Confederate Victory TL Cliches:
1. Robert E. Lee becomes President of the Confederacy in the 1867 election.
I'm guilty of that one. But I think, unless health issues prevent it...which, in a CSA Victorious TL, Lee's health might be better in the postwar period, and he might live longer...Lee would be President. He very much viewed himself as the Confederacy's George Washington, and would have seen it as his duty, if he was asked to run. And if he does run, he will win. Nobody else in the Confederacy would have had a chance of beating him in an election.
2. The United States goes to war with the British Empire over Canada.
Guilty of that one too, and with far less justification, I freely admit.
3. The Confederacy becomes enlightened and abolishes slavery in about ten years.
Actually, prior to my THE BLACK AND THE GRAY timeline, this wasn't really a feature you saw very often in CSA Victory timelines, which were pretty uniform in presenting the Confederacy in very dystopic terms, with slavery surviving long into the 20th century, pogroms against the black population, etc. etc. My timeline kind of changed all that, and it is true that many timelines written since have had slavery being abandoned in the immediate aftermath (within 20 years) of the war.
I would tend to agree with you that slavery was not likely to be abandoned before the late 1890s or early 1900s (when the collapse of te cotton market and the advent of the boll weevil would have made slavery a liability and more likely to be abandoned) without some special circumstance being involved. My timeline at least had some justification, being based on a POD where the Confederacy won it's independence by adopting the Cleburne Memorial and massive use of black soldiers. Most recent "CSA Wins" timelines don't really give a justification for the early abandonment of slavery, and I consider that a major flaw.