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Slavery represented the opposite of freedom. In the period of human history variously known as the modern era or the Age of Discovery, this form of unfree labor would mark the landscape in critical ways. It is believed that slavery not only provided the economic foundations of the modern world, it helped establish the limits of freedom. In other words, slavery was required to remind citizens what freedom actually meant. __NOTOC__
The United States is a creature of this world. It provides interesting support to this notion, as the idea of “slavery” was used to describe the colonies’ relationship to Great Britain as they ironically practiced slavery themselves within the boundaries of colonialism. Like all enslaved people, those people of African descent who were enslaved in the colonies and then the United States sought to undo the shackles that restricted them. Because the colonial legal system that underpinned the system did not recognize them as full persons or citizens, those shackles were often undone by revolts.
