You're completely wrong about this. You just have to look at the constitutional changes in the states and the huge growth in participation in politics in the 1780s. The revolution was a mass movement, and it had a profound effect on how the general population viewed politics and on what sort of government they were willing to accept.
> And it was practically unique in that regard. The NJ constitution had a wealth requirement and, despite originally granting women and free black people the right to vote, it later rescinded those rights!
Pennsylvania wrote the most democratic state constitution, but it was not at all unique in overhauling its system of government to become much more participatory. New Jersey's 1776 state constitution lowered property requirements, replaced the royal governor with a governor selected by the elected legislature, and reduced his powers (e.g., no veto power), and as you point out, removed racial and gender restrictions to voting.
> But more importantly, while the US was busy regressing from the founding principles it only halfheartedly upheld, other nations were busy drafting and creating new constitutions that better uphold those ideals.
The US was one of the only democratic republics in the world well into the 19th century. That's the context for Lincoln's statement that the United States was "the last best hope of earth." The 1848 revolutions in Continental Europe had been crushed, and the US appeared to many to be the only major democratic country left standing.
> It only requires that it have been present.
If that's the extent of your argument, then your argument is fairly meaningless. Everyone knows that slavery existed in the South. What I and others object to is the claim that the US became wealthy because of slavery. It seems much more likely to me that the US was economically held back by slavery.
Right, but the replacement didn't functionally address the broad issue of consent of the governed. It replaced a government of wealthy white gentry with a wealthy white gentry in a different location. Your average American citizen didn't actually gain much, if anything, in terms of representation. Only the upper class did (which is, in many ways, the class we're arguing about).
> Perhaps at the founding of the US that was true, but Pennsylvania passed a radically democratic state constitution in 1776 that was highly innovative and unusual in many ways
And it was practically unique in that regard. The NJ constitution had a wealth requirement and, despite originally granting women and free black people the right to vote, it later rescinded those rights!
Not to mention a Constitution like South Carolinas, which required slave ownership to hold public office.
But more importantly, while the US was busy regressing from the founding principles it only halfheartedly upheld, other nations were busy drafting and creating new constitutions that better uphold those ideals. And tot he point I keep returning to: our deification of the original constitution prevents many necessary improvements in that regard.
> But it did deliver much more economic development than the old slaveocracy.
I don't think I've said otherwise. You seem to think the argument I'm making somehow relies on slavery being a lynchpin of the American economy. It doesn't. It only requires that it have been present.