Americans became convinced very early on that successful plantation agriculture was dependent upon slave labor. This strongly held belief traces its origins to the introduction of tobacco to the Virginia Company. Tobacco cultivation did not fare very well with endentured servants (mostly from England). They worked grudgingly and once freed from their indenture, did not choose to work the tobacco field. Efforts to use Indian slaves fell short because the Indians could just walk away and go home.
Only after the Portugese introduced Black slaves into Virginia did plantation agriculture catch on. Tobacco flourished, followed by Rice, Indigo, Sugar, and eventually cotton. Many who were morally opposed to slavery could not see a way to end it. Of course, the South was not really interested in ending slavery, they were interested in preserving it and wrapped the practice in their economy, culture, way of life, natural order of things, etc.
Slavery would have ended in the South, as it had in the North, when it became economically unecessary and the moral arguments against it prevailed. That probably would have occurred in the 1870’s or 1880’s, but the anti-slavery movement had changed the moral attitude of the civilized world and there was no patience for waiting.
The Civil War was about slavery, no doubt. But, it wasn’t just about slavery.
Exactly! And of course they were dead wrong to have done so.
No, it wasn’t just about slavery. But, slavery was the main cause.
I find no fault in your reasoning except for the potential alternative of slavery fading as it did in South America. Many slaves were skilled craftsman and not simply unitelligent field workers. Such a skilled workgroup could have played a part in industrializing the South. What alternative future would have come had the North not gained in Congress or Lincoln elected, is simply specultation. I envision that it would not have faded, but quite the reverse. But that is the realm of fiction writing.