We know that Africans were treated far better than Irish slaves (and were worth 10x more). Are we to believe that somehow there was outsized and rampant abuse of African slave 'property' as opposed to Irish? And what were the Irish slaves? Just ordinary people going about their business, swept up onto slave ships? Or were they criminals?

And what if the African slaves were actually the unwanted Africans (criminals, political dissidents, etc) like the 161,000 criminals and political dissidents sent to Australia from the UK? Then they would have been sent to North and South America as prisoners, wouldn't they?

Are we to believe that ordinary Irish became slaves and the criminals in Ireland didn't, and were free to become a burden to Ireland? Can we apply the same logic to African slaves?

What if Britain exported its criminals to Australia (1788-1868) because it worked when they exported Irish criminals to the Americas (from 1500)? And what if the same merchants that bought Irish criminals negotiated the same deal with African tribes to supply labor to the new world?

Between 1500 and 1600, Africa's population grew by 32%. By 1700 there were 106 million Africans (compared with 2M total people in North America). During the approximate 400 years of the African slave trade, between 600M-1B Africans were born. Supposedly about 12 million slaves were exported from Africa to the new world, with most being sent to South America. This is about 2%

Is it unreasonable to assume that Africa had criminals making up 2% of its population, and the leaders of tribes would want to get rid of them or exchange them for something of actual value? "Give me your criminals in exchange for gold/silver"

What leader wouldn't take that deal? They'd probably want them also to take their family, too, because they would be a burden to society.

If so, would these criminals be allowed to roam free in the new land? Probably not. They would be chained on the ships and chained when they got off. They may also have committed more crimes in the new land, leading to punishment or even death for repeat offenders.

Should we assume that most accounts and photos of slaves being punished or killed were of slaves who did nothing wrong?

Was the Republican Party established in response to slavery not only because it believed all men should be free, but that the offspring of criminals should not be born into slavery? Would there be any political gain for the democratic party to leave out these important aspects? Are there any other ways the democratic party tries to make it seem like the republicans wanted and kept slaves, and did all kinds of horrible things to them?

tl;dr Slaves were unwanted criminals in their own lands, eventually exploited for political gain by the democratic party