[Non-Sequitur]

Slavery should have been abolished in 1788 by mutual consent, not in 1865 after the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the ruination of much of the South.

There was no mutual consent to end it on the part of the slave holding states. And 73 years later there was still no desire to end it on the part of the slave-holding states.

[Wallace T.]

In 1788, all but two states were slaveholding. In the 1780s, northern New Jersey and southeastern New York had slave populations as high as much of the South outside the Tidewater plantation areas. The blame for the continuation of slavery after 1788 was not just a Southern one. Even after the admission of the Northwest Territory as free states and the end of slavery in New York, New Jersey, et. al., there was no universal opposition to the existence of slavery in the free states. Remember that abolitionists were widely unpopular in large parts of the free states, particularly those areas Kevin Phillips defines as the non-Yankee North, extending from what is now metropolitan New York City to the southern half of Illinois.

In 1788, 11 out of 13 states were slaveholding; by 1860, 15 out of 34 permitted the institution. In the 72 year period, due to the increased admission of free states and the abolition of slavery in the Northeastern states, slave states went from the majority to the minority.

Thus, "slave states" of 1788 were different from those of 1860.