I will add (as well) that going by natural human rights, that slaves (slaves by heredity, not due to agreement they themselves signed, a la indentured servitude, which was a legal and moral agreement) also were worthy of the right to self-determination as well.
I agree, which is why I have always had a problem with the message sent* by the Civil War; "You use force to control people, so we will use force to control you."
It establishes the premise that oppression/control is legitimate if you have sufficient power to accomplish it.
If we believe that people don't have the right to force obedience on other people, we should not be trying to force obedience on other people.
They themselves were morally justified to utilize any manner and method to escape involuntary servitude.
No one has an obligation to remain someone else's servant against their will.
the South in turn had their boot on the throat of a substantial minority or (in the case of Mississippi and South Carolina) an outright majority of their own non-White population. They had the right to their own freedom and independence. They had the right to their own freedom and independence.
Yes they did, and I think eventually an appeal to reason would have worked. (especially after the profitability had been greatly reduced.)
I have studied the evolution of abolition in America, and I have read of how the idea mostly began (with Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration) and started a preference cascade initially in the North East, but one which faltered more and more as it traveled further south, hitting resistance from the profit motive. Never the less, it was making steady progress, based mostly on societal disapproval, and even in the South where it was most profitable, Charles Dickens reported of numerous families who owned slaves lamenting the fact, and trying to figure out ways to disinvest themselves from the institution without getting too badly hurt.
I think given time, the social pressure against it would continue to gain states incrementally, until it finally broke through in the deeper South where the practice was more profitable. I also think the mechanized alternatives would have eventually undercut it's profitability to the point where the Social pressures would have made it "not worth it." And then it would have collapsed.
I have numerous times opined that Slavery would likely have lasted between 20 and 80 years longer, but would have eventually expired naturally as an institution within that time frame.
But the question for those who believe the war was primarily about slavery is this: Was it worth the bloodshed and destruction to not have to wait that long? Why, after "four score and seven years" of legal slavery in the United States, did it suddenly become more intolerable than it was in the previous 87 years? (Longer if your count the time it existed while we were Colonies of Britain.)
Was it worth the creation of the Federal leviathan that has been dominating us ever since, and which is the source of so much of our current troubles?
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. *The message that most people claim was sent by it. I now believe the message that was actually sent was "Mess with the flow of money into the Empire of New York/Washington DC, and we will send armies to destroy you."
Force has been the justification and imprimatur of virtually every government and empire since day #1. Emphasize even the phrase, “Full force (of the law).” Whether it is right or wrong tends to depend upon your point of view over what is being “forced.”
As for how long it would’ve taken for enough people in the South to decide ending slavery was preferable, it’s hard to say for certain. There was already outside pressure, of course. The U.K. was supposedly standing ready to help the CSA, but only if they got rid of slavery at once. Here again, they could’ve had their country independent of the USA over this one thing, but that was a no-go. Another example of why the CSA was too much an amateur hour in the realm of nation creation.
Setting that aside for a moment, even if slavery were abolished by their own accord within a 20-50 year period, it’s almost certain that the CSA would’ve still kept ex-slaves in a second class status. Enfranchisement en masse ? No way. It would’ve been a great deal like the post-Reconstruction to 1960s Jim Crow era stuff, they’d have either had the choice to leave the CSA for the USA (probably risk getting killed crossing a VERY heavily fortified border along the Ohio River or inland, had the southern counties of IL-IN-OH seceded) or agreeing to an odious sharecropping arrangement, which was de facto slavery (or such as how some mining companies exploited their workers by not even paying them cash, but in scrip, and only able to redeem them at their ludicrously expensive company stores - a de facto version of White slavery, usually of newly arrived European immigrants).
So, again, this was a raw deal almost any way you slice it, at least for Blacks (and Native Indians who would’ve also been added to the mix via CSA annexations).
But to answer your question, was the war worth it in the end ? That it would lead to a massive Federal leviathan ? Absolutely not. If you were a slaveholder who saw his property destroyed ? No way. But if you were a slave in the Deep South who gained his freedom and (albeit briefly) enfranchisement ? The answer is self-evident. They and their ancestors had been waiting since slavery was enshrined in the old colonies for that day to come.