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 Slavery had been a universal feature of ancient societies. Slaves were the spoils of war. For politicians and philosophers in ancient Athens, the famous cradle of democracy, or in ancient Rome, for that matter, life without slaves was beyond imagination.
-It was only with the European Age of Enlightenment that things took a turn. While there had long been single voices of individual theologians and philosophers questioning the legitimacy of slavery, the 18th century witnessed a growing choir of dissenters, and, more importantly, of collective endeavors aiming at the abolition of first the slave trade over the Atlantic Ocean, and, then, slavery proper.
-While the first part of this struggle took place in England, the second one shifted its focus to the United States. At the end of that century-long struggle abolitionism had won an outright victory - something that hardly anyone would have believed to be possible at its outset.
 ===Trans-atlantic slave trade===
-The trans-atlantic slave trade, conducted mainly by British entrepreneurs, was a highly profitable scheme. For a mere dozen men to come together and to decide to fight this important branch of the British economy in the name of religious convictions and humanitarian compassion - something that happened in the year 1787 with the foundation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharpe and others, seemed of no importance at all at the time. Especially, since this association relied on nothing more than the strength of their moral arguments - and this in quite a hostile environment which used to value the slave trade for its contribution to the nation’s wealth and to romanticize the adventurous lives of traders on the high seas.
+In 1787, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharpe and others founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
-On the other hand, it was the Age of Enlightenment, and a growing sensibility and empathy had certainly reached Quakers and other religious leaders and had begun to draw attention to the inhumanity and cruelty of the slave trade.
 :To expose the barbarity of the slave trade, Clarkson gathered evidence, such as the tools of torture used on slave ships, and interviewed thousands of slave ship sailors. He also developed powerful allies, such as M.P. William Wilberforce, who used his political influence to lobby for abolitionist causes in Parliament. Clarkson, Granville, Wilberforce, and other activists began spreading their message. They published protest pamphlets, raised funds, and organized public lectures and rallies. Twenty years after the founding of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, their work was partially rewarded by the passage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. This act prohibited Great Britain from participating in the transatlantic slave trade ([http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/abolitionism/origins.htm]).