Slavery existed in Africa, but it was not the same form of slavery like which the Europeans introduced. The Europeans formed chattel slavery in which the slaves were treated like property and had no rights. Even though many African slaves help fight against the Britain for American Independence, the basic freedom stated in the Constitution did not applicable in their situation. The tension between the South and North over the issue of slavery grew as the South supported it and the North did not, which eventually led to the separation of the Union into the rebellious Confederacy and the Union. With the Confederacy's defeat and the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln enacted the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all the slaves from the rebellious states are free. However injustice and discrimination toward African Americans still existed during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War.
