If that were truly Deep South Fire Eaters' driving motive, then they would necessarily have been super-eager to avoid war, which people like Jefferson Davis well knew would result in a Union blockade of Confederate ports, thus eliminating the possibility of the great economic bounty DiogenesLamp fantasizes.
And yet those Fire Eaters did not oppose Civil War, were instead super-eager to start it!
Further, a number of posters here have made a key point which DiogenesLamp refuses to grasp.
That is: in 1860 Deep South leaders were not driven by strong desires to become industrial & commercial giants like Northerners.
Just the opposite -- they considered themselves Jeffersonian Agrarians, idealizing rural self-sufficiency and independence.
Jeffersonians were not against industry per se, but they did abhor conditions which created a mass underclass of Marxist believing proletariats.
So, it was not Northern industry and commerce which Deep South Fire Eaters wanted, but rather the freedom to continue their Jeffersonian Agrarian slavery-based life-style as they had grown to know and love it.
That New York & other Northeastern cities would not lose much from Confederate independence is demonstrated by economics during the Civil War, at which time Confederate exports stopped entirely.
Northern cities rapidly found alternative sources & products, adjusted their economies and continued to prosper despite the loss of cotton & other Confederate exports.
So your arguments hold no water.
DegenerateLamp bases so many of his postulations on what-if’s that never were and could never-be. Beyond being equal parts absurd and amusing they fail at the basic test of aligning with actual history. But I’m sure they’re fun.
So let’s play.
What if the slavocracy hadn’t been fire-eaters. How do you suppose their fortunes might have gone had they planned for their exodus from the union instead of doing it in one big, ugly, bloody temper tantrum? What if they had spent some time and some capital on building up their infrastructure, encouraged essential industry, built partnerships, etc?
Imagine if they possessed true independence from their northern brothers - a condition entirely the opposite of where they actually stood in 1860. Imagine if they had had the forethought and maturity to put their petty differences behind them long enough to standardize their railroad? What if they had subsidized their own ship-building enterprise?
Elements within the south agitated and schemed to cut ties from their northern brothers for years and decades. But those same agitators failed the basic test of independence - can you be self-sufficient? These men had the time to do all the things I mentioned - and more. Had they truly been interested in a structured and honorable separation from the north they would have laid the groundwork for peaceful departure. They weren’t and they didn’t and the entire country paid dearly.