Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley did not mention slavery as a primary cause of the Civil War, giving challengers possible ammo as the former South Carolina governor rises in the polls ahead of the start of GOP primaries next month.
Haley was pressed by a voter during a town hall event in New Hampshire on Wednesday to identify the cause of the Civil War, resulting in a lengthy back-and-forth as she avoided mentioning slavery altogether. Haley instead took a different approach: blaming the conflict on the role the government was going to play.
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“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run,” she said. “The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
Haley then pressed the voter to explain what he thought the cause of the Civil War was, prompting him to shoot back that he is “not running for president.” Haley maintained her stance that the conflict was caused primarily by the role of government, resulting in a tense exchange between the pair.
“Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life,” Haley said. “They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you’d answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’”
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley responded before calling for the next question.
The exchange came during an event in the first-in-the-nation primary state less than four weeks before Republican voters cast their ballots to choose their party’s presidential nominee. Haley has experienced a climb in New Hampshire in recent weeks, rising in the national polls to overcome Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) as she works to close the gap between herself and former President Donald Trump.
However, Haley’s comments on the Civil War could come back to haunt her as several of her opponents, including President Joe Biden himself, have already used the incident to attack her.
“It was about slavery,” Biden said in a brief response on X, formerly known as Twitter.
DeSantis’s campaign has also seized on the comments, calling the incident “disastrous.”
“Yikes,” the team wrote on X.
It’s not the first time Haley has come under fire for making comments related to the Civil War. She previously received pushback while running for governor in South Carolina when she defended states’ rights to secede from the U.S., describing the conflict as two sides fighting between “tradition” and “change.”
During that same interview in 2010, Haley also dismissed the push to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, arguing the flag “was not something that is racist.” Haley later ordered the removal of the flag in 2015 after a mass shooting that left eight black attendees dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
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There were a number of issues that led to the outbreak of the Civil War, with many pointing to the southern states’ desire to preserve slavery as a predominant cause. Haley’s own home state of South Carolina mentions slavery in its Ordinance of Secession, explaining its reasoning for removing itself from the Union.
The Washington Examiner contacted the Haley campaign for comment.
