Most Southern abolitionists supported a gradual emancipation of slavery not the sudden, catastrophic sort supported (and carried out) by radical abolitionists in the North. I say it was catastrophic because it suddenly left blacks with no master to provide for them and no jobs or education with which to provide for themselves. What little programs there were to help them were hastily put together programs that were less effective than a well-though-out program could have been. Also, the entire economic system of the South was suddenly thrown into complete disorder, which could possibly have been avoided if the shift from slave to free labor had been progressive but gradual.
If the advice of the gradual abolitionists of the South (and the North) had been followed then a successful emancipation similar to the one carried out in the late 1700's and early 1800's in New York (I think) would have occurred.
Little or no credit is given these days to Lee, Jackson and the other good men and women of the South who, unlike some of their neighbors (both North and South) wished to see a free but stable South.