Yep, if you read the rhetoric of the time, it’s clear they had no intention of ending slavery anytime soon. Even if slavery economically was going to run its’ course, I’m sure they also were thinking ahead to the consequences of having to deal with the freed slaves.
That’s the whole problem with slavery, it was a short-term economic gain, but it was going to create a burden that future generations were going to have to deal with, long after those who benefitted from slavery were long gone.
Before black slavery most slave cultures once subsequent generations were freed they either migrated back home if they had been seized in conquest or they assimilated
That’s the rub.
I’m not sure slavery was thriving ...it seems it was on the wane in the north where it was being supplanted by poor whites and the parts of the south where it was most obviously successful for the owners were going to run out of land to cultivate and too many heirs to split holdings between
Hence like second sons before them who migrated from Europe for wealth these folks wanted the eastern plains pretty much the same
To extend their way of life
That’s just the slavery expansion economics ....
The civil war was about much more than that.
You do bring up a salient point...one always ignored here.
What to do about these blacks if freed.
In parts of the south if you did what the radical GOPe wanted under the guise of altruism then you handed all political power to blacks to lord over what in any places is a white minority...then...and now in places like the delta or Jackson Miss
They didn’t get their way obviously.
I don’t think repatriating slaves to Africa was possible but the north could have offered that as an option...and encouraged it
But even though they sure didn’t ever....note I said ever....want them en masse.....nor did any to the left of Lincoln wish them to leave given the power these newly freed folks gave the GOPe at that time
It was a mess.
And yes like you said....the fallout from brining them here continues to this day and despite some blacks achieving power and status I think it’s declined since my youth for blacks as a group.
Stuff like this is just political grandstanding by hucksters.
Go to Richmond and look around.....statues are not the problem