I know exactly what it says. It dealt with more than... “persons held for service or labor” ...Compromising in the present does not mean the future would be the same. I also know that the section addressed other people than just them.
Why do you think Congress would have been able to act after 20 years?
Why do you think that the importation of slaves could be prohibited?
It is clear that the Founders were ashamed to even use the word “slavery”, most believed it would die a natural death as the nation evolved economically.
You know it means slaves. You are just whistling past the graveyard here. Lincoln even admitted it meant slaves, just as I have shown you his words.
Why do you think that the importation of slaves could be prohibited?
Because all the states agreed to it. That's why. They agreed to the other too, but then the Northern states one by one refused to honor it.
It is clear that the Founders were ashamed to even use the word “slavery”, most believed it would die a natural death as the nation evolved economically.
It would have done so but for the invention of the Cotton gin by that clever Massachusetts Yankee. :)
“I know exactly what it says. It dealt with more than... “persons held for service or labor” ...Compromising in the present does not mean the future would be the same.”
That is why the founding fathers, including all the Southern delegates, insisted on including in the United States constitution a provision allowing the document to be peacefully amended.
Slavery could have, and should have been, eliminated by a peaceful constitutional amendment. Not war.
For all the talk, neither Lincoln nor any northern Congressman or Senator ever introduced before the war a proposed constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. And Lincoln actually served in Congress.