Chattel slavery was also a spiritual/moral ball-and-chain. Call me simple minded, but I say when you do that to people (this isn’t either POW conscription or indentured servitude, the types of “slaves” mentioned in the bible) and then you go before God as Dixie did and beg to be a “free” country — you are just asking for instant karma, to mix terminology shamelessly. God’s going to laugh you off as a hypocrite and will be no help.
The fact that slavery helped destroy the South in this country showcases the fallacy of short term thinking. In the short run slavery helped Southern Liberal Elites - in the long run it gave a more ethical Yankee North the tools to defeat the evil of slavery...