Indeed, slavery likely lasts into the 20th Century without a Civil War.
That's an even bigger stretch than my own interpretation, particularly with the advent of the industrial revolution.
Not really. Take for example cotton. Mechanical cotton pickers didn't become commercially viable in this country until the labor shortages of World War II led to their adoption. In some third world countries, cotton cultivation is
still done by hand rather than using expensive machinery. With cheap and abundant slave labor, there is little economic incentive to mechanize most agricultural production. While slave labor is inefficient if one includes the slaves in computing per capita GDP, exclude them and you can get the same or higher results for the elites that remain.
Imagine if you will a county in which jobs now done by illegal immigrants are instead done by slave labor. While morally repugnant, economically it is roughly equivalent and maybe even more advantageous to those who currently hire illegals. The case against slavery is not based on economics, but on morality.