Why should slavery have been abolished in the 1860s when it was clearly profitable for Southern farmers?
Slavery was abolished because it regarded as immoral and inhuman. Walking On Sunshine’s comments about that abolition was to set America apart from the European nations is wrong. The Europeans were decades ahead of the United States in terms of concepts like emancipation of women, anti-slavery laws, anti child labor laws and animal rights laws. The US was not world leader in terms of promoting concepts of true democracy, egalitarianism or equality, it was still trying to catch up with the more progressive European nations.
