I will provide my thoughts mostly based on my review of the Constitutional Convention. As we know, the writers of the document clearly believed that a replacement for the Articles of Confederation was needed and also knew that it would need near total agreement to avoid breaking up the "united" states. Obviously, this was going to require compromise and re-writing to come up with a document that would make it through the ratification process.

The Constitution has two major parts related to the enslaved. The first is the three-fifths compromise, which allows enslaved individuals to be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of the decennial census, increasing the population of those states with thriving slave populations. The second provision is the forbidding of international slave trade after 20 years. Both topics were covered in the Federalist Papers, giving us some ideas related to the reasoning behind both during the debates.

In Federalist No. 38, Madison argued that the eventual prohibition of slave trading internationally was still better than what was under the Articles of Confederation. Of course, as any biologist might tell you, you likely wouldn't need new enslaved Africans to replace those already in the various states. It also required Congress to develop eventual laws to enforce this change.

The three fifths compromise was a major requirement of southern states and was clearly included to get their support. In Federalist No. 54, Madison seemed to provide reasoning that because the enslaved were both people and property, there was a need to give them consideration, since they were part of the population. Frankly, while many of the arguments presented in the Federalist Papers were logical and clear, it seems to me that Madison was trying to convince New Yorkers (the original audience for the Federalist Papers) to approve the Constitution, even with possible disagreement about slavery.

So, finally, back to your original question: I believe that the final government of the United States had slavery built into it, with no specific provisions to eventually do away with the institution. While the general belief at the time among many was that slavery would eventually die off, by not providing any plan to legally eliminate it, at the very least, the writers chose to at the very least, table the issue. Obviously, the main supporters chose to compromise over what would eventually lead to the major conflict of the country less than 100 years later.

No. In fact they ignored a respected historian just to make the claim;

... I had received an email from a New York Times research editor. Because I’m an historian of African American life and slavery, in New York, specifically, and the pre-Civil War era more generally, she wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion: “One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.”

I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.

...

More importantly for Hannah-Jones’ argument, slavery in the Colonies faced no immediate threat from Great Britain, so colonists wouldn’t have needed to secede to protect it. It’s true that in 1772, the famous Somerset case ended slavery in England and Wales, but it had no impact on Britain’s Caribbean colonies, where the vast majority of black people enslaved by the British labored and died, or in the North American Colonies. It took 60 more years for the British government to finally end slavery in its Caribbean colonies, and when it happened, it was in part because a series of slave rebellions in the British Caribbean in the early 19th century made protecting slavery there an increasingly expensive proposition.

And then;

The editor followed up with several questions probing the nature of slavery in the Colonial era, such as whether enslaved people were allowed to read, could legally marry, could congregate in groups of more than four, and could own, will or inherit property—the answers to which vary widely depending on the era and the colony. I explained these histories as best I could—with references to specific examples—but never heard back from her about how the information would be used.

Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay. In addition, the paper’s characterizations of slavery in early America reflected laws and practices more common in the antebellum era than in Colonial times, and did not accurately illustrate the varied experiences of the first generation of enslaved people that arrived in Virginia in 1619.

• Leslie M. Harris, who is professor of history at Northwestern University, and author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 and Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies.