re: 154 years ago today.

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It was well on its way out.

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It was so much on its way out that the now tamed Southern States immediately passed "Black Codes" in the aftermath of the war, which codified the lease labor system, a system that stayed in effect up until the early 1900's.

Your viewpoint begs the question as to why the US was so far behind the other major powers of the time, which abolished slavery much earlier and had just as much reason not to, with their vast colonial possessions. The argument is a cop out and is frankly lazy.

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Slavery was going to be obsolete inside of 20 years and technology and industrialization was going to make sure of that. Owning slaves and housing and feeding them was a costly expenditure financially and publicly. It was well on its way out. It was getting to a point where only the truly untouchable rich as shite people could afford slaves.

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While this does not excuse the moral depravity that was chattel slavery in the American South (particularly the excesses in the cotton belt), it is almost certainly true and empirically supportable. It also stands as a stark rebuttal to the "War was the only way" crowd.

Maybe war was the best way or the only "sure" way, but it was not the only way. In hindsight, particularly the bitter Reconstruction era, the long, bloody civil rights struggle and this seemingly unending impasse between the races even to this day, perhaps an organic, less violent resolution, through an erosive process would have been a better way to go.