in point of fact, decent people everywhere in the USA despised the "slave-traders" as "socially unacceptable", in the antebellum period. such persons would NOT have been invited to the "Big House" for tea.
otoh, DAMNyankees (who comprised the VAST majority of the persons IN the "slave trade") were from new england.
"new englanders":
1. bought slaves at their barracoons in West Africa,
2.OWNED the ships that brought the Africans here,
3.CAPTAINED/crewed the slave ships,
4. sold the slaves at auction,
5.financed the sales &
6.were conceded internationally to be "the leading lights" of the "flesh business" from the very first days of the "peculiar institution".
"yankees" from new england have FOREVER been money-hungry,SANCTIMONIOUS, HYPOCRITES! ONLY after importation of new slaves from abroad was OUTLAWED, did the "DYs" decide that slavery was WRONG!
free dixie,sw
I wish Reconstruction could have been so conducted and extended so the sanctimonious New England effect on Dixie would have been greater and longer-lasting. Maybe the South would not have been so violence-filled, ignorant and poor for so many decades.
There were good men in the South with fine moral instincts, but they were powerless against the slave system without the external infusion of decency that came mainly from New England.
The flip side of your argument is that only after the trade in slaves was restricted to domestics, did the southern slave owners decide that it was a practice worth fighting for.
Actually, the Northwest Ordinance, restricting slavery in the new states was passed during the time of the Articles of Confederation. To me that suggests that all agreed that slavery was a practice that should be limited, reduced, and cut back. It would have been rather nice if the practice could have been limited (as the Republicans wanted, by restricting slaves in the Territories) until the pro slavery forces were weak enough that it could be abolished. The pro slavery forces didn't want that approach. And the war came.