I want to present you with a difficult to understand concept.
Economic changes that might be bad for Tredegar (and I reject that claim) may be more than offset by economic benefits to the larger industries of the South.
You are trying to convince us that these economic changes would be overall worse for the South, simply because you assert they are worse for Tredegar.
They might be worse for Tredegar, but bringing in more profits and capital to all the other cities of the South would have been greatly beneficial to their overall economic condition.
And these changes would have been very definitely worse for Northern Industries who more or less controlled the New York coalition which ran the Congress, and who I am beginning to believe held Lincoln's leash.
“offset by economic benefits to the larger industries of the South” There were no larger industries in the South except agriculture. It that arena, the South a rock solid economic ground, it was a world competitor. Move outside of agriculture, and the South was 30 years behind the British and French and 20 years behind the North in capacity and capability. Remove the protective tariffs, what advantage could Southern manufacturing employ to be competitive. Shipping would become almost exclusively British. The Brits and the French would flood the South with there products manufactured cheaper than anything the South could accomplish. And the Southern Constitution forbade the Government from interfering.
The South would remain an agricultural powerhouse for decades, but its ability to diversify into manufacturing would be problematic.
This is my opinion, just as your opinion is the opposite. Since the Confederacy did not survive, our opinions of what might have been are purely speculative in nature. Rhetorical exercises at best.