It is a valid question my friend. As Fezzy Festoon admitted, the South even in the 21st century would still be a world pariah apartheid state. Thus, those who call the South backwards and reactionary are entirely correct in their accusations.
You are operating off of incorrect history, but fortunately, I can correct you. Slavery was already collapsing in the 1850s because it was an investment intensive enterprise, and because people really aren't a tangible asset, as far as a bank is concerned, because people expire.
I don't know where you are getting your economic "facts" but they are wrong. There was an effort in the early 1850's to diversify the South's economy away from its dependence on plantation slavery and manufactured goods imported from the North or Europe. It largely failed because plantation slavery was the most profitable place to sink investment capital in the South in that decade.
Slavery was morally bankrupt, but financially it was profitable, provided you weren't a slave of course.
