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?