[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I have reservations about Lincoln, but he did preserve the Union and end slavery.

Of course, without Lincoln, there would probably have been no need to “save” the Union, and from my reading, slavery was moribund in the South, anyway. It's not likely that slavery would have survived another generation, absent the Civil War. The real troublemakers, then as now, was the Supreme Court, with the Dred Scott decision that lead to the election of Lincoln and precipitated the Civil War. So, so unnecessary.

For the bondsman, that would have been a generation too long, but at what a monstrous price in blood and treasure was his freedom purchased. And the conditions of emancipation hardened Southern sentiment against the freedmen far more than it would have been had abolition arisen spontaneously from local conditions and suffused the Yankees with an odious and persistent self-righteousness that has lead to ever greater impositions on freedom in this Republic. (A self-rightousness absent from the modest and self effacing Lincoln.)

Still, the place of Lincoln in history is secure: he must be counted one of the great presidents because of his achievements. Another Republican would have been elected in 1860, and the South would have seceded, if Lincoln had not run, whether the alternative Republican would have been more successful or not, we cannot tell. But Lincoln did succeed.

[tanknetter]

and from my reading, slavery was moribund in the South, anyway. It's not likely that slavery would have survived another generation, absent the Civil War.

Slavery, remember, combined both economic (cheap, immovable labor) with societal (firm belief by many South elite that owning slaves wasn't just a property right, but a moral imperative - not to mention a matter of social status).

I've been reading some material recently suggesting that one of the reasons the Founding Fathers didn't address slavery is that they thought it too contentious for something that would die out within a generation or two of them ... NOT something that would persist to the middle of the 19th Century. What changed the matter was the cotton gin, which in the South put renewed emphasis on manual agricultural labor, and gave slavery a second life.

Personally, I think slavery would have persisted much further into the late 19th Century, and possibly into the 20th Century, without the Civil War as the needs for cheap and assured manual labor persisted with the growth of the railroads and industrialization in the South (both of which the Civil War ensured remained Northern institutions throughout the remainder of the 19th Century)