I want to describe the Middle Passage to you.
Not abstractly.
Specifically.
Enslaved people were loaded onto ships in West Africa at a ratio calculated to maximize profit after accounting for expected deaths in transit.
They were chained in holds with roughly eighteen inches of vertical space, unable to sit upright, lying in their own excrement for voyages that lasted between three weeks and three months.
Mortality rates on Middle Passage ships averaged between 10 and 20 percent.
On some voyages, significantly higher.
Historians estimate that between 1.5 and 2 million people died during the crossing, their bodies thrown into the Atlantic.
Those who arrived alive were washed, oiled to appear healthy, and sold on docks while buyers examined their teeth and bodies like livestock.
You described this system as "not necessarily a nightmare" and compared the labor that followed to picking crops in Africa.
I am not going to debate you on the merits of this position.
I am going to ask you to read what I just wrote.
And then I am going to ask you whether the problem is that you don't know this history, or that you know it and have decided it doesn't change your argument.
Because the answer to that question tells us something important.
Not about slavery.
About you.
ALT The Marie Séraphique of Nantes, Captain Gaugy, Musee d’Histoire de Nantes.
Slavery wasn't necessary a nightmare. It was also not a crime. The Indians for instance offered themselves voluntarily into slavery to escape hunger, and the slaves got lodging and food.