Nikki Haley responds to Civil War controversy: ‘Of course the Civil War was about slavery’

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley responded to a brewing controversy regarding her failure to mention slavery as a primary cause of the Civil War during a town hall event Wednesday night.

Haley has since amended her statement, saying, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery, that’s the easy part of it,” during a Thursday morning interview on The Pulse of NH, a radio program in the Granite State.

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“What I was saying was what does it mean to us today?” Haley said. “What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about. It was about individual freedom.”

Haley went on to say the war was about economic freedom and individual rights.

“Our goal is to make sure no, we never go back to the stain of slavery, but what’s the lesson in all of that?” she said.

The damage control comes after Haley did not mention slavery as a primary cause of the Civil War when an audience member asked about it during a town hall event Wednesday in New Hampshire.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run,” Haley originally said. “The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

“In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you’d answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery,’” the person who asked the question responded.

“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley said.

Democrats and Republican primary rivals pounced on Haley for her comments shortly after.

“It was about slavery,” President Joe Biden said in a brief response on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and his allies quickly spread video of the incident on social media, while South Carolina state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, who is campaigning with the Florida governor in Iowa this week, told the Washington Examiner that he was surprised by Haley’s comments.

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“I was a little surprised by the comments she made last night,” Kimbrell said. “I can say I’m very proud of South Carolina. But I can also unequivocally say that there’s no question that the Civil War was certainly one of the key causes, probably not the only cause, one of the key causes was over slavery and the expansion thereof or the ending thereof. For her to kind of dodge that, I was surprised. This seemed out of character for what she said during the past.”

As governor of South Carolina, Haley removed the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds in 2015 after the murders of nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Church, a historically black church in Charleston.