Very good point. My posts are focused on the situation in the Deep South. Certainly, the Border States were a far different animal. I am sure you would agree with me, then, that, at least in the Deep South, slave owners were not very likely to voluntarily end slavery. That would have amounted to nearly complete collapse of the economy.
Agreed.
While small slave-holders in states like Kentucky were selling their slaves to Deep South plantations, because slave prices were so sky-high they made the institution unprofitable in Border States, at the same time King Cotton made plantation slavery hugely profitable in the Deep South.
So, for the great plantation owners in the Deep South, slavery was a matter of both economics and status, therefore they could not even conceive the idea of abolishing slavery.
Any suggestions along that line were met with the sternest of responses, including when necessary, declarations of secession from, and war against, the United States.