Slavery

Slavery was an institution practiced in the New World in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries wherein blacks were owned as property and forced to labor without compensation on their owners' plantations. It was introduced into what would later become the United States by Britain in 1619 and remained legal after the American Revolution. It was banned state by state in the Northern states and became a major divisive issue between northern and southern states throughout the first half of nineteenth century. When Abraham Lincoln, a fierce opponent of slavery, was elected President in 1860, a number of slave states responded by seceding from the Union, forming the Confederate States, and starting the American Civil War.

Slavery in Atlantis
Slavery was initially unheard of in the uninhabited wilds of Atlantis; however, in time, the French and Spanish settlements began an active trade in African slavery. Additionally, following the Basque discovery of Terranova, copperskins were also forced into slavery. Dissatisfied slaves severely hampered both French and Spanish war efforts against England during the French and Spanish War. Victor Radcliff's closest military advisor was Blaise, an escaped black slave.

Slavery in A Different Flesh
Slavery was, in effect, a two-tier system in North America and the Federated Commonwealths. Blacks were imported from Africa to act as both domestic servants and laborers. The native sim population was tamed and used in a similar manner, until owners realized that the sims were poor domestic servants. Thus, until the early 19th century, blacks were traditionally domestic servants, while the sims were laborers.

However, the existence of sims eroded at the institution of slavery, as it became clear in time that the central axiom of slavery, the inferiority of blacks, was a falsehood. In the case of one Jeremiah, a slave who had fled his master in 1804, his attorney, Alfred Douglas, demonstrated that his client was capable of speech and literacy, unlike a sim. The court ruled in favor of the slave, and slavery itself began to wither through the remainder of the century.

Slavery in The Guns of the South
Slavery was the primary reason for the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging's interference with the course of history, by traveling back to 1864 and supplying the Confederate States Army with AK-47s, which allowed the Confederacy to win the Second American Revolution. The group also lied to the Confederate leaders, claiming that emancipation had lead to disasterous consequences for whites. Robert E. Lee, himself a slaveowner, but no supporter of the institution, had his doubts about the AWB's claims.

Those doubts were validated in 1868 when the AWB's leader, Andries Rhoodie attempted to assert his will over Lee as Lee contemplated a run for the presidency. Angered by Rhoodie's presumptions, Lee became more firmly anti-slavery. Upon his election, Lee was presented with a stolen book from the future, The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, which proved that the AWB had lied about the catastrophes which they claimed lay in wait for the South if it lost the war. He confronted Rhoodie, revealing his intentions to push for the end of slavery. In responce, the AWB attempted to assassinate Lee at his inauguration. In response, the full might of the C.S. military was brought to bear against the AWB.

After the capture of the AWB's Richmond offices, Lee presented before the Confederate leadership all the historical documents that the men from the future used to inform themselves of the events of the present time. With the view of hindsight, the Confederacy saw how the issue of slavery is almost universally reviled in the future and that, where they had hoped to be vindicated for their actions by their descendants, practically the entirety of the world viewed the Civil War and Southern Secession to be nothing more than a crime against humanity itself. With this new information, Congress was more inclined to agree to Lee's plan to pass a bill for gradual emancipation of its entire slave population. The bill itself was modelled after a proposed act of legislation in slave-holding Brazil.

When the AWB was subdued, Lee turned his full attention to ending slavery, an uphill battle considering many in the C.S. believed that they'd fought the Second American Revolution to maintain their "peculiar institution".

Slavery in Southern Victory
Slavery proved a major embarassment to the Confederacy during and after the War of Secession, giving Britain and France serious reservations against extending diplomatic recognition to it even after the Army of Northern Virginia captured Philadelphia in 1862. In 1881, those two nations agreed to support the CS in the Second Mexican War only on the condition that they abolish the practice, which was done shortly after the CS's 1882 victory. (For its part, the United States formally banned the practice in its few remaining slave states in the 1860s after losing the War of Secession.)

Slavery was also practiced in Brazil until 1889.

Slavery in The Two Georges
Slavery was peaceably and legally ended in the British Empire in 1834. The freed slaves were integrated immediately into British society.

Bitterness over the end of slavery was a motivating factor for many members of the Sons of Liberty. Even after a century, many descendents of slave-holding families felt that they had been robbed of the rightful place in the British upper class.

Slavery in Gunpowder Empire
Agrippan Rome, having never modernized, still used slavery as a fundamental part of its economy and society. The Solters found slavery repulsive, but also found themselves heavily burdened by the sheer number of domestic tasks they had to accomplish alone. Crosstime Traffic regulations specifically forbid agents from owning slaves; there had been quite the scandal a few years in the past.

Amanda Solters became close friends with Lydia, a Christian slave in Polisso.

Slavery in In High Places
The slavery scandal that rocked Crosstime Traffic actually involved Annette Klein, a teenager from the home timeline who was captured by slavers and sold into slavery in Madrid in a medieval European alternate that never recovered from the Great Black Deaths. The Madrid slavers in turn sold her to an illegal Crosstime slave outpost where people owned and abused slaves freely, against government regulations. Annette Klein was eventually able to escape to the home timeline and alert Crosstime to this abuse of power. All major ringleaders were sent away for lengthy prison terms.