People really don’t seem to appreciate that descendants of Europeans took up arms and pens and fight and argued to end slavery. Of course, slavery is ongoing right now. Including in the United States at a small scale. It never ended. We didn’t really want to completely end it. We still believe in the idea of slavery, just not generalized enslavement of entire ethnic groups.

Regardless of that, the slaves almost never freed themselves. They never got to a point where them or their descendants got to dictate the terms.