To this day, I've got to wonder what those nitwits who fired on Ft. Sumter were thinking when they launched that costly war.
Lincoln had actually proposed a very reasonable plan to buy the slaves from the sale of public land, an idea he'd borrowed from a minor party candidate for president in 1844. It would've been a whole lot cheaper than the war. The process would have accelerated after the price of slaves started to plummet.
Probably true. I was being very conservative. More like 10 years in reality.
One point to remember is that slaves are only good for unskilled jobs as you have to force them to work agains’t their will. If you put them on a skilled job in a factory they will sabotage it at every opportunity. The more industrialized the country the less jobs slaves can do.