Counterpoint Independence is a two edged sword.

wausaubob

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If the Confederates had somehow achieved independence, the US would also have been independent of the Confederacy. The ratio of paid labor states to slave labor states would have been at least 20:4, after the admission of West Virginia. Slavery would have been abolished in the US. The fugitive slave act would have been repealed, and the boundary fortified. Both sides would have spent money on modern arms and warships, and the US had the larger economy.
Beyond that issues become speculative. But the British most likely would have supplied the shipping services and the manufactured goods the Confederate states needed, at a price. Initially the prices may have been good, but the British were not engaged in trade for charitable purposes. Once they made the Confederacy dependent on British goods, the British would have charged what they wanted.
The French most likely would have become the financiers of the Confederacy, again at a price. If those trends progressed very far, the states that made up the northern tier of the possible Confederacy would have seen independence as a benefit only to a few.
Meanwhile, the US would have been influenced by immigration from the German states, and the rise of German nationalism.
Its hard to see how the Confederacy and the US would have avoided the nationalist trends that led to repeated war in Europe.
As the US continues to be independent of the Confederacy, it is free to subsidize western railroads, modernize its currency system, and copy the British by adopting an income tax.
Its hard to see how the Confederacy would keep up.
If the Confederacy is independent, the US is free to develop as fast as it can. I speculate that the two nations would never have made it past twenty years of hostile co-existence before finding some excuse to start the shooting again.
 
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