[CobaltBlue]

Agreed. The ironies are overwhelming. I don't believe in historic inevitability, but I think the Confederates knew that the end of slavery was inevitable.

Cotton depletes soil, and in those days before chemical fertilizers, and before mechanical farm equipment, it was becoming increasingly difficult to make a profit raising cotton in places with thin soil.

[Restorer]

it was becoming increasingly difficult to make a profit raising cotton in places with thin soil.

Which was why they felt slavery had to expand to survive. The big-thinkers among them envisioned a conquest of all Latin America, which would be converted into a giant plantation system.