Is that what they taught you growing up? What nonsense!
First, the heads were awfully cool until the anti-slavery movement seriously got going in 1830. Before then the debate was pretty rational for the times and the subject and almost NOTHING HAPPENED. Slavery was not dying out or even weakening, as it had decades earlier in England. Your precious Wesleys did not eliminate slavery and it was NOT about to die out. The US did not follow the English lead because there were too many slaves, too financially important, too close to home for Southerners to give them up.
On the eve of the Civil War, the value of slaves in the South was larger than the value of land. They were incredibly valuable and the South wouldn't give them up without a fight.
If Lincoln had allowed the South to secede, a country FOUNDED on the preservation of slavery would have continued slavery for a LONG, LONG time. We will never know, but probably not until the mid-20th century would slavery have ended in the South, though it all depends on how seriously the Confederacy wanted to join the community of decent nations.
And, while we all admit it was morally wrong, the slaves were their property, legally bought and sold. Of course it was an horrid institution.
Hey, I'm fully willing to admit that slavery was an important issue. It wasn't the only one.
Tell me. Are you willing to have someone march in and destroy your entire way of life without offering any solution for change? Just end slavery. Turn em all out in the streets with no education and nowhere to go.
Where were they going? Was the North welcoming them with open arms? Don't be absurd.
The South may have treated the slaves as property. But they saw them fed, clothed and housed. The North didn't want them to be property.
They just didn't want them.