The former South Carolina governor instead said it was a dispute over how ‘government was going to run.’

Nikki Haley declined to say that slavery was a cause of the Civil War on Wednesday evening, placing the blame, instead, on the role of government.

The former UN Ambassador and South Carolina governor, who has seen her star rise in the first-in-the-nation primary state, was appearing at a town hall event in Berlin, New Hampshire, when a voter asked her to identify the cause of the war.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run,” she responded. “The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was or argument?”

The questioner, who could not be easily heard off camera, was apparently unpersuaded by Haley’s response. When she asked him what he believed the cause of the war was, he replied that he wasn’t running for president.

  • d00phy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I mean, it was about what people could and couldn’t do… Like buying, selling, & OWNING PEOPLE.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nah, she’s a nutjob. Nobody is suddenly going to vote for her because she has one normal take, but her (southern) constituency will absolutely take offense if she says anything beyond “states rights” or some such bullshit.

      • drmeanfeel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Probably lost a few by not saying “I’m not familiar with the Civil War, perhaps you’re referring to the War of Northern Aggression?”

      • Caradoc879@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Even the democrats and liberals in the south seem to have a strange inability to accept that the civil war was about slavery. They all say it was about taxes and shit.

    • d00phy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      She’s been positioning herself as a more sane version of Trump. She says slavery caused the war, and she has to change up her whole strategy because she would have lost any Trumpers considering her.

  • Altofaltception@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    When she asked him what he believed the cause of the war was, he replied that he wasn’t running for president.

    Sounds like a man afraid of being lynched

  • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The southern oligarchs attacked the US because they feared losing their “property”. In fairness, you could say that it really was just incidental that the “property” was people. The oligarchs probably would have reacted just as murderously to any other threat to their wealth and power. So, be nice to Elon, everyone.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Didn’t Lincoln and the other guys have slaves themselves? I thought the slavery abolition was just a reason to get the black people fighting on their side and even then it took quite a while for everyone to stop slavery

    Edit wrong

    • splicerslicer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No. Northern states had already outlawed slavery, southern states were already pissed that Northern states weren’t enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, the newly formed Republican party had already been leaning towards national abolition, and Lincoln described slavery as an abhorrent sin. His election is what triggered secession, according to the very articles of secession by several states. They saw the writing on the wall that slavery was coming to an end of they didn’t separate and form their own nation. The emancipation proclamation was just rushed as a way of allowing southern slaves to legally flee the south.ind you equal rights was a fringe opinion at the time, they weren’t even treating white women as equals after all. But most northerners were repulsed by slavery at this point in history.

      • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My bad I think I confused Lincoln with another guy I did recall there being slave owners in the north. Maybe I read some bs online.

        I did just find this article about Lincoln wanting to deport black people out of the country to colonize a different land and put them there.

        Not sure if that one is true but that would add some layers of irony to the current Zionism movement in America.

        • Seleni@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You may be thinking of the founding fathers, many of whom owned slaves despite putting ‘all men are created equal’ down on paper. Washington even had a set of dentures made of human teeth. Guess where he got those from?

          They still laid the foundations for equality. But there’s no denying they were kinda hypocrites.

    • neptune@dmv.social
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      1 year ago

      This is a sophomoric interpretation.

      Yes, lots of northerners were NOT abolitionist, but that doesn’t mean the Southern fear of a loss of slavery didn’t drive secession.

    • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Didn’t Lincoln and the other guys have slaves themselves?

      No.

      I thought the slavery abolition was just a reason to get the black people fighting on their side

      That is a half-truth at best. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any slaves outside the confederacy.

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        “Somebody said something that I already want to agree with” is a perfectly cromulent source.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      The South seceded based on slavery.

      https://www.bing.com/search?q=Ordinance of Secession wikipedia&form=WIKIRE

      It doesn’t matter what Lincoln believed or planned to do; the south thought that they had to get out of they’d be forced to give up their slaves.

      Think of it this way. A cop walks into a bar to use the bathroom. A crook sees the cop, thinks that the cop is coming for her, and shoots the cop. The crook can’t say that the cop forced her to shoot. The South chose to leave because of slavery.