The fact that the British, Spanish, French and others ended slavery peacefully – as did the Northern states in the U.S., where slavery existed for over 200 years – is perhaps the court historians’ best-kept secret. Most Americans have only heard of how slavery was ended in the Southern states and are unaware of how it was ended peacefully in the Northern states and in the rest of the Western Hemisphere during the 19th century. There were no "wars of emancipation" in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, or Illinois, which were all once slave states.
