There have been all kinds of alt histories written regarding the Confederacy. I think the most likely scenario is that it would have followed a path closer to a South American country than the US, Canada, or Western European countries.
Slavery was ingrained in the Confederate Constitution which meant that it almost had to be an Agrarian nation. Which meant that a few rich land-owners would have risen to the top of society with a vast underclass of subsistence farmers. And then slaves below them.
Any move towards industrialization and mechanization would have been met with the same question: What about the slaves?
I think the world should probably be pretty thankful that the South lost for the simple reason that by the 1930s you could have had mechanization in agriculture, a worldwide economic depression, AND widespread acceptance of eugenics possibly meeting in a Southern cotton field.
I think the non-slave population would have developed more industry because the rich would be swimming in money and the middle class would want to get some of that, and so they would make products and services that the rich wanted to buy. I think the capitalization would have resulted in a boom of industry.
I've read newspaper accounts from the time period talking about the massive economic growth Charleston was experiencing just prior to the war. They couldn't build warehouses fast enough, and population had started streaming in with diverse talents and abilities.
I think population and industry will travel to where the money is, and when Southern money increased dramatically, there would be those people there who wanted to capitalize on it.
I think the world should probably be pretty thankful that the South lost for the simple reason that by the 1930s you could have had mechanization in agriculture, a worldwide economic depression, AND widespread acceptance of eugenics possibly meeting in a Southern cotton field.
I think at that point in history, eugenic theory was already common place. In that era, the whites of the North and the South all thought they were superior to Blacks, (Certainly Lincoln thought so) and selective breeding was already being practiced. I don't think it would have ever gone in the direction of the Nazis, because all of these people, both North and South, were mostly devout Christians. The Northerners mostly hated blacks unequivocally, but a lot of the Southerners regarded their slaves as family.
It is possible that after mechanization, they would have eventually manumitted their slaves and possibly set them up with some kind of trade. Mechanization would have made too little work for too many hands.
I think some would have done one thing while others may have done another, but at some point it would have no longer been profitable to keep so many people. It would have become George Washington's problem all over again.
I think had the South remained independent, there is a possibility that Charleston might have become the Southern New York with it's "high society" and it's wealth. It may have become a major financial city of the World, and we might all be bitching about the liberals of Charleston instead of those of Boston, New York and San Fransisco.
I think it's hard to say exactly what would have happened.