"Inasmuch as the South could barely make a cannon during the Civil War, does anybody believe that just 35 years later, they would have had the industry, engineering skills or wealth to built the fleets of huge dreadnaught battleships that dominated world power and affairs in the 1890s? The northern U.S., England, Spain, Germany, France and even heck Japan had such fleets. The South plainly would not."
Yes, they could and would have. Southern industry was in infancy but, with coal, steel and other minerals in plenty, within a couple of decades the South would have equalled the North in most respects, including the abolution of black slavery which really wasn't a very cost effective labor system. The industrial revelolution, electricity and steam power needed and would have driven a rapid expansion of education for everyone which would have then fueled a universal social and industrial growth that would have exceeded what the north's wealthy classes permited up there for a very long time.