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[Robert Vermaat]

Therefore, I think a comparison between America and Greece in the time of Thermopylae is wrong - one would pull both periods out of context.

I didn't mean for a direct comparison between the two just that they were fights for "freedom", and yet in both America and Greece at the time of the Persian wars, not everyone was free, and nor would they be for a very long time

So which conflict do you refer to? The War of Independence? One could argue that the Americans did not think of themselves as free, but still it's totally different from the outside invasion by the Persian Empire. Neither war was about slaves though.
If you are referring to the Civil War, that would be totally different. The slaves were unfree (although it can surely be argued that the Civil War was NOT about freeing the slaves!). Anyway, freeing the slaves was a totally alien concept to bth parties at Thermopylae.

So where's the comparison? If you'd want to compare the two, you'd best compare it to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, surely? Thermopylae was about a foreign attack - in that sense I could see it as a struggle for freedom, but only against the threat of losing that freedom.