Answer:
b) Fear of rebellion, economic inefficiency, and moral concerns
Step-by-step explanation:
Slavery refers to a mode of production and social organization where slaveholders own a number of slaves, who are the property of the slaveholder and must work for him. Slavery is the most ancient form of social and economic oppression, and in one form or another, it survived well into modern times. However, around the 19th century, slavery was becoming rarer and rarer in the Atlantic world. This is primarily due to three reasons:
- Fear of rebellion: slave rebellions were not uncommon. Hundreds of slave revolts happened through the ages. The most successful of them was the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), which expelled the French colonial government from Haiti and proclaimed a free republic. As slaves were often times more numerous than non-slaves, there was always the fear of revolt. This potential powder keg was seen as increasingly dangerous, so it became desirable to get rid of slaves.
- Economic inefficiency: slavery is tremendously inefficient when compared to other modes of production, especially capitalism. Whereas under slavery slaveholders have to provide shelter and food during the entire lifetime of a slave, and any harm or illness to their slaves means a damage to their property, under capitalism the bourgeois owners only have to provide a wage to the workers, who then have to provide for themselves with whatever money they earn. Also, they can just be fired if they become a burden to production. Capitalism, where free workers are hired for a wage, also provided for a better organization of the economy, where they'd work in a production line operating industrial machinery. Industrial organized work is far superior to slavery when it comes to economic efficiency.
- Moral concerns: the ideas of Enlightenment, through the influence of the French and American Revolutions, soon spread across the whole Atlantic world and all the way to Russia. While the original Enlightenment ideas made no real mention of slavery, the concepts of equality, liberty, and the Rights of Men eventually permeated popular conscience, making slavery a more and more reviled and condemnable institution as time went on.