Well this is true, but it ignores economic reality. No rational man would use slaves to grow wheat in Nebraska when he could use them to grow cotton in Mississippi. The profits are just so much greater with the same quantity of labor.
Wow. Anywhere from one generation to three of ownership for one, bondage for another.
Do you think the lives of 750,000 men might be worth a few decades of the status quo?
Why not say a 100 years since you’re pulling numbers out of a hat.
I'm not pulling numbers out of a hat. That 80 year number comes from the advent of the first commercially viable cotton harvesting machine, and as cotton harvesting was one of the primary purposes of slaves, it is clear to me that when machines were capable of doing it, it becomes irrational to use slaves to do it.
I've always said that when the social benefits of abolishing it exceed the economic value of keeping it, it would disappear.
If you had bothered to plot the graph of abolition, you would see it was a social phenomena that was increasing in strength while the economic benefit of slavery was slowly waning. When the two graphs met at equal value, that would be the point at which a preference cascade would occur and slavery would collapse.
There's a long list of problems with that argument,so let's start here: In no slave-state was slavery waining & weaker, seemingly, than Delaware.
And yet Delaware steadfastly refused to adopt Lincoln's 1862 compensated abolition plan, or to abolish slavery on its own before the 13th's ratification.
And while Maryland, Missouri & West Virginia did abolish on their own, Kentucky, even with relatively fewer slaves remaining, like Delaware, refused.
In short, pure economics was not the only consideration, simple pride & stubbornness also played a role.
Another point -- a simple math exercise shows that in 1860 roughly half of the USA's ~4 million slaves worked in cotton.
Yes, they may not have been quite as profitable as cotton workers, but their slaveholders were still not eager to unanimity them.