I could've seen it dying a natural death, as an increasingly mechanized economy came to the fore, and the costs of maintaining the institution became more and more prohibitive. I believe there were still many in the South who saw this writing on the wall.
I would have.
And further more, what kind of country would we be?
A nation thus enslaved to evermore onerous taxation to support a rabble, white, black, hispanic, what have you, that will not work but instead sucks our sustenance away.
A nation that no longer wins wars, internal or external.
We would not be a nation, united with a central government to issue checks to the indolent. We’d be a Balkanized nation of squabbling states, counties, separate ‘’nation-states’’. In short we’d be a mess. To think the South would have let slavery if it had indeed won the war , after expending so much blood and treasure to win it is sophistry.