If it had been, we would not have had the US Civil War. Eventhose Southerners who accepted the immorality of slavery could notend the practice, although some freed their own slaves.The large numbers of "unpaid" laborers to the Southern economywere irreplaceable, or so it seemed. Although slaves were expensiveto care for, they could not easily leave their owners, and most oftheir children were born slaves. This meant that they were areliable source of physical labor in the agricultural South.