[Mr Ramsbotham]

Some kind of phase-out period coupled with economic aid to the south to help them transition away from slave labor perhaps? Would that have been better than killing hundreds of thousands of people?

It would certainly have been better, but it wasn't going to happen. The intransigence of the South over the issue of slavery outweighed every other consideration at the time. It wasn't even a question of outlawing slavery, but of simply whether it would be allowed to expand. And the excesses of the Southern states, even against their own citizenry, were such as to indicate that they were not about to give it up without a struggle.

[AceMineral]

The organising principle of Southern society was the natural superiority of the white race over the black race. Nothing was going to interfere with that. If slavery was either outlawed or phased out that meant at the least the former slaves could start to outvote the white populace and who knows where that may have lead. At the most it would mean that whites and black were morally equal. Both outcomes were completely unacceptable to the white populace whether slave owner or not.

[samtheman]

It would certainly have been better, but it wasn't going to happen. The intransigence of the South over the issue of slavery outweighed every other consideration at the time. It wasn't even a question of outlawing slavery, but of simply whether it would be allowed to expand. And the excesses of the Southern states, even against their own citizenry, were such as to indicate that they were not about to give it up without a struggle.

You are correct.