And never mind the fact that had the south been allowed to leave peacefully, slavery almost could not have existed on a large scale. A north with no slavery would not have even had to give any lip service to fugitive slave laws or anything else. The northern border states would have soon been inundated with refugees fleeing slavery. That, of course, would have made it more difficult to secure capital for slaves in south, particularly in the border states. The slaves that remained would have been both more expensive and less secure making the whole thing much more difficult and less desirable.
One sometimes gets the feeling that states like Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio fought as much to make sure that the South kept its slaves as they did to free them.
