> The South was afraid the North would enact tariffs on cotton, thus crippling the only significant product of the Southern economy - cotton. It was about tariffs on cotton. Not anything else.

So not free trade and you were completely wrong in your original comment.

> The reservations and Indian nations within the US suggests the former, not the latter.

Actually it doesn't. Nice little pathetic attempt at denying native genocide.

> They didn't give their conquered territories back. They installed puppet governments that obeyed the conquerors. Japan and Germany are not puppets of the US.

Actually Japan and Germany are puppets. As a matter of fact we installed the governments that they current have and they are firmly within our sphere of influence. Maybe this reality makes you uncomfortable because it doesn't align wtih your agenda, but once again, you don't get to dismiss reality just because you feel like it.

> "By 1650, hereditary enslavement based upon color, not upon religion, was a bitter reality in the older Catholic colonies of the New World."

Since the catholic world gave us capitalism, what's your point?

"Capitalism in its modern form can be traced to the emergence of agrarian capitalism and mercantilism in the early Renaissance, in city-states like Florence."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

> Also, the slave economy collapsed during the Civil War, while the northern free economy thrived.

What's your bizarre agenda? "Free economy"? Why are you being so sneaky and using weasel terminology? The "free economy" of protectionism and tariffs?

> The reason Lee was even at Gettysburg was because the Confederate army was shoeless and nearby Harrisburg had a shoe factory.

Yes, the shoe factory existed thanks to a non-free trade protectionist policy supported by the north.

To HN's credit, it's rare to come across such a dishonest and blatantly agenda driven comment. Even rarer to see one double down and continue to lie when confronted with facts and evidence.