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Bull Snipe:

Slavery was dying around the edges. But not in the 15 States were slavery was legal. The 1850 census records 3.2 million slaves in 15 out of 31 state. The 1860 census records 3.9 million slaves in 15 out of 34 states. The slave population was growing, not dwindling in the states were slavery was legal.

False - as usual with you. The slave population was growing. The percentage of total free families owning slaves in the Upper South had declined. The percentage of the black population which were freedmen was climbing steadily. This is the same process that happened elsewhere as industrialization took hold.

FLT-bird: ". The slave population was growing.
The percentage of total free families owning slaves in the Upper South had declined."

In 1860 slave populations in Maryland and Delaware were declining and in Missouri declining as a percent of the population.
One reason for declining slave numbers was increasing freed-black populations in those states.

Another was the continued rapid increase in slaves in the Deep Cotton South.
That increase was so great it changed the percent of Deep South slaves to total slaves from 50% in 1840 to 60% in 1860.
In 1860 both the numbers of slaves and market prices for slaves were increasing to all-time highs, due to the booming cotton economy.

So, bottom line, suggestions that slavery was dying out in Border South states might have some merit, except that in 1860 there was not even a breath of a hint of abolitionism in those states.

And one reason for slavery's relative decline in Border States was the booming demand for slaves in the Deep Cotton South.
It's no coincidence that in those Deep South states where slavery was most important, the 1860 election of "Ape" Lincoln's "Black Republicans" was enough to drive them to declare secession and war on the United States.

FLT-bird: "This is the same process that happened elsewhere as industrialization took hold."

And in the Northern US, but nowhere was the investment in slavery more important & rewarding than in the Deep South, and nowhere was resistance to abolition more intense.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."

That's not "revisionism", that's just history.

Based on the 1850-1860 Census date. The following increases are seen:

free blacks in free states: 29,900 ( + 13%)

free blacks in slave states: 22,600 ( + 9%)

Total slave population in U.S.: 700,000 ( + 17.9%)

Yes, the number of freemen increasing in the U.S. But at a slower rate than the number of slaves.
While the number of slave owing families declined, the number of slaves owned by the slave owning families had increased.

To me it appears that the numbers do not support your contention that slavery was dying in the United States.

The way these people approach any discussion of the Civil War is to immediately introduce slavery as the primary issue of the war.

Lincoln's support for the Corwin amendment along with the US Constitutions guarantee that slaves would be returned to their masters, conclusively proves that Slavery was not the motivating force for the Union invasion of the South.

Allowing them to keep the discussion focused on slavery is a mistake. Slavery is a fig leaf for the evil thing they did in murdering people because the Washington DC power Cabal wanted to keep control of the Economic output of the Southern states.

The war was about economic power and who would control it. Lincoln's support for the Corwin Amendment indicates that the Union would clearly tolerate slavery indefinitely. What they would not tolerate is the South competing with the Northern power barons for European money and trade.

Money. Money. Money. Money.

That is the only thing the Civil War was fought about.

Slavery is just a lying deflection tactic to avoid discussing the truth.