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A number of military leaders in the Confederate Army opined the same thing.

The nations that abolished slavery peacefully all had a plan that compensated the former slave owners for their loss of property. I do not remember the exact numbers, but the value of the slaves owned represented a fairly significant portion of the wealth in the 'slave' states. Wiping out that amount of wealth by law would have completely collapsed the economy in the impacted areas.

There was a bill before the Virginia Legislature to abolish slavery (gradualy) when Lincoln called for an invasion of the south.

Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, all union states, declined to abolish slavery.

Slaves were the most valuable property in the United States after real estate. Before you condemn slaveholders, would you give away your cars to "Save the Planet"?

A compensated or gradual manumission would have been possible. If I remember correctly, the Virginia law would have said no child could be born into slavery, and since importation of slaves was forbidden in both the USA and CSA, it would have only been a matter of time.

If slavery was not an important reason for the South's succession, then why didn't the South abolish slavery on its own accord? No one was forcing them to be slave states.

Economics. The antebellum South was heir to a feudal legacy, and simply could not function economically without huge numbers of cheap laborers. With industrialization dawning, it wouldn't have been much longer before that changed though. Slavery was a doomed institution, as much or more because of technology than because of any human rights considerations.

Slavery was the focus of states' rights, that's all.

Err...how to politely discuss actual history with the willfully ignorant?

Perhaps an analogy.
A large meat producing company has forced illegal foreign immigrants to work for substandard wages, and under deplorable conditions, under pain of death.
The ultimate end users of their products eventually get word of this human injustice.
But the end users find they can not just refuse to buy that product,and put that meat company out of business, because their own government has a vested interest in extracting "special taxes" and kickbacks from that company, and allows them to operate, as long as they pay extra taxes, and bribes to politicians.
But the end users persist in not wanting to buy from those particular companies, because they do not wish to appear to condone slavery.
This makes the Federal government very unhappy, because if the meat companies who pay the largest amount of taxes, not to mention private graft, are ruined, than they themselves will suffer not only the loss of all that money, but also the loss of power, against both the people and the meat company.
What is to be done?
It has already been universally accepted(in the north) and forgotten,that the red skinned indigenous peoples were not really considered fully human, and may be mistreated as a matter of course, but since they had been mostly eliminated in the North Eastern states(through genocide) and contributed little to federal coffers, their plight was not popular.
Meanwhile, in the Southern States, the vast majority of the population did not own slaves.
They were not amused when the Northern states aligned with the Federal governments "fix", and decided to assess extra taxes on all of them, to assuage the outraged Northern States newfound humanitarian sensibilities against the meat packing companies, by punishing the Southern States with more taxes.
I could go on, but the gist is obvious....
And history is again repeating itself.
Several large companies, and many small ones, are operating by paying graft money to the Federal government, for employing slaves.
The Feds like the money, and won't do anything to stop it, and there will eventually be another war, initiated by the people,for the people, and against each other.
All in the name of fighting against the Federal government.
Sigh....