The Brits got rid of slavery by a combination of common law -- it was always illegal in England -- and an Act of Parliament (1833) abolishing the slave trade. The latter was due to a mass movement, and memorialized misleadingly as the result of One Man's (William Wilberforce) heroic struggle in the recent movie Amazing Grace.
Slavery survived in Cuba to 1886 and Brazil to 1888. In both cases it was abolished without bloody war. Russian serfdom was abolished by ukase in 1861 without war.
Unfortunately slavery has not been abolished absolutely; it persists to this day in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South East Asia, and existed in the Nazi concentration camps and the Stalinist gulag. Forced labor remains a lawful punishment in the US under the 13th Amendment, a loophole that was the basis for the de facto and de jure re-enslavement of large parts of the black population especially after Reconstruction.
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