Nikki Haley declines to say slavery led to Civil War during town hall in Berlin
An audience member asked Haley: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
An audience member asked Haley: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
An audience member asked Haley: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley avoided using the word slavery at a town hall in Berlin Wednesday night after an attendee asked her, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
“Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything. I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” the former governor of South Carolina initially responded.
>> Raw video: Nikki Haley answers question about cause of U.S. Civil War
She then asked the attendee what he thought caused the Civil War.
“I’m not running for president,” the man said. “I wanted to see your view on the cause of the Civil War.”
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Haley then added, “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are, and I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. That was never meant to be all things to all people.”
“Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you don't need to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom,” she continued.
“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,” Haley added.
The attendee then said, “Thank you. In the year 2023 it’s astonishing to me that you answered that question without mentioning the word slavery.”
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley asked the man.
“You’ve answered my question. Thank you,” he said.
Haley then moved on to another audience member, saying, “Next question.”
The man who asked the question spoke to reporters after the town hall ended.
"It's a pretty fundamental and frankly pretty easy question, right?" said the man, who did not give his name. "You can answer it I think in one word. Maybe it's a little more complex than that, but not much."
Haley has three town halls planned on Thursday in North Conway, Plymouth and Lebanon.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is scheduled to appear at all three events. Sununu endorsed Haley in the Republican presidential race about two weeks ago.
Issues surrounding the origins of the Civil War and its heritage are still much of the fabric of Haley’s home state, and she has been pressed on the war’s origins before. As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview with a now-defunct activist group then known as The Palmetto Patriots, described the war as between two disparate sides fighting for “tradition” and “change” and said the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist.”
During that same campaign, she dismissed the need for the flag to come down from the Statehouse grounds, portraying her Democratic rival’s push for its removal as a desperate political stunt.
Five years later, Haley urged lawmakers to remove the flag from its perch near a Confederate soldier monument following a mass shooting in which a white gunman killed eight Black church members who were attending Bible study. At the time, Haley said the flag had been “hijacked” by the shooter from those who saw the flag as symbolizing “sacrifice and heritage.”
South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession — the 1860 proclamation by the state government outlining its reasons for seceding from the Union — mentions slavery in its opening sentence and points to the “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as a reason for the state removing itself from the Union.
On Wednesday night, Christale Spain — elected this year as the first Black woman to chair South Carolina’s Democratic Party — said Haley’s response was “vile, but unsurprising.”
“The same person who refused to take down the Confederate Flag until the tragedy in Charleston, and tried to justify a Confederate History Month," Spain said in a post on X, of Haley. “She’s just as MAGA as Trump,” Spain added, referring to Trump's ”Make America Great Again" slogan.
Jaime Harrison, current chairman of the Democratic National Committee and South Carolina's party chairman during part of Haley's tenure as governor, said her response was “not stunning if you were a Black resident in SC when she was Governor."
“Same person who said the confederate flag was about tradition & heritage and as a minority woman she was the right person to defend keeping it on state house grounds,” Harrison posted Wednesday night on X. “Some may have forgotten but I haven’t. Time to take off the rose colored Nikki Haley glasses folks.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.