congo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium

Adam Hochschild devotes a chapter of his book, King Leopold's Ghost, to the problem of estimating the death toll. He cites several recent lines of investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, examining local sources from police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries, and "many others", which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free State period. Since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, that implies a rough estimate of 10 million dead.[8]

Slavery existed in Africa long before the Europeans or colonialsim arrived.

Slave trade with Muslim Nations had existed for aproximately 800 years before the Christian Europeans came on the scene, it was a world wide trade including all the major continents.

The way slaves were treated in Africa was different in many respects from the American method, in Africa hundreds or thousands were executed in religious ceremonies but they were also sometimes treated as family.

Now it's given that the vast majority of slaves died and were torn from their culture during the TransAtlantic voyage.

Virgina under slave owner Thomas Jefferson's leadership was the first state to outlaw the importation of slaves in 1778.

The U.S. outlawed the importation of slaves while Jefferson was President in 1808.

The Confederacy only existed from 1861-1865, they practiced slavery, they didn't commit genocide.

They didn't exterminate their slaves, the slave owners were in it for profit.

Is slavery evil and dehumanizing? Absolutely but it's not genocide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_slave_trade

African slavery [edit]

Main article: Slavery in Africa

Slavery was practiced in some parts of Africa,[16] Europe,[16] Asia[16] and the Americas before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. There is evidence that enslaved people from some African states were exported to other states in Africa, Europe and Asia prior to the European colonization of the Americas.[17] The African slave trade provided a large number of slaves to Europeans.[18][19]

The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, although it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique: "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million[20] through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean."[21]

According to John K. Thornton, Europeans usually bought enslaved people who were captured in endemic warfare between African states.[22] There were also Africans who had made a business out of capturing Africans from neighboring ethnic groups or war captives and selling them.[23] People living around the Niger River were transported from these markets to the coast and sold at European trading ports in exchange for muskets (matchlock between 1540–1606 but flintlock from then on) and manufactured goods such as cloth or alcohol.[24] However, the European demand for slaves provided a large new market for the already existing trade.[25] Further, while those held in slavery in their own region of Africa might hope to escape, those shipped away had little chance of returning to Africa.

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The treatment of slaves in Africa was more variable than in the Americas. At one extreme, the kings of Dahomey routinely slaughtered slaves in hundreds or thousands in sacrificial rituals, and the use of slaves as human sacrifices was also known in Cameroon.[60] On the other hand, slaves in other places were often treated as part of the family, "adopted children," with significant rights including the right to marry without their masters' permission.[61] Scottish explorer Mungo Park wrote: "The slaves in Africa, I suppose, are nearly in the proportion of three to one to the freemen. They claim no reward for their services except food and clothing, and are treated with kindness or severity, according to the good or bad disposition of their masters.... The slaves which are thus brought from the interior may be divided into two distinct classes - first, such as were slaves from their birth, having been born of enslaved mothers; secondly, such as were born free, but who afterwards, by whatever means, became slaves. Those of the first description are by far the most numerous ...."[62] In the Americas, slaves were denied the right to marry freely and even humane masters did not accept them as equal members of the family; however, while grisly executions of slaves convicted of revolt or other offenses were commonplace in the Americas, New World slaves were not subject to arbitrary ritual sacrifice.[63] New World slaves were very useful and expensive enough to maintain and care for, but still the property of their owners.

(snip)

In Britain, America, Portugal and in parts of Europe, opposition developed against the slave trade. Davis says that abolitionists assumed "that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery.".[115] Opposition to the trade was led by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and establishment Evangelicals such as William Wilberforce. The movement was joined by many and began to protest against the trade, but they were opposed by the owners of the colonial holdings.[116] Following Lord Mansfield's decision in 1772, slaves became free upon entering the British isles.[117] Under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, the new state of Virginia in 1778 became the first state and one of the first jurisdictions anywhere to stop the importation of slaves for sale; it made it a crime for traders to bring in slaves from out of state or from overseas for sale; migrants from other states were allowed to bring their own slaves. The new law freed all slaves brought in illegally after its passage and imposed heavy fines on violators.[118][119] Denmark, which had been active in the slave trade, was the first country to ban the trade through legislation in 1792, which took effect in 1803. Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, imposing stiff fines for any slave found aboard a British ship (see Slave Trade Act 1807). The Royal Navy, which then controlled the world's seas, moved to stop other nations from continuing the slave trade and declared that slaving was equal to piracy and was punishable by death. The United States Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in the U.S. for use in the slave trade. In 1807 Congress outlawed the importation of slaves beginning on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution for such a ban.