The threat was to the economy. Slavery just being a mechanism or tool of the 19th century factory farm..
If your saying economy=slavery then I agree with you. From what I’ve read slaves were worth upwards of 2-3 billion dollars in 1860. So it is understandable why the slavocracy revolted at even the possibility of a threat to their peculiar institution. I maybe could even muster a little bit of sympathy for them, if it wasn’t slavery.
It’s a shame the founders couldn’t have definitively dealt with slavery when the constitution was written. However, from what I’ve read of the constitutional convention we would have lost Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina if the hardline anti-slavery founders had pushed the issue. And the founders were more concerned about a fractured America fighting amongst itself or being influenced or taken over by foreign powers. So they kicked the can down the road.
Some tool ...
Some mechanism ...