It came close. Shortly thereafter, slavery was replaced with Sharecropping. I don't remember much about that from my US History classes, but I'm under the vague impression that it wasn't much of an improvement.

Cherry-picked, out-of-context quote from wikipedia: "Though the arrangement protected sharecroppers from the negative effects of a bad crop, many sharecroppers (both black and white) were economically confined to serf-like conditions of poverty."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping#United_States