Sounds like a bad agreement. If the Northern states had just stuck to their moral guns and refused to make a deal with the Southern states, why everyone would have been better off in the long run. Right?
As it is, they made a morally odious deal, which they subsequently sought to undermine at every opportunity, culminating in them eventually breaking the deal which they agreed to in the first place, after obtaining every possible advantage from it while it lasted.
It helped to secure their independence, it helped to boost their sales and economy, it provided them with much needed capital, and when they became rich, they didn't need it any more. They could afford their recently found morals. Now that the deal no longer served their interests, they could look down their noses at it, but without it, there is a good chance they would still be part of England.
Bait and switch. That was a very successfully played game.
Well, no. Because if northerners had insisted on abolition as a condition of Union, there would have been no Union.
As I think I’ve repeatedly noted, slavery at the Convention is a much bigger issue in our eyes than it was at the time.
Everybody believed it would just fade away. So they simply let the sleeping dog lie, on the theory he would just die in his sleep.