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Mechanization would eventually have done away with the need for slaves, and without bankrupting the Southern agrarian economy. I highly doubt that ANYONE -- North or South -- "insisted blacks be forever enslaved for the benefit of their white masters."

I personally believe that the Confederacy WAS in the right as far as the state sovereignty question is concerned. And while I freely admit to being a racist, since I do not beg forgiveness from black people for sins I've never committed, I do not see myself as a White Supremacist, nor do I align myself with that ideology, which I regard as laughably stupid.

I do agree that Slavery would not have lasted too long in the South, by latest, 1900 when mechanization was in full swing. As to the status of Blacks, well, the historical butterflies would be in place but the "alternate historian" in me would have speculated that there might have been a drive to have the freed Blacks resettle in Africa or perhaps in the Carribean somewhere if the Confederates would have expanded there. I just wanted to point out as you did the Civil War was not quite the noble war to end slavery. The North really did not care to end or or not, basically Lincoln freed the slaves to stick it to the South, it was just a tool to do that.

basically Lincoln freed the slaves to stick it to the South, it was just a tool to do that.

Lincoln's Emancipation didn't free any slaves except those in states "in open rebellion." It was about turning the war into a moral platform on slavery so that no European power -- especially England, which had been waffling -- would dare come in on the side of the South. So it was less concerned with liberating slaves than it was about playing a powerful political trump card, one Lincoln had not dared play earlier lest he risk losing the "border states" like Kentucky and Missouri.

With the Union losing right and left and France and Russia giving serious thought to recognizing the Confederacy -- something they didn't risk doing without England's support -- Lincoln had to find some way to forestall the foreign intervention that would have tipped the war in the South's favor.

"Egalitarian" France and "enlightened" England could not justify entry into a war to defend human slavery.

Nowhere Man: "I do agree that Slavery would not have lasted too long in the South, by latest, 1900 when mechanization was in full swing."

No, you have it backwards.
By 1860 slave-holders learned their human "property" could do most anything unskilled white workers could do, better, cheaper and with less complaint.
So slavery was on the march -- not just growing cash crops like cotton, sugar cane and tobacco, but also working in mines, building railroads, and labor in manufacturing shops.
Meaning by 1860, for slave-holders the sky was the limit, just so long as they could find new places & jobs for slave labor, there was no need to ever hire "white trash".

Nowhere Man: "...there might have been a drive to have the freed Blacks resettle in Africa or perhaps in the Carribean somewhere if the Confederates would have expanded there."

In fact, there were several plans beginning with President Jefferson, all the way through Lincoln's to purchase freedom and offer resettlement for ex-slaves in Africa.
All such plans were rejected by slave-holders.

Confederate plans to expand into the Caribbean were certainly not to provide homes for freed slaves, but rather to provide new land for slave-holder operations.

Nowhere Man: "I just wanted to point out as you did the Civil War was not quite the noble war to end slavery.
The North really did not care to end or or not, basically Lincoln freed the slaves to stick it to the South, it was just a tool to do that."

But the 1860 Republican platform did not call for freeing any slaves anywhere.
It merely opposed slavery's expansion.
So there was no automatic effort to free all slaves, just because the Confederacy had declared war, on May 6, 1861.

After May of 1861, Lincoln's first concern was to defeat the military power which had provoked, started and declared war on the United States.
Of course, Lincoln knew from the beginning that war meant the President could declare runaway slaves to be "contraband" and free them.
But his actual sequence of events was slow and deliberate, in hopes of keeping the Unionist loyalty of slave-holders in Border States.