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I think one reason the Founders punted on the slavery issue was that in the 1780s slavery was looking to be economically unviable. I believe they thought that it would gradually die out without any fuss or bother. But then Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and slaves could produce and process enough cotton that more than paid for their expenses.

I think you are correct. Those D@mn Massachusettsians are always stirring up troubles, aren't they? :)

That of course led to the exhaustion of the soil and the quest for more land to grow cotton on.

There was no more land on which cotton would grow without irrigation systems that hadn't yet been invented.

There was even talk of annexing Cuba to continue cotton/slavery. Too much of the south’s capital was invested in its slaves. Hard to imagine their giving that up without some violence.

They didn't have to give it up if they had remained in the Union. Lincoln and Northern state representatives were quite willing to guarantee them permanent protection for slavery if they just stayed in the Union.

What they wouldn't allow them to have is enough representation to vote off the taxes that had been put on their income streams, most of which were funding Washington DC, with a big chunk of it getting dropped off in New York.

What they wouldn’t allow them to have is enough representation to vote off the taxes that had been put on their income streams,

The weren’t taxed on their exports (not allowed under Constitution) but they were having to pay taxes on their imports. Ships hauling cotton to England came back filled with superior English-manufactured products. Northern factories couldn’t compete with English so they pressured their Congressmen to pass higher tariffs. Southerners resented paying taxes that they got little in return from. Nice, slow-moving rivers provided their highways, but their taxes were providing for roads in the north and west and subsidizing railroads as well.

The South felt picked on and unloved by the rest of the nation. The fact that more and more Northerners sneered at their “peculiar institution” didn’t help. They saw the election of Lincoln as the last straw. It’s taken well over a century (and the invention of air conditioning) for the South to recover.