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> USA beat the UK for importing slaves by a few weeks

Do not pretend for a moment that USA was leading on anything here.

1. UK had already abolished importation of slaves. No-one could be a slave in the UK since 1778 (Scotland, Eng\Wales was earlier). If you "imported" a slave to the UK, they would become free.

2. The ~1807 US/UK laws were far from equivalent - the UK act was abolishing the trade completely. The US was only ending importation. Domestic / inter-state trade was unaffected.

3. The US law came into effect 6 months after the UK one.

The day Jefferson passed that 1807 act, his 100s of slaves got a little more valuable. Who needs imports when you can abuse 16 year old enslaved girls? As he signed this act, he was, yet again, impregnating Sally Hemings so that in 1808, his 7th bastard child born was into slavery. The birth was recorded in the Farm Book alongside other livestock.

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ben_w 4 days ago | parent [-]

You can add the Scottish example to the other list of years I'd already given, there was no sense of the US genuinely "leading" on that when I'd already said 1772 and 1799 — the point was simply that the 1807 act was also not much of a sign of genuine leadership.

The UK government was basically forced to do what it did thanks to campaigns against slavery, not because the politicians themselves were fully on board with it; and even more recently, despite how "we ended slavery" has become as much part of the national identity as "The" Magna Carta, the conversation about the Edward Colston statue in Bristol wasn't as one-sided as the conversation about the Jimmy Saville statue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston

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Fluorescence 4 days ago | parent [-]

> The UK government was basically forced

Forced? You clearly don't know the history.

It was a long campaign but the moral argument had won broad support in the population and parliament. It was literally the UK government trying to get this passed. Prime Minister William Pitt was an abolitionist as was his successor William Grenville that passed this bill. This specific bill was passed by a near unanimous majority.

Earlier bills under Pitt had passed the commons but fallen in the more conservative Lords claiming to protect "the national interest". I believe the strategies that helped tip the balance was salami-slicing to just abolish trade rather then total abolition while arguing that continued trade would lead to slave rebellions as had been seen in French colonies thus it needed to be stopped not just out of moral necessity but national interest too.

You seem intent on corrupting history to do what? Attack some straw-man concoction of British national identity? Stop it.

	▲	ben_w 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I believe the strategies that helped tip the balance was salami-slicing to just abolish trade rather then total abolition while arguing that continued trade would lead to slave rebellions as had been seen in French colonies thus it needed to be stopped not just out of moral necessity but national interest too. Y'see, I count that as "the bare minimum done because they were forced to not because they wanted to". Knowing that if you don't, it's going to be expensive is part of "being forced to". Getting around to it only when there's overwhelming pressure in one direction rather than 50%+1 is "dragging your feet". The margin of what passed is on the one hand, the fact that it was only peaceameal — as demonstrated by literally all the other years on that list — is the other side of that coin.