Nikki Haley is slammed for refusing to name slavery as primary cause of Civil War during tense town hall back-and-forth with voter

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has been heavily criticized for refusing to say slavery was the main cause of the Civil War.

Haley, the 51-year-old former governor of South Carolina, blundered through the question Wednesday evening during the town hall debate in Berlin, New Hampshire.

The former UN representative jokingly told the audience member 'well, don't come with an easy question', before claiming that the civil war was fought for freedom and ideological differences in how governments should work.

“I think the cause of the civil war was really how the government was going to function, the freedoms of what people could and couldn't do.”

The White House hopefuls, currently a distant third to Donald Trump in the race to become the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, then debate the limits of government overreach and civil liberties.

“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 safeguard the rights and freedoms of the people.

“It was never meant to be all things to all people. The government doesn't have to tell you how to live.

'They don't have to tell you what you can and can't do. They don't have to be part of your life. They have to ensure that you have freedom.

'We need capitalism. We need economic freedom. “We need to make sure that we do everything so that individuals have the freedoms, so that they have freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the freedom to do or be whatever they want without government getting in the way.”

She goes off on a tangent and tries to turn the question back on the voter, who tells her he's not the one running for the Oval Office in 2024.

You then hear him say, “In 2023, I find it amazing that you would answer that question without mentioning the word slavery.”

Haley asks him, “What do you want me to say about slavery?” Next question.'

Historians generally agree that slavery, and the divided opinions of the Northern and Southern states over whether to abolish it, was the primary cause of the Civil War.

The southern states of the US, including Haley's home state of South Carolina, were pro-slavery, while the northern states were anti-slavery. The South Carolina Proclamation, which laid out the reasons for leaving the Union in 1860, pointed to the “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as the reason for the state to withdraw from the Union to delete.

But Haley's refusal to acknowledge this angered many across the political spectrum.

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Meanwhile, the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another foe of Haley, circulated a video of the exchange on social media, with the comment, “Yep.”

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 which a white gunman killed eight 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.”

Aggregated polling data from FiveThirtyEight shows that nationally, Haley could soon overtake Ron DeSantis to take second place in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Despite this, she still has a long way to go to defeat Donald Trump, who currently has 61.2% of Republicans pledged to vote for him.

Even in her home state, Haley lags far behind, with less than half the votes Trump has.

MailOnline has contacted Nikki Haley's presidential campaign for comment.