If you ignore the morality of treating people like farm animals, and only look at economics, it would have been very difficult for the Southern states to have abolished the basis of their economy, even if they had wanted to. One could draw a parallel to the modern use of fossil fuels. Is there evidence that voluntary abolition was ever a realistic possibility?

The following specific questions may help define what seems a "realistic possibility", if that needs to be narrowed down:

• In the UK's Slavery Abolition Act of 1834, slaveholders were compensated (in theory). Did the political pressure from the North at the time of the Civil War include the idea that slaveholders would be compensated? Otherwise it seems that very wealthy people would have to just give up their wealth, which seems unlikely.
• What percent of wealth and/or what percent of wealth-producing investment did slavery represent for the South?
• Has any society ever shifted it's economy from one source to another on the basis of ethics, while the first source still existed?
• Has any society ever made a voluntary economic change which affected a percentage of its assets equal to the percentage of wealth represented by slavery in the South, or have all economic changes on this scale in history only been caused by crises like war, climate change, or the exhaustion of the resource?