Could the Civil War have been avoided

Could the Civil War have been avoided?

Tough question as it is endlessly debated in every Civil War book on the chapters leading up to secession and then Fort Sumter. The answer is more like the war should have been avoided, but that's very obvious, isn't it?

By the end of the 1850s, the only compromises possible on the issue of slavery, free or slave state, and states' rights were those of negative compromises, the kind were no one benefits but every one must lose. It leaves both sides unsatisfied, resentful, and angry; but by then it was the only kind of agreement possible.

In hindsight, what would have happened if the Southern slave owners accepted a far-out proposal to emanicpate their slaves and accept monetary compensation from the federal government? This is cynical to say so, but then the South could have gone on to tranform the freed slaves into serfs or peasants, pretty much what happened to the blacks anyway under the Jim Crow laws and the sharecropper system of the early 20th century. The northerners did not believe the black man was equal to the white man, the same sentiment of the south. But the north just didn't want to see the black man still enslaved. Anything else done to them would probably have meant little else. The South never took advantage of this northern sentiment. But once the issue of slave ownership evaporated and then the thorny emotional issue of slave or free state would have gone away as well. Then the south and north could turn their attention to resolving commerce and economic issues between themselves, something that is typically possible without resort to war.

It's hard to predict what kind of United States would have been without a Civil War. It would have initially been a strong nation that would have quickly covered the entire continent faster than what took place. But issues that were resolved, such as the supremecy of the federal government over the states, the limitation of states' rights; economic, political, and commerce powers assumed by the federal government, even the concept of secession, would have not been totally resolved and possibly still bitterly contested today, leading to later divisions within the U.S. Congress and among the states.

But in the grand scheme of things, any peaceful alternative would have been preferable to the loss of some 660,000 lives, the total devastation of the southern states, and a lasting legacy of bitterness and racial divide that lingers on today, even if fortunately the passing of decades withers it more.