To prevent this from hijacking another thread, this is a thread to discuss the plausible workings of an independent Confederacy's economy. I see in a lot of ATLs the CSA both ditches slavery far too fast and industrializes in a manner that would not work in an actual Confederacy. The CSA has economic handicaps in most of its wealth being invested in slaves and land (not hard cash in other words) and in its economic system being dependent on the abilities of 2/3s its population to hold down 1/3.
The CSA has political handicaps in that the planter caste monopolizes all power and would see serious, large-scale industrialization as a threat to this political monopoly, by virtue of the threat of true democracy. In my view, a CS economy would be primarily based on slave agriculture, and would remain cotton-based into the 1920s, as the OTL South after the economic devastation of the later years of the Civil War kept that system intact until the Boll Weevil, an independent CSA with greater prosperity would be even more conservative.
Industry would exist on a local, small scale, but the CSA would import most finished goods and the primary focus of the industry is on the needs of the Confederate army. The CS economy would benefit mostly the planters, with slaves considered expendable and yeomen farmers excluded as much as humanly possible. Most CSA-will-industrialize-because-it-must scenarios overlook the absence of liquid capital and the political problems of an independent Confederacy where 1/3 the population being repressed is taken for granted as a positive necessity and absolute good. Industrialization has both political and economic overtones, and the CSA's problems in overcoming these are more serious than in most other proto-industrial states.
Evidently some people disagree, and this is kind of a central thread for that topic so it doesn't carry over into multiple ACW threads.