FWIW, and pace Dingus Tom Cotton, no one at the constitutional convention or really at any other part of the creation of the American Republic said slavery was necessary to get the country off the ground but then later we'd get rid of it. No one.

2/ Lots of people wanted to get rid of slavery because they thought it was wrong or incompatible with revolutionary ideology. Other people thought it was awesome really not a problem. Still others - and this was a majority view of revolutionary Southern elites in these ...

3/ decades - could not make a positive argument for slavery but also saw it as something the country was saddled with. It just was and there was no way for Africans to live free or live free with whites or **safely FOR whites** and in any case no one whose livelihood ...

4/ rested on owning slaves was stepping forward to free them or get rid of them. It was what it was. These Southern elites especially in these years often wished the problem away with the idea that slavery would simply wither away or fade away over time. There was a relatively..

5/ There was a relatively brief flurry of emancipations in these years. And somewhat unique among the leading revolutionary, Washington privately decided that slavery couldn't be squared with republican belief was Washington. He kept these thoughts in private correspondence.

6/ But he did manumit the slaves who were his personal property once his wife died. Make of it what you will. Slaves presumably were pretty firmly all against. In any case, there was no viewpoint at the time that slavery was bad but the US needed it as ...

7/ a necessary evil to get the country off the ground and slavery would be abolished later. The 'necessary evil' discourse had to do with what planter elites would do with an institution they couldn't justify but were in no way ready to get rid of. Whatever economic historians...

8/ economic historians and other historians make of the question today there's really no one who was thinking hey this slavery thing isn't right but we need it for a while for capital accumulation and to jump start industrial capitalism. Once we have that shit up and running ...

9/ we can drop this. No one thought in those terms and no one said that.