The united states of america was pretty late to the party of abolishing slavery.
One of the first wars fought by the US was over slavery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
Anti-slavery sentiments built up over time. Abraham Lincoln was moved by this popular book for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufferings_in_Africa
Of course these things aren't often taught in school.
And your link makes clear the Barbary form of slavery had little in common with the extreme form practiced in the US.
The violent rejection of England and monarchy allowed the founders to make a dramatic break from the past. A new approach to human rights, a government of the people, for the people. Ideals broadcast and institutionalized via the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, ..."
All the mindful attention, negotiation and agreements, toward implementing a system explicitly establishing liberty and justice for all, adds a thick layer of criminal responsibility for the systematic exception made, to continue upholding one form of extreme injustice. The complete violation of all those principles, held dear, for one unfortunate group.
And I am sympathetic to pushback. Many of these discussions are thinly veiled "slavery in the states wasn't bad" nonsense. Slavery in all forms is bad. Period.
Perhaps but the difference is that the West African tribes often sold the slaves to Europeans. Why would they pay a ransom to get those people back?
There were certainly racist connotations associated with slaves and ex-slaves. But it seems a stretch to say that white slaves in a non-white country fared better than black slaves in a white country.
This is also little-known information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners Some slave owners in the colonies and early US, maybe even the very first one, were black.
I think that you are being disingenuous here. The African tribes that sold slaves were not necessarily the slave’s own tribe, but rather a different tribe that proved victorious in war or raiding. The slave’s own tribe, as I mentioned, would hardly have been unable to ransom its own people from the US due to lack of literacy, lack of communications, and lack of financial means. Meanwhile, postal connections between North Africa and Europe were reliable enough by the 17th and 18th centuries that slaves could message home for ransom, and this was frequently allowed as it proved highly lucrative for Barbary slaveholders.
> white slaves in a non-white country
This is a completely ahistorical way of describing the matter. In terms of race linked to skin colour, Barbary slaveholders very much considered themselves white in opposition to the black African populations to the south whom they exploited. (This survives in modern Mauritanian slaveholding.)
Moreover, Muslim slaveholding here and in the broader region was bound up with with issues of religion, not race as the modern USA understands it. In as little as a single generation post-manumission, those descendants of raided European slaves were no longer necessarily regarded as an outcaste, provided they were observant Muslims, which is why so much of the power in the Ottoman Empire famously ended up in the hands of men of Eastern European descent. At least in terms of knowing your progeny would be better off, they had privilege that African chattel slaves in the USA could only dream of.
As an easy rebuttal to one of your points, yes blood purity is bad; and so is religious purity.
Look, I'm open to the idea that slavery in the US was somehow the worst slavery ever. But most arguments used to prop up the idea rely on laughably naive views on slavery elsewhere. Worse, much of it seems to stem from a naive "US bad" gullibility in taking in information.
As you say, slavery is pretty bad and trying to figure out which one is "better" is rarely a productive exercise.