What twaddle. That's a bogus argument for many reasons.
First off, you're holding out the specious position that the only two choices for those held in bondage in the South, was slavery or death. Clearly, obviously, untrue.
As to "compassion," the original southern slaveholders were not being "compassionate" when they bought their slaves from the slavers who delivered them from Africa. They were buying livestock to provide labor for their plantations.
And you most certainly cannot apply that argument to those human beings who were born to slaves, and by extension were enslaved themselves, and their offspring after them. There's no "death vs. slavery" compassion involved there -- it was a matter of livestock trading.
And it also manages to sidestep that soaring language of the Declaration, that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The problem with self-evident truths is that they're not something about which "each man must answer for himself." They're simply true, and they apply even -- perhaps even especially, in this case -- to men held as slaves.
The fact is that the slave-holders had a financial stake in their livestock, and were therefore unwilling -- to the point of secession and warfare -- to give them up unless forced to do so.
All in all, this "compassion" gambit is among the more rancid arguments I've seen on these threads.
“First off, you’re holding out the specious position that the only two choices for those held in bondage in the South, was slavery or death. Clearly, obviously, untrue.”
You are putting words in my mouth with this statement. Never a wise point from which to argue. You know not my views on the origins of slavery nor my views on the institution itself.