Agreed.
What's being debated here are two questions:
A) How important was slavery to the South? and
B) Would slavery have "withered away" and died out on its own, peacefully, had there been no Civil War?
Some of those who defend the Southern Cause wish to minimize slavery's importance for the Civil War, and assert slavery would have naturally died out on its own, even had there been no war.
And there are factual arguments to be made, as you may have read on this thread.
For two examples, it is a fact that:
From facts such as these they build a case that the Civil War was not all about slavery, but really was about States Rights against Federal power -- a War of Northern Aggression in which the South was defending the US Constitution!
Well, the truth is, it was all about slavery, indeed, for those states who began the secessions, it was only about slavery.
There was no "northern aggression" then for them to point to, only the insult and potential threat to slavery represented by the election of Abraham Lincoln.
And Lincoln had not even taken office yet.
We can see this more clearly if we look closer at the two "facts" cited above.
Next we consider that slave populations ranged from barely 10% of the total in Border States like Maryland and Missouri, to over 50% in Deep South states like South Carolina and Mississippi. For the average to be say 35%, then some states and counties must have been in the range of 2/3 -- 67% of white households owning slaves.
For such people, slavery was not just an option or luxury, it was a necessity -- and any perceived challenge to slavery would be met with violence.
Smokin' Joe: "Many produce crops cannot be successfully harvested without destroying the plant, and because the crop does not ripen all at once."
Again agreed, but only up to a point.
In this day and age technology can do amazing things, including distinguish between ripe-enough and not-yet-ripe-enough produce.
But the question is: at what cost?
If it takes a million dollars to purchase an automatic harvester for delicate produce -- plus tens of thousands per year to operate and repair it -- what farmer would spend such sums if he could hire workers for a few thousand dollars per season?
So, considering that the Deep South was willing to bet everything on a War for Independence to protect slavery in 1860, I see no reason to suppose they would have abolished slavery peacefully on their own just a few decades later.
Just as the Northern slaveholding states had discovered, industrialization was indeed making slavery moot. No longer were dozens needed to sit and pick the seeds out of cotton, the cotton gin would do the same job cheaply, efficiently, and only had to be 'fed' when it was in operation.
As much as slavery is presented as a moral issue, the economic side of the issue cannot be ignored.
Indded, slaves represented a large initial capital outlay, and on ongoing capital outlay as well, in housing (dirt floors? No running water? Outhouse? Well, most everyone lived that way.), food, clothing, and at least rudimentary medical care to keep them healthy enough to work. Much as the argument between a horse and an auto could be weighed once roads traversed all but the most difficult terrain, the automobile only needed to be fed when in operation, the horse was in need of constant care.
Where possible, and in an increasing scope, the business of tillage, cultivation, harvest, and processing was becoming increasingly mechanized. So, despite the need for manual labor during harvest, the expense was ongoing. With an increase in immigrants, one might note that slaves were reserved for less hazardous jobs than wage earners, simply because the wage earner did not represent a significant capital investemnt: he/she was replaceable readily, at a minimum of cost.
There are those who will note that slaves were self-replicating, but I would counter with the need to support them through their lives to a useful age for labor, provided they lived that long (infant mortalities were high among all the population then, not just the slaves), before any return could be had on that investment, whereas the wage earner showed up ready to work, without any prior capital outlay on the part of the employer.
So there were, in fact, multiple dynamics which made those who hired their help at an actual economic advantage over those who owned it.
With increasing industrialization, which unchecked by the devastation of the war might have been more rapid than many assume, I think slaveowning would have been far more an economic liability than an asset within a couple of decades, certainly by the 1890s.
Incidentally, the reason the Irish immigrants became teamsters, miners, longshoremen, etc, was that these were jobs which were commonly considered too hazardous to risk losing a slave (and the investment made in that slave) in.
Now, I am not excusing the institution of slavery. I am not denying the fact that slaves were people, too, although the denial of personhood afforded the Negroes by a self-righteous abolitionist would seldom be afforded to the tribes to the west who were stripped of massive assets, land, mineral wealth, etc. just shortly afterward by being presented and treated as 'savages', which justified in the mindset of the Government taking away all by deceit and open warfare.
So I'm not buying the fable of American History that the North was out to free the slaves, especially as many northern states were slaveowning states as well. The whole moral high ground seeps into the morass of deceit and subsequent villification of entire peoples while stealing their birthright in the name of Manifest Destiny.
Simply enough, slavery was an issue at the time because it was an economic cudgel with which to beat the South, to attack the means of production of the wealthiest, and one which would have been as moot in a couple of decades as banning the horse-drawn plow after tractors came widely into use.
It cost 600,000 lives and uncountable treasure to end an institution which would have, for the most art, died a natural death due to changing economic paradigms.