Stalemate ACW: The south stays in the union?

Just a thought I had, the South in the ACW was intending to get independence, but their goal was to keep slavery. It doesn't seem to me like one would need to happen for the other to. Wouldn't it have been possible for the South and North to come to an agreement, if one side couldn't win on the battlefield, that the South would stay in the union but the right to own slaves be made a unchangable part of the constitution or something? Or was pro-independence feeling in the South and anti-slavery feeling in the North simply to high for such a compromise to be reached under any circumsances?
 
The South wanted to keep their peculiar institution. If it was guaranteed in an amendment, they would secede once the free states started to reach 2/3 majority in to push through a new amendment or remove the old one. The simple fact that they could not control the presidency was enough to trigger them to leave OTL.

Half of southern households owned slaves and the vast majority of the rest aspired to own slaves. An absolute majority of the wealth and thus vested interests of the south were in land and the slaves that worked it.
 
Given Southern Independence is the legal default in the event of a "perpetual ceasefire" , the circumstances would have to be such that it's a material victory for the North but a moral stalemate: as it the Rebellion believes they will lose if the Federal Government keeps fighting and the willingness of Northern society to push through to a bloody conclusion wavering in a grey area: certainly willing to fight for now but not certain they are willing to push through to the bitter end (playing the gurellia's card earlier might help with this, giving the prospect of having to extensively occupy and brutally surpress the region). In that case, it might be possible... but it's a best a stay of execution as tensions in the Federal government are going to be tense as nobody wants to poke the hornets nest of Southern internal state politics.
 
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