> Well, if we just never freed the slaves, we would still have a globally competitive cotton industry.

America is the #3 exporter of cotton in the world, and the world leader in manufacturing and exporting the harvesters (John Deere, Case International) which have replaced those slaves as pickers of cotton.

The facts of the matter support your point much better than your counterfactual did (I do realize you probably did not intend to be taken literally here).