Nikki Haley does not mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War, later changes her position

2023-12-29 07:39:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Nikki Haley

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked during a rally in New Hampshire what was the reason the country got involved in the Civil War, but she did not mention slavery in her answer. A few hours later she changed her mind.

Asked Wednesday night at a meeting in Berlin what she believed caused the war, Ms. Haley spoke about the role of government, replying that it had to do with "people's liberties, about what could and could not do".

She then counter-questioned the person who asked, who replied that he was not the one running for president and that he wanted to know her answer.

Ms. Haley then continued with a longer explanation about the role of government, individual liberties and capitalism. The questioner then told Ms. Haley that, "in 2023, it's amazing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word slavery."

“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Ms. Haley replied before suddenly moving on to answer another question.

The former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor is working to become Donald Trump's primary challenger in the party's race for the 2024 presidential nomination. It is unclear whether her comments , on what led to the Civil War, will have a long-term political impact, especially among the independent voters who are crucial to her campaign.

She retracted her stance on the Civil War 12 hours later. Her campaign officials released a radio interview early Thursday morning in which she said, "Of course the Civil War was about slavery," something she called "a stain on America." She continued by repeating that "freedom matters and that individual rights and freedoms matter to all people".

Her Republican rivals were quick to recall her initial comments on the issue, though most have been accused of downplaying slavery's impact on the country.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' campaign officials recirculated the video of the original exchange between Ms. Haley and the questioner on social media, along with a sarcastic comment directed at her. On the campaign trail in Iowa on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis said Ms. Haley "has had some trouble understanding basic American history" and that "it's not that hard to identify and accept the role that slavery played in the Civil War."

Earlier this year, Mr. DeSantis faced criticism over slavery when Florida adopted new education standards that required teachers to teach high school students that slavery was also a form of education, as slaves gained trades.

South Carolina US Senator Tim Scott, the only African-American Republican in the Senate, rejected that characterization, saying slavery was about "tearing apart families, maiming people and even raping their wives".

Make America Great Again, a conservative political group backing Mr Trump's campaign, issued a statement saying Ms Haley's response showed she was "clearly not ready to take a seat at the top of the race". The group also pulled a tweet from Florida Republican Byron Donalds, an African American who supports Mr. Trump, who wrote on the X Network: “The answer is slavery and period, Haley. But this really doesn't matter because Trump will be the candidate for 2024!".

Mr. Trump did not mention two centuries of slavery in America at an event in 2020 on the occasion of the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. He focused on the founding of America that had "set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that ended slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most just, equal, and prosperous nation in history." human".

Ms. Haley has been under pressure before on the question of the origins of the Civil War. While running for governor in 2010, in an interview with an activist group, Ms. Haley described the war as a fight between two different sides over "tradition" and "change" and said the Confederate flag was "not a racist thing." .

During the same campaign, she dismissed the need for the flag to be removed from one of the state's official buildings, portraying her Democratic rival's push for the issue as a desperate political stunt.

Five years later, Ms. Haley asked lawmakers to remove the flag, which stood near a monument to a Confederate soldier, after a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white gunman killed nine members. of an African American church./ VOA