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 The first abolitionist movement was also the most successful one ever. The fight to end slavery started out from the very fringes of society, but ended up not only with the eradication of both the slave trade and the legal institution that permitted the holding of slaves, but brought about such a radical change in public opinion that - today - it has become almost impossible to imagine how a society could ever have considered the existence of slavery as something natural and unquestionable.
-Slavery had been a universal feature of ancient societies. Slaves were the spoils of war.
+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.
-To enslave powerless people had been a very widespread practice over the ages and continents, and neither the democracies of the ancient Greek cities, the Roman or the Ottoman Empire would have been conceivable without this peculiar institution. 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.
+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.