You seem here to be restating your position in greater detail rather than offering any justification for it. I also note that the USA’s population in this scenario will be several millions smaller than it was in OTL as it just lost at least nine million people. Depending on how the Confederacy gained its independence and sundry butterflies the USA’s population in 1865 in this scenario is between 21 and 23 million, between two and two and a half times that of the CSA in the same scenario but now only slightly more than two thirds of the size of the British population. So we can see the USA no longer has a ‘large’ population just a bigger one than the CSA. I should add that I don’t think population is that an important factor in industrialisation, Belgium which industrialised before the USA OTL had a modest population.
An important point you do raise is the relative richness of some parts of the population compared to the richness of people in similar livelihoods in Europe. The most important of these were the industrial workers and similar. It was after all the availability of good wages and the prospect of a better life that drove Irish immigration to the USA rather than any ideas about liberty. The continuous waves of immigration constantly replenished the labour pool but the constant demands of new industry sought to empty it. If as in this scenario there is a lack of capital to invest in new industry then there will be an excess of available labour. The rate of immigration however will lag this local phenomena for several years and in the end there will be a very large pool of unemployed, starving migrant labour which will of course drive wages down. All that needs to happen in order for this to happen is that investment in new industry falters and as I have already demonstrated in this thread there are at least two was this can happen in this scenario, the USA defaults or even defers payment on its war bonds or foreign capital begins to flow to the news CSA which has far greater infrastructure and industrial needs and unlike the USA can offer a better return on capital.
The USA’s in OTL was enormous and still being paid off at the start of WWI. It was bigger than that of the CSA, this is no surprise they spent much more on materiel of war than the CSA did. It will also be much harder to pay off due to the loss of the revenue producing CSA.
2) Why? During the whole ACW the North didn't have slumping imports nor decling duty revenue and it wasn't collecting much in duties from the South.
What will the merchants used to pay for the imports? Who can afford to buy them? The revenue producing south has gone.
See above.
That is a very interesting explanation of your view point without much in the way of a justification. I think you are wrong. There are almost no credible scenarios for CSA independence in which the CSA manages to achieve independence by its own merits. I can think of only two:
1)The CSA wins its independence by continued feats of arms on the battlefield early in the war and gains European recognition. In which case sin some scenarios they end up with Arizona and in some they don’t. In which case all I have said above is valid.
2)The CSA wins its independence after a long and gruelling defensive war of attrition peace in the Union election year of 1864 or God forbid 1868. By this stage both USA and to an even greater extent the CSA are economic basket cases and nothing I have said above is valid.
The other way the CSA can gain its independence is via a European intervention primarily a war with Britain arising out of the blockade or with the French over Mexico in 1864. In which case the CSA gets Arizona in most scenarios, California becomes independent, splits or ends up as part of French Mexico in many scenarios and in some BNA starts grabbing choice bits of the borderlands. In which case everything I have said above is valid but things are even worse that I have described for the Union.
To put this into context however, if we performed a thousand historical simulations, in around 750 of them the USA holds on to the CSA, in 160 of them a contemporaneous Union war with Britain (sometimes France as well) gives rise to an independent CSA, in 30 a war similar war with France gives the CSA independence, in 50 the CSA wins by a sustained feat of arms early in the war and in just 10 scenarios does the CSA win independence through a war of attrition.
For at least 10-15 years after the war the South was at best a net wash for the North if not a net loss for it. The reconstruction costs were enormous which it would NOT pay if the South was independent. There would be little or no net effect on Northern income or industrialization.
2/3 the population of GB is still a large population, GB was hardly an scarcely populated desert! The US already had higher wages than GB and still would attract a lot of immigrants.
1) That is Twilight Zone as the President of the US controls the army and neither Lincoln nor Hamlin would have given up while they were president which leaves 2. BTW even an 1862 victory will wind up with the US controlling AZ as the CSA can not possibly hold it. One Union regiment was more than enough for occupation troops and the CSA can not dream of sending as many men or supplies as the Union can.
2) The US was hardly an economic basket case in 1864, on the contrary it had a booming economy. US GDP SOARED during the ACW.
3) Neither England nor France would intervene in the ACW. Palmerston was dead set against it and Napoleon III flat out refused to even think about intervening unless GB did so first. Even if the do it would merely to break the blockade not put boots on the ground to give the CSA Arizona. If the French put boots on the ground for some bizarre reason and take AZ it will become part of Mexico not the CSA. CA wouldn't become independent in either case. Nobody outside the US claimed it and there was no significant separatist movement in CA.
4) You're wrong, by far the most likely scenario is Sherman doesn't take Atlanta and Little Mac wins in 1862 and screws everything up.