Given the worldwide fall in cotton prices in response to increased worldwide production anyway, it is interesting to ponder what the South's post-war fortunes would have been even if they had won.
No worse than it was. The Depression went unnoticed in the South as that things had been that bad for decades for most people.
However, I suspect that it would have been much better. Where I live, hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin timber was sold to carpetbaggers for as little as 7 cents an acre in some cases.
In any case, timber, agriculture, and the discovery of massive oil deposits in Texas and Oklahoma would have seen the South's fortunes rise as they have today...but probably much sooner.
