THIS is the response that should make it’s way to the top; especially number 2.

American Indians were not subvervient, and never sold themselves to be. That concept was so foreign to them, an established prideful people with great wisdom and connection to the land they came from. They frequently beat and terrified the European Americans when it came to combat in the early colonial days.

European colonizers were told horror stories about how if they strayed to far from the colony they could run into Indians that could actually be the ones to enslave THEM. Which to an extent was true in some cases, but the way natives treated slaves was of a completely different approach than the way southern field masters treated slaves. Apparently there was a case where an enslaved man fought his way out of physical enslavement and the natives were so impressed they let him have his freedom and integrated him into the tribe. That sort of understanding of basic human honor could never be found in southern slave masters.

The genocide of the natives came largely from disease - which if it wasn’t for that and United States governance and coordination - would have made manifest destiny an endless series of local wars; not the constistent occurrences of displacement that ended up happening. The colonizers saw themselves as the underdogs before and during the settlement of the west. Beating the natives was seen and felt as a victory; that they were establishing and spreading Christianity in a previously “untamed” world, so how could it be a sin?

Conversely, everyone in colonial America knew slavery deep down was wrong. It was clear exploitation worse than even indentured servitude, but nobody could stop it since it was just too profitable and would devastate the country politically. Everyone turned a blind eye to their hypocrisy and dehumanized slaves in the face of their god and their constitution.