IF everyone remembers current accepted historical "fact," in 1776, when our "Founding Fathers" had decided that they had had enough of British rule, slavery was the order of the day. WE, OUR not yet founded country, was a part of the British Empire. There were measures or gradations of slavery within the British processes. Those who were privileged had land bestowed upon them in return for their daughters to marry off for political reasons and their sons to fight for the Crown. Those folk also managed the collection of TeH Crown's taxes from the VERY poor.
Serfs were demanded to give up a portion of their living needs, crops that would keep them healthy over winter, etc. even quarter soldiers who were passing through the area and the occasional slaughter of needed livestock to feed these quartered soldiers.
Lowest classes of slaves were those brought by force from their homelands (from various places around the globe, including the richest continent of all, Africa) under threat of death and forced to work in "questionable conditions" offered nothing in return for their lifelong toil, with no way to ever escape the confines of their slave masters.
All of that is well known and points to a reason or two why I am one of the very few Americans who does not get all giggly and bend over and hold his ass cheeks open every time he hears a British accent. My tendency would be one more like, "WTF do you want and why are you STILL here?"
Unfortunately, due to our overwhelmingly populous conservative base at the time of teh Declaration Of Independence (who barely were convinced. It was NOT the conservative base that thumbed their noses at the British Crown successfully in 1776 and again and again) our newly formed country was still British in Practice, if not in name. We kept slaves, still. FUCK!
It took a full two generations (all those old British suck-up men had to die and the ones they raised had to die and FINALLY) for our country to start to mature and even begin to start moving away from the same old shit, time after time and begin to work toward the very thing (MANY IMPORTANT THINGS!!) that was stated in the original documents set to remove ourselves from British rule.
It took like eighty fucking years to to START!