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The other 1.25 million slaves, were used to build rail roads, court houses, forts, post offices. They were trained as masons, black smiths, wheel wrights, carpenters. In the South, these people were competed directly against free labor pling those trades. All Southern manufacturing operations employed slaves so some extent. Tredegar employed 40% slave labor. No only pick & shove work, but as mill wright, machinists, blacksmith etc. Virtually every facet of Southern economic activity relied heavily on slave labor.

This is a reasonable reply. Pikachu_Dad needs to see it so he knows what one looks like.

Most of the stuff you mention would not have transferred to the territories. There likely wouldn't have been a New Mexico territory Iron works, so there likely wouldn't be many mill wrights or machinists, but blacksmiths? Probably, because that was a commonly needed service in that era.

Masons, Carpenters, and road work? Yes, but again, not anything on the scale of what was happening in the Southern states, and I dare say the smallness of their numbers would encourage calls for dissolution of slavery in the territories.

My point, which I think you grasp better than most, is that these states would be slave states mostly in name, but not so much in reality. The fight was more about the power they would have in congress rather than whether or not rampant slavery was going to happen in these territories made into states.

As I said, Pennsylvania and Delaware still had slaves all the way up to the Civil War, but not very many relatively.

Existing law was making lots of money for the Northern "free" states, and they had the stronger coalition, and wanted the Southern states kept in the minority so they could not undo the laws which favored the northern industrialists.

And it was worth a lot of money to keep the Southern coalition in congress in the minority.