... An important take-away from the history of North American slavery -- as practiced by Euros in all parts of the continent including Canada -- is that only one segment of the continent still retained and promoted the legal practice of slavery by the mid-19th century, and only that one segment practiced the most heinous form of slavery -- systematic chattel slavery -- including self-propagation (meaning many slaves and their ancestors, if not most, have white bloodlines). Also it was only that one segment that practiced slavery at such an immense scale, their very economy completely reliant on slave labor to the exclusion of industry as adopted by the Northern sections.
That particular segment of course is the Slave South in the U.S., and thereby the Confederacy.
It is that unique history of that section that defies the Lost Cause / Lost Cause Lite / Confederate apologist promotion (myth) that slavery in the Southern U.S. was no worse than slavery as practiced anywhere else on the continent, that slavery was endemic in the Northern states from the very founding of the U.S. (and here we find even in colonial Canada). If that idea can be sold, it enables the selling of the idea that the Civil War wasn't about slavery because slavery had been practiced everywhere on the continent including the Northern U.S (and Canada).
The key phrase though, as we all know, is the phrase "had been practiced," a phrase that Lost Cause / Lost Cause Lite / Confederate apologists avoid using because it blows their gig. In the same way they will never on their own bring up the immense of difference in the scale of slavery as practiced in the Southern U.S. as compared to anywhere else on the Continent.*
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(* keeping in mind we're only comparing North American slavery, not Middle or south American slavery. It's true enough that the scale of slavery in South America was quite comparable to that of slavery in the Southern U.S., But that's for another thread).
