We need, however, to step back and see slavery for what it is. Slavery is a human issue. It is the inhumane treatement of one man by another. Slavery did not go away with the emancipation proclimation. It exists today.
Nobody holds an exclusive franchise on the ability to be cruel to other humans.
Whites have enslaved whites, arabs have enslaved arabs, blacks have enslaved blacks, asians have enslaved asians, North American and South American Indians have enslaved other Indians. Husbands and wives were separated from each other and from their children. The elderly were discarded, slaughtered or left to die alone. At the fortresses, slaves were stored in pitch-dark dungeons for upwards of three months. The women were preyed upon sexually by their captors, and brutalized if if they resisted.