Yes, I'm glad to see someone positing something other than a banana republic in this scenario. The Deep South was the richest part of the United States of America because of their production of cotton. On top of that, it's a western Anglo Saxon capitalist democracy, I wonder often in these independent confederacy scenarios where the south turns into a third world hellhole whether this belief comes from an actual look at the facts or a (justified) hatred of the confederacy and a (not so justified) hatred of the Christian conservative south.
Well, its a single commodity Agricultural society. Those tend to follow specific economic development trajectories. There's a reason for the term 'Banana Republic.'
Overall, the Confederacy had deep infrastructural problems. There was no integrated railroad network. There were a bunch of mismatched short lines of varying quality. Apart from that, it was a mixture of canals, rivers and roads of varying quality. Mostly rivers. The Confederate transportation infrastructure was not centralized or integrated, rather, what you had was a series of mini-networks, mostly not connecting effectively to each other, but extending to separate coastal ports, to facilitate exports and imports, rather than any kind of coherent internal market.
The result of this sort of infrastructure is that Confederate goods and manufacturing actually competed at a disadvantage with foreign imports. The Confederacy had difficulty shipping goods within itself. Rather, it used the same transport channels back and forth, that the imports did. Essentially, it would have to ship out to the port, over to the next port, and back up into the Confederacy.
It's notable that the Confederate constitution actually prohibited significant cross state infrastructure development.
The Confederacy also maintained a policy of low tariffs, something common to single crop agricultural exporters. It allowed for profitable exports. But it also made for cheaper imports, which in turn outcompeted local manufacturing. This also reduced the tax base of the Confederacy, so that it had limited funding to invest in infrastructure or governance.
The Confederacy had no financial structure to speak of, no banks, no stock market, no organised credit system. So wealth tended to be tied up in land and slaves, in tangible property. There was a shortage of capital for economic development.
So, I don't see any real case for the Confederacy, or any pseudo-Confederacy to industrialise or turn into an Anglo-Saxon economic powerhouse. The model seems to push towards Banana Republic.
In the case of the Confederacy, the boll weevil, a generation later is going to hit that economy like a rolling catastrophe. It will knock the foundations of that economy. Does that mean that the Confederacy will rebuild and industrialise at that point? Possibly. But their infrastructure will be junk, their tariff structure will be dysfunctional, and all the capital tied up in slaves and land will be worthless. There's not going to be any spare capital or resources to reinvest in new agriculture or crops, or industrialisation.
The best guess for the post-boll weevil confederacy will be a fire sale on Confederate assets, with foreign interests buying up immense amounts of property at rock bottom prices. Again, Banana Republic stuff.