Brazil gradually abolished, first the slave trade (1831) then all new slavery (1871), then all remaining slaves over 60, including a Manumissions Fund (1885), then finally any few remaining slaves (1888), with no compensation for owners, but intended financial aid for freed slaves.
If you consider: US secessionists declared separation not over plans to abolish slavery in the South, but rather over Republican promises to prevent slavery's expansion into any western territories which didn't want it, then you can see that slavery in the US was significantly different and more deeply entrenched, especially in the Deep South.
Remember, in 1860 cotton growing had never been more profitable, the Deep South never more prosperous and slave prices never higher.
Certainly so long as that remained, there was no possibility those slave-holders would accept restrictions on their "peculiar institution".
DeoVindicesSicSemperTyrannis: "Also, you are making the assumption that folks fought to defend slavery.
They didn't, because the majority didn't own any slaves.
Most were fighting to protect their homes from invasion."
Remember, no pro-Union poster on these threads has ever said a disparaging word about the courage, resourcefulness, tenacity and, yes, good behavior of the vast majority of Confederate solders, who as you say, cared far less for slavery than they did for defending their homeland.
But Confederate leadership is a very different story.
Consider first, how many slave holding families there were: in seven Deep South original Confederate states, nearly half of families owned slaves, and most of those who didn't aspired to.
But in the four Upper South states it was a different story.
There only 25% (roughly) of families owned slaves, and every Upper South state had large regions of anti-slavery Unionists -- western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Arkansas.
That's why those states refused to join the Confederacy before Fort Sumter, and why they all supplied significant numbers of troops to the Union Army.
Moving north -- in the four Border States, slave ownership was still less (typically 15% of families) and there majorities were anti-slavery & pro-Union, which is why they never voted to secede.
Point is: regardless, Confederate leadership was virtually 100% slave-holders, and were primarily motivated by their desires to preserve, protect and defend their "peculiar institution" of slavery, see, for example, this link.
That is the reason they refused, even months before the bitter, bitter end, to make a peace deal with Lincoln which would have freed slaves, even with Lincoln's offer of $400,000,000 in compensation!
DeoVindicesSicSemperTyrannis: "...the tension between them and the North over slavery was never regarding the perpetual preservation of slavery.
It was always regarding whether the Fed gov or the states (or territories) should have the right to decide the issue of emancipation."
Rubbish & propaganda, because 1860 Republicans never threatened slavery in the South.
Instead, the Republican 1860 platform called for free-choice for settlers in western territories, and for citizens in Northern states.
You may remember, the 1857 Dred Scott decision made it virtually impossible for Northern states to outlaw slavery within their own borders.
And pro-Confederate posters on this thread defend Dred Scott as necessarily Constitutional!
So that's what gave rise to the great Republican revolution.
DeoVindicesSicSemperTyrannis: "There were also other issues at stake, such as the high tariffs the north was pushing, and the fact that for the first time in history a purely sectional party had been elected, whose interests lay primarily in benefitting their section."
- Tariffs: In 1860 US tariffs were near all-time lows of 15% overall, well below the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations" @35%.
Throughout US history, tariffs had gone up and down, depending on political winds, had sometimes been a major issue, but were clearly "politics as usual".
So there's no reason to suppose a modest tariff increase would lead to declarations of secession.The 1860 Proposal for a modest increase in tariffs (Morrill) could not pass Congress so long as Democrats remained in power there.
So Morrill only passed after Southern Democrats walked out, in 1861. - That 1860 "sectional party": was mostly just the old Whigs, minus their previous Southern allies.
Former Whig Southerners who favored Union voted for John Bell's Constitutional Union party, which carried Virginia, Kentucky & Tennessee.
It also did well in other regions throughout the South.So, while Republicans were mostly Northern, Unionist voters could be found in every Southern state
Note here Constitutional Union Party shows up as yellow-orange counties in the South:
DeoVindicesSicSemperTyrannis: "You are definitely right however about Jefferson Davis (among others) being a voice for the gradual abolition of slavery.
He once said that once the Confederacy gained its independence, it would mean the end of slavery."
Sure, after the war, Davis called for peace and reconciliation between South & North, and who knows (?), may even have admitted that abolishing slavery was necessary.
But there are no such statements I know of from before or during the Civil War.
At the time of secession, in early 1861, Deep South secessionists were not in the least bashful about saying slavery was their prime motivation for leaving the Union.
DeoVindicesSicSemperTyrannis: "Southerners were much more open to the abolition of slavery that one might think.
They just wanted to be the ones to do it themselves, and not have it forced on them.
This was the way the North had done it years before, but unlike the North, when the time came the South would actually have to free all their slaves, instead of cheating and selling them Southward, like a number of Northerners did."
From the time of our Founders until the Civil War, there had been many different proposals, ideas, suggestions, etc. to abolish slavery.
Without exception, those pre-war proposals included shipping freed slaves back to Africa, or someplace else, like Cuba.
So one can well imagine that would be the fate of any freed Confederate slaves.
As for any likelihood of the Confederacy freeing its own slaves, that falls into the same category as the North's 1861 desperate attempt to save the Union by making legal slavery a matter of constitutional amendment.
It shows that under duress, some people will say & do anything.
DeoVindicesSicSemperTyrannis: "...it would be a big money saver in the long run because you don't have to feed, clothe, and house machines.
They don't get sick and die on you either."
To repeat: when slave families were allowed to care for themselves, grow their own produce & livestock, etc., then they became virtually cost free.
No machine could be cheaper.
And slave families began working at, say, age 10 until maybe age 50 -- no machine can run that long, certainly not without major repair costs.
And to repeat: the proof of this idea is that even today, when low-cost migrant workers are available, farmers hire them, but when not available, then farmers consider investing in high-cost machinery.
So we can well expect that continued slavery would have delayed & reduced the success of labor-saving farm machinery.
Finally, we should note that unlike machinery, slaves could easily "multi-task", meaning that whenever one opportunity for productive work dried up, they could move as needed and quickly learn another, for example: building machines in factories.