Perhaps, but the split of the South was factored on more than just slavery. Maybe in time those things would have changed on their own over decades, but everyone lives in the here and now as well. If your family is not doing well and the economics are crushing you you’re going to deal with short-term things that can help you rather than long-term that can’t help you now when you need it.
So very true. Slavery was a minor issue, really, albeit the future of the insititution was a factor of division.
The idea of freeing the slaves was a further economic sanction to be imposed on the states which had lower immigration rates and relied on the production of labor intensive crops for their economies.
While the South was industrializing, which would have meant the eventual end to the North's lock on much of the finished goods trade which relied on cheap (exploitatively so) southern raw materials, or their reliance on foreign sources affected by trade sanctions, that had not reached the critical mass where the South was not still reliant on outside markets for its produce.
While the the idea of the taking of economically vital property without compensation, and the prevention of that property from being marketable in the expanding Union while decreasing in value were drivers in the schism, other economic factors played a bigger role.
With homegrown industrialization, though, the need for cheap labor would have declined, and with that decline, manumission would have gained popularity. Without that industrialization, one region simply exploited another, and used the weight of law to do so, especially with droves of new faces skewing the voting base in the House.
In all likelihood, the transition may have been significantly smoother, with more complete cultural integration, had the South simply been allowed to develop its own industrial base.