PEACETOPIAN MILESTONES

A holistic movement for a better world
has been evolving throughout history...

February 1, 1865
13th Amendment Abolishing Slavery

The acceptance of the concept of slavery - the idea of one person 'owning' another - is one of the most obvious hurdles that had to be overcome in the pursuit of creating a better world. Unbelievably, slavery was only outlawed in the United States a century and a half ago, and the journey towards the abolition of slavery was a slow and difficult victory fought by many over many years. Spain passed the first laws in Europe abolishing slavery in 1542, although the law was not enforced. In the 1600s, Quakers in England condemned it as un-Christian. Many of the writers of the Enlightenment in the mid-17th and early 18th century criticized slavery, pointing out that it was one of the most significant violations of the natural rights of all people. The British movement to abolish slavery was launched in 1772 and in the late 18th century the call for an end to slavery became very widespread, although colonies and new nations that arose, like America, where slavery was established, continued to use slaves. After the American Revolution, starting with Pennsylvania in 1780, many of the northern states began to outlaw slavery. In 1833, Britain abolished slavery throughout the British Empire; France did the same in 1848; and the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery in the United States in 1865 after a bloody civil war that was somewhat fought over this issue. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, condemned slavery around the world and in 1981 Mauritania became the last country to abolish legal slavery. Fortunately, human consciousness has evolved so that slavery is almost universally seen as a grave injustice, and it is illegal almost everywhere on earth. However, we still have more to do to banish this violation of freedom, because slavery still exists today in the form of human trafficking for labor and sexual bondage; in fact there are more slaves now than ever before in history.