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They planned to send all the blacks back to Africa once they were no longer needed. Thomas Jefferson was very explicit about this, as I demonstrated in a reply to Hlynka above. Many of the greatest Americans, from James Madison to Andrew Jackson, and from Daniel Webster to Henry Clay, were members of an organization entirely dedicated to achieving this goal, as, again, I’ve noted in multiple comments in this thread. This effort was a dismal failure, resulting in the deportation of only a few thousand blacks to what became Liberia. So, yes, the importation of a massive population of black slaves was a disaster for this country, and the men responsible should indeed be roundly lambasted for their decision to do so. However, it’s not like it didn’t occur to the smart ones just how big a problem they had on their hands, nor the importance of dealing decisively with that problem at some point. Sadly, their descendants waited far too long and couldn’t execute the dismount.
Most of them didn't, actually. A few did, hence the ill-fated Liberian venture, but the majority of early slave importers never had a long-term vision for what they'd do with a growing slave population, and the later ones just thought they could keep the system going forever with enough force (hence, the Confederacy).
It's true that many of the founding fathers undertook projects later in life to send Africans back to Africa. But their motives varied. Jefferson believed it was necessary for self preservation - he was terrified of slave revolts - while Madison was one of many slaveowners who came to have moral qualms later in life. I also suspect that they didn't really think their projects were likely, any more than you think your project to segregate America into Whitelandia and Blacklandia is likely. They saw the problem but short of somehow convincing almost all their fellow countrymen to undertake a radical transformation of society, it wasn't going to happen.
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