Economically, slavery was almost at an end, even though the planters didn't want to admit it. The Industrial Revolution would have forced an end to slave labor.
Nonsense. The Planters couldn't even conceive of the industrial revolution reaching the deep south, and it basically didn't until well into the 20th Century. Hell, share cropping (defacto slavery) still existed into the 1960s.
BTW. What about industrialization is incompatible with slavery? Slavery can be very profitable in any task requiring large amounts of non-skilled or semi-skilled labor. (See China). The largest iron works in the South (Tredgear in Richmond) profitably used slave labor -- Picking cotton in Mississippi or mining silver in Nevada or packing beef in Kansas, slave labor would have been just as profitable for the few.
Sheer idiocy. The industrial revolution had been going on for 35 years and slavery had thrived throughout. It wasn't almost at an end. There was nothing to replace it with.