[Schlagbohrer]

Slave owners, such as all of the so-called founding fathers, were as much rent seekers as any king

[ludicrousdispla]

not all of them, as 15 of the 56 signers of the Declaration did not own slaves.

>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_and_the_United_States_...

[thombat]

Of those 15, it might be illuminating to know how many did not on grounds of principle versus merely that the cost/benefit didn't favour it for them at that time?

[mmcdermott]

Slavery was a controversy from the beginning that finally bubbled over into the Civil War. It was not, as this question seems to imply, a near universally approved of practice where a few just didn't happen to need slaves.

That doesn't justify allowing it for almost a century. The US was comparable to the rest of the West, in this regard. The final abolition of slavery in Britain wasn't until 1833.