MUH TARIFFS

[DC Al Fine]

Even in a peaceful secession, the Confederacy would be a 3rd world country from day one.

Ummm...not even close.

If you took the states that seceded and imagine them asa new country, it would be the world's 4th largest economy with a nominal GDP of 4.86 trillion per year.  That makes it larger than the "First world" countries of Germany, France, the UK and Canada.  With a population of 101 million people (which would make it the world's 12th most populous country, and bump the U.S. down to the number 4 spot) it would have a GDP/capita of $48,118 per year.  This puts the CSA in the 7th spot with a higher GDP/capita than Switzerland, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Kuwait and Denmark to name a few.

Hardly a Third World country in my book.  Wouldn't you agree?

  

Assuming it gained independence in the Ciil War, it has an economy heavily based off agriculture, a vast segment of the society enslaved and treated pretty badly as well as a lot of poor whites.  The CSA is going to need to get its act together and start industrializing.  The US, meanwhile, will probably want the place back. The US can support a large standing army, and, with its immigration polciies, will continue growing.  The CS needs a large standing army, but if you spend all the money on that, you can't industrialize.  Without foreign gaurruntees to its defense, or assistance in industrializing, it will eventually economically collapse.  Likely, that will lead to full on slave revolts, or a revolution by the lower class white, wanting to not be poor as dirt.  Then, in a civil war, they will have to fend off the US.  It's survival just doesn't seem likely.

I think you are talking about two different things. (CSA seceding in 1860 vs. 2014)