A few years? Nobody said "a few years." It would have taken decades, but again, how much is your life worth? In exchange for the lives of 750,000 men, I think three decades is not unreasonable.
How long did it take in Massachusetts? 150 years?
Reply 944. StoneWall Brigade said, "Yes if the had the won war Slavery would have been over with it was already a dying institution at start of the war. Add the advancement of farm technology, and the religious reveals breaking out it would have ended in short, amont of time." Sounds more like he was meaning a few years rather than decades to me.
How long did it take in Massachusetts? 150 years?"
First of all, it's important to understand that "a few years" might well apply to such border slave-states as Delaware, Maryland or even Missouri where slavery did indeed seem to be "dying out" in 1860.
But that was certainly not the case in Deep South states where slavery had never been more profitable and necessary to produce King Cotton.
Those states had no incentive -- none, zero, nada incentive -- to abolish their peculiar and highly lucrative institution.
Especially after fighting a Civil War to prevent abolition, it's impossible to imagine Deep South slave-holders or their descendants' descendants ever voluntarily submitting to abolition.
So we are not talking about "a few years", or even "a few decades" but rather we're talking about "several generations" if ever, to voluntarily abolish slavery in the Deep South assuming a Confederate victory in the Civil War.
Second, the cost in lives of Civil War was huge, but was started by Confederates and could have been ended by them on any given day with much better terms than the Unconditional Surrender they received in April 1865.
Third, slavery in its American colonies was a matter of British law before July 4, 1776.
So Massachusetts and other colonies had no lawful ability to abolish slavery, even if they wanted to.
After 1776 Northern states almost immediately began gradually abolishing slavery, beginning with Vermont (1777), Pennsylvania (1780), New Hampshire (1783) and also Massachusetts (1783), which declared slavery unconstitutional thus abolishing it immediately, the first state to do so.
So claiming Massachusetts took 150 years is ludicrous.
In fact, it took three years after Massachusetts ratified its new state constitution in 1780.