Nikki Haley doesn't mention slavery when asked what caused the Civil War. She later walks that back
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked at a town hall in New Hampshire about the reason for the Civil War, and she did not mention slavery in her answer. She walked back her comments hours later.
When asked at Wednesday night's town hall in Berlin what she believed had caused the war — the first shots of which were fired in her home state of South Carolina — Haley spoke about the role of government, responding that it was about “the freedoms of some people.” could not and could not do it.”
She then turned the question back to the man who asked it. He replied that he was not the one running for president and that he wanted to know her answer instead.
After Haley gave a more detailed explanation of the role of government, individual freedom, and capitalism, the questioner appeared to admonish Haley, saying, “In the year 2023, it's amazing to me that you answer that question without the word 'slavery.' to name. ”
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley replied before abruptly moving on to the next question.
Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina, has worked to become the main alternative to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. It is unclear whether her comments will have a long-term political impact , especially among the independent voters who are crucial to her campaign.
She walked back her Civil War comments 12 hours later and released a radio interview with her campaign on Thursday morning in which she said, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery,” something she called “a stain on America.” She further reiterated that “freedom matters. And individual rights and freedoms matter to all people.”
Her Republican rivals quickly pushed back on her original comments, even though most have been accused of downplaying the effects of slavery itself.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' campaign distributed a video of the original exchange on social media, with the comment, “Yep.” DeSantis said Thursday while campaigning in Iowa that Haley “has had some problems with some basic American history” and that it is “not that difficult to identify and recognize the role that slavery played in the Civil War.”
DeSantis faced anti-slavery criticism earlier this year when Florida implemented new education standards requiring teachers to instruct high school students that slaves developed skills that could be “applied to their personal benefit.” U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate and DeSantis' then-rival for the Republican presidential nomination, rejected that characterization, saying instead that slavery was about “separating families, about mutilating people and even raping their women. .”
Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC backing Trump's campaign, sent a press release saying Haley's response shows she is “clearly not ready for prime time.” The group also included an X-post from Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a black Republican who supports Trump, with the text “1. Psst Nikki… the answer is slavery PERIOD. 2. This really doesn't matter because Trump will be the nominee. Trump 2024!”
Trump made no mention of America's two centuries of slavery during a 2020 event marking the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. Instead, he focused on the founding of America, which had “set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and became the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history.” built history.”
Issues surrounding the origins of the Civil War and its legacy are still very much part of the fabric of Haley's home state, and she has been pressed about the war's origins before. When 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 between two disparate parties fighting for “tradition” and “change,” saying that the Confederate flag was “Not something that is racist.”
During that same campaign, she dismissed the need to drop the flag from the Statehouse grounds, portraying her Democratic rival's push to remove the flag as a desperate political stunt.
Five years later, Haley urged lawmakers to remove the flag from its spot at a Confederate soldiers monument after a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white gunman killed nine black church members attending the Bible study. Haley said at the time that the flag was “hijacked” by the gunman from those who saw the flag as a symbol of “sacrifice and heritage.”
South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession—the 1860 proclamation by the state government outlining the reasons for secession from the Union—mentions slavery in its opening sentence and notes the “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as a reason for the state to withdraw from the Union.
On Wednesday night, Christale Spain — elected this year as the first Black woman to chair the South Carolina Democratic Party — said Haley's response was “despicable, but not surprising.”
“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 from Haley. “She's just as MAGA as Trump,” Spain added, referencing Trump's “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Jaime Harrison, current chairman of the Democratic National Committee and South Carolina party chairman during part of Haley's tenure as governor, said her response “wasn't stunning if you were a black resident of S.C. when she was governor.”
“The same person who said the Confederate flag was about tradition & heritage and as a minority woman she was the right person to champion its preservation on statehouse grounds,” Harrison posted on X on Wednesday night. “Some may have forgotten, but I haven't. Time to take off the rose-colored Nikki Haley glasses, folks.”
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This story has been corrected to show that nine people, not eight, were killed in the 2015 Charleston church massacre.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.
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Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Ankeny, Iowa, contributed to this report.