....European Christians are unusual in their almost fanatical commitment to equality of all before God's eyes. At the time they did not overall believe this.

....European Christians are unusual in their almost fanatical commitment to equality of all before God's eyes. At the time they did not overall believe this. At least not in deed. Some did and most didn't. Indeed, 100 years after the Civil War major American cities experienced massive declines in population due to the white flight that ensued as a result of desegregation. Also consider Irish treatment of blacks in New York City during the Civil War. There were Biblical justifications for slavery since the book does not outright say it is wrong. One justification was that Ham was cursed. ....isn't that they practiced slavery, but that they recognized that it was categorically evil (not just evil in particular applications). It simply isn't true that at that the time Europeans more or less universally thought slavery was categorically evil.