The Confederacy of the 1860's is a fairly rich state, and once a barrier (even a weak one) is up giving some protection of light industry from the northeastern states they will industrialise apace.
The Confederacy was fairly rich, but then they started the ACW. By 1863, they were suffering bread riots across the south. Massive deficit spending, overburdened infrastructure, price controls, and 10% of their work force joining the Union Army did not help the Confederate economy.
The Union blockade provided more protectionism for Confederate industry than their tariff ever would. Combine the end of the blockade with reduced demand for goods by the Confederate government and imported goods will strangle Confederate industry in the cradle.
Majewski has prettymuch destroyed the "American Heritage" idea of a threadbare CSA.
"Even a brief perusal of the 1850 or 1860 census suggested that the Republican economic critique rang true. The South had fallen dramatically behind the North (especially the Northeast) in manufacturing output, population growth, urbanization rates, inventive activity, and almost every other measure of development. Slaveholders living in older southern states such as Virginia and South Carolina had special reason to be concerned with the growing developmental divide. The failure of their states to industrialize created a pattern in which the oldest southern states were among the poorest in the nation, while the oldest northern states were among the richest" -
John Majewski
"Virginia worked feverishly to modernize their economy through large investments in canals, railroads, and banks. Such efforts, however, largely failed. Virginia's transportation network remained highly localized with little integration; no intersectional trunk lines connected Virginia's cities to midwestern markets; and the manufacturing base remained small, especially in relation to northern states. The central problem was that Virginia's slave economy discouraged the development of a large commercial city that could provide investors, traffic, and passengers for major transportation projects" -
John Majewski
"It was one thing to wish for improvements that would capture western trade; it was another to build them. As chapter 5 demonstrates, local financing made coherent networks cumbersome to organize, especially with no fewer than four cities seeking to build
the central trunk line. Pitting Richmond, Norfolk, Petersburg, and Lynchburg in a battle for mercantile supremacy, these commercial rivalries prevented the legislature from focusing resources on a single trunk line. By 1860, a collection of uncompleted and unprofitable railroads and canals littered Virginia's landscape."-
John Majewski