What if you postpone the ACW until British-Indian cotton production surpasses the South's, causing the Southern cotton industry to decline due to the availability of cheap Indian cotton imports. This could cause some Southern landowners to diversify their production at the risk of losing their livelihood, including constructing factories. Many factories would likely be owned by the quasi-airstocracy of the South, and the workers in such factories would be enslaved. Virginia has been mentioned as an ideal candidate for such an economy, but might Alabama be another candidate? Today its industry is focused on iron and steel, along with lumber, which might have become the basis for the beginnings of a Gulf coast rust belt. I think that Mobile would have become an industrial hub in this scenario, using Mobile Bay as a major shipping port, and the Alabama River to gain access to the resources further inland.