Agreed in part, the founders could not solve all issues but tabling them till 1861 was not the best choice either.
That the DEMOCRAT party made the post civil war era attempts to set the slaves on the path to FULL economic parity is probably more to blame at this point than slavery itself.
Read the list of civil rights laws passed by the post war Republican congress as attempts to solve the issues (none stong enough or at least no enforced enough sadly)
I wouldn’t consider what they did as “tabling” the slavery issue at all. There was much debate and in fact they were able to win a victory against the pro-slave states via the 3/5th’s clause. With that clause, they lowered the represenation of pro-slave states when compared to anti-slave states and they also were able to get the pro-slave states to admit that their slaves were “men” as defined by the Declaration.
This set a heck of a foundation for the future abolotionist movement. In addition, they also gave us a founding document that allowed for the eventual abolition of slavery.
They were able to take it as far as was possible without losing half the colonies from adopting the constitution and bill of rights. It is rather amazing after all.
Well, at least until John Roberts declared it constitutional for the federal government to confiscate the ownership of my physical being.
Just a bit of insight into some of their views:
George Washington: “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”
—Letter to Morris, April 12, 1786, in George Washington, A Collection, ed. W.B. Allen (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1989), 319.
John Adams: “Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States…. I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in …abhorrence.”
—Letter to Evans, June 8, 1819, in Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams ed. Adrienne Koch et al. (New York: Knopf, 1946), 209-10.
Benjamin Franklin: “Slavery is …an atrocious debasement of human nature.”
—”An Address to the Public from the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery” (1789), Benjamin Franklin, Writings ed. J.A. Leo Lemay (New York: Library of America, 1987), 1154.
Alexander Hamilton: “The laws of certain states …give an ownership in the service of negroes as personal property…. But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty—and when the captor in war …thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.”
—Philo Camillus no. 2 (1795), in Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961-), 19:101-2.
James Madison: “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
—Speech at Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787, in Max Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), 1:135.