Why didn't the US abolish slavery when the constitution was created?

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Economics. Slaves were economically viable in both the north and southern parts of America at the time of the Revolutionary War. The American Economy was dependent upon slavery to provide the labor to produce goods.

It wasn't until the North became industrialized in the machine age that slavery became an economic burden. One man operating a machine could do the work of ten slaves, so it was cheaper to hire one worker at minimum wage than pay to feed and house ten slaves.

The South remained Agrarian and farm machinery was not invented at the time of the civil war, so the south remained depended upon slaves to provide the labor....Show more

The southern states wouldn't have agreed to become part of the United States if slavery was abolished. The US did make the stipulation that no new territories to the US could allow slavery, but that was years later and lead to the civil war....Show more

Although many of the Founding Fathers acknowledged that slavery violated the core American Revolutionary ideal of liberty, their simultaneous commitment to private property rights, principles of limited government, and intersectional harmony prevented them from making a bold move against slavery. The considerable investment of Southern Founders in slave-based staple agriculture, combined with their deep-seated racial prejudice, posed additional obstacles to emancipation

15 were slave owners
7 were non-slave owners...Show more

1. Slaves were valuable, and abolishing slavery would have amounted to taking away the property of thousands of people.

Even Lincoln didn't free the slaves in areas under Union control when he created the Emancipation Proclamation, because that would have upset slave owners in border states like Maryland and Kentucky (which stayed with the Union during the Civil War). The Proclamation was only effective in areas not under Union control at the time it was published--meaning that it didn't free a single slave until later in the war except in areas where the North had taken control of Southern areas.

2. Blacks were not considered human, at least not in a legal sense. While there were non-chattel slaves (indentured servants) that were white, they at least had reasonable a chance of becoming free, while the odds of a black slave becoming free was microscopic.

3. Slavery was condoned by the Bible, leading some to think it was OK....Show more

At the time, slavery was considered acceptable by most of society; it was only later that opposition started to grow.

The other issue was that it was important to the economy of many of the southern colonies, and it would have been very difficult to get their support if it was removed- after all, look what happened when they did try....Show more