Oh good Lord, is there nothing that you unreconstructed rebs won't blame the man for? There are times when I honestly wish you had won. Watching you wallow in that Southron cesspool the confederacy would have become would have been worth it.
The South would have abandoned slavery, possibly in a somewhat orderly manner, within a generation. I believe the South would have rejoined the Union eventually.
The whole point of acting on principle is that no one CAN know what the future holds. That’s precisely why acting on principle is moral, and “consequentialism” and “situational ethics” are immoral.
It’s true that slavery was a criminal enterprise. In that case, the South should have been allowed to go their own way—and be criminals—leaving the Union free of slavery, free of being any longer complicit in slavery. When the South eventually got rid of it, they could rejoin—with the principle of self-government intact.
The Union insisted on the end of polygamy before admitting Utah. The Union should have expelled California and New York when they legalized abortion—which is an infinitely greater crime than polygamy.