It's fairly well documented that the Founding Fathers were pretty much all opposed to slavery, but saw it as a huge political shit sandwich that would jeopardize Federalization. The United States is one of the only unions on the planet in which every single member state (without exception) voluntarily ratified and agreed to join. Had the Founding Fathers pushed for abolition, the South would never have joined the Union, and slavery may not have been abolished in the 1860s.
In order to ensure Federalization, the Founders simply ignored the question of slavery to get the slave-states to join the Union, and in fact built systems in place to incentivize the abolition of slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a good example of this: the South outnumbered the North (when counting the slaves), and the South wanted slaves to be counted as one whole person in the census so that they would have outsized representation in the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives. This was obviously unfair since those slaves were unfree and basically would have given rich slaveholders multiple votes. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a proposal by the abolitionist North to 1) neuter the power of the South at the Federal level, and 2) worded in such a way ("non-free persons") that if a Southern slave state wanted more House seats at the Federal level, all they had to do was abolish slavery.
A really good way to understand how the Founders felt about slavery is to look at how those that literally advocated for starting a new nation based fundamentally on the institution of slavery (the Confederates) felt about the Founding Fathers. The Cornerstone Speech was an address given by the Vice President of the CSA just before the Civil War began, and includes commentary around how they felt about the “old Constitution” and its framers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech#Cornerstone
The relevant bit:
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution, African slavery as it exists amongst us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.””
They couldn't have been that opposed to it or they themselves wouldn't have kept owning slaves.
Sure, Washington freed 'his' slaves when he died (modulo complications such as he intended them to be freed on Martha's death, but she freed 'his'--not 'hers'--early), but until then he did stuff like rotating 'his' slaves out of Philadelphia every few months so he wouldn't have to free them. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Posey which includes this quote: "The general's cook ran away, being now in Philadelphia, and left a little daughter of six at Mount Vernon. Beaudoin ventured that the little girl must be deeply upset that she would never see her father again; she answered, "Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now.")
And not to get into Jefferson and Hemings, whom he started raping when she was 14 (whether you think a slave can consent, a child can not), and kept enslaved (along with their children) until his death.
> The United States is one of the only unions on the planet in which every single member state (without exception) voluntarily ratified and agreed to join
That 'without exception' is doing a lot of work in the case of Hawaii.
In fact, it should be quite clear from that comment that not only was slavery NOT a foundational pillar of the United States, it was the opposite of a foundational pillar since its abolition was a long-run goal, the Founders placed Federal incentives to drive its abolition, and ultimately hoped that later generations would be able to do so across the entire Union once and for all.
Similarly, slavery as an institution had no bearing on the socioeconomic systems of the Northern States, but it was quite essential to the Southern States. All the US was (at the time) was a Union of all of those States. The concept didn't really exist at the US level, and insofar as it did exist, it was in the form of an incentive to abolish slavery. The foundational pillars of the United States were simply a Federal union of States with a bicameral legislature, a set of enumerated powers, and a set of limitations on the Federal government. That's it. Just because it did nothing to abolish slavery at its founding does not mean that slavery was itself a foundational pillar of the institution. By that logic, <insert atrocity committed by UN member country> is a foundational pillar of the United Nations. A totally unserious argument.
My question wasn't rhetorical. I actually do not know the history. If monarchy was indeed both socioeconomically important and a deal-breaker for founding the EU to a comparable extent as slavery in the United States, then I would think it's fair to call it a founding pillar.
> Similarly, slavery as an institution had no bearing on the socioeconomic systems of the Northern States, but it was quite essential to the Southern States.
That isn't the impression I've gotten from my admittedly non-expert reading of history, but I'm willing to be shown how I'm wrong. My impression is that the textile industry (which was intimately tied to Southern cotton production) was hugely important to the North for at least 50 years after the northern states had started restricting slavery. And from what I can tell, Pennsylvania was the first of the colonies to "abolish slavery," and that wasn't until 1780 and more importantly it didn't free existing slaves. It abolished importing slaves, and made children subsequently born to slaves indentured servants.
> By that logic, <insert atrocity committed by UN member country> is a foundational pillar of the United Nations. A totally unserious argument.
No, again, it's not about the mere existence of a phenomenon. I'm not claiming that wearing a tricorne hat was a founding pillar of the United States because it was common at the time of founding. I think I've been clear about that.
The disagreement is that it's not accurate to call it a founding pillar even in such cases. "The founding pillar" of most unions has nothing to do with the specifics of members of that union, unless explicitly stated. And in fact, as I pointed out above, the Framers added systems to incentivize its abolition, so not only is it inaccurate to argue that slavery was a foundational pillar, it's arguably the opposite.
We actually have a rich set of literature outlining what the so called "founding pillars" were, and they were the Federalist Papers. The outlined "founding pillars" were (in no particular order): federalism, bicameralism, minority rights, republicanism, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
> My impression is that the textile industry (which was intimately tied to Southern cotton production) was hugely important to the North for at least 50 years after the northern states had started restricting slavery. And from what I can tell, Pennsylvania was the first of the colonies to "abolish slavery," and that wasn't until 1780 and more importantly it didn't free existing slaves. It abolished importing slaves, and made children subsequently born to slaves indentured servants.
There was certainly trade between Southern and Northern States, but the North was overwhelmingly industrialized, whereas the South was an agrarian slave-driven economy. When the Civil War ended, the North continued to prosper, while the South's economy was decimated; in fact when slavery was abolished, the GDP of the US increased(https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html).
And although you're correct that Pennsylvania didn't abolish slavery until 1780, the US Constitution wasn't drafted until 1787; until then the States were governed by the Articles of Confederation. By 1787, every single Northern State except New Jersey (1806) had abolished slavery. And FYI, abolition meant freeing existing slaves, not just banning the importation. By 1806, all former slaves in the Northern states were free.
And another FYI, slavery was abolished in the Northern States before it was abolished in France, the UK, and the Netherlands. No reasonable person would call slavery a "founding pillar" of either of those countries.
Um, that's not remotely close to what's being contended here. What we're talking about is tradeoffs; i.e. what do you do when you want to coerce other States to abolish a regime that's politically unpopular in your State, but politically popular in the State in question? You can either do nothing, and let that system continue to exist (in perpetuity), or you can set up a new system that enables us to eventually abolish that institution from the top-down.
You have to consider the alternative: Founders that didn't create a Union, an independent South, and no real incentive or force to act as a check on slavery, and potentially allowing it to exist in the South beyond the 1860's. This is a hypothetical that's pretty easy to imagine considering that those Southern states tried creating a Confederation with slavery literally being enshrined in its Constitution (a "founding pillar", to use your framing) in 1861.
A world in which the South just agrees to join the Union in 1787 and also simply agree to abolish slavery is a fantasy. A world in which the North creates a slavery-free Union without the South is one in which slavery exists in a Confederate constitution well past the 1860's. Given those options, I'll take our reality any day of the year: the one where we created a Union that allowed us to eventually outnumber the South, elect Abraham Lincoln, and abolish slavery once and for all. That was the Founders' gambit, and the Confederates admitted just as much in their Cornerstone Speech I cited above.
Thought experiment: a state that actively uses the death penalty applies to join the EU...