Dem
51
GOP
49
One might think that a resident—and certainly a former governor—of South Carolina would have a pretty good idea of what caused the Civil War. Y'all know, the little dustup that happened after some folks in that state fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861? And in case Haley didn't learn about the subject in school, her tenure as governor saw the establishment of the Old Slave Mart Museum at 6 Chalmers St. in Charleston, which itself has a few clues as to the cause of the Civil War.
Despite this background, on Wednesday at a campaign stop in Berlin, NH, a voter asked Haley to identify the cause of the Civil War. She responded: "I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do." It is true that most historians do think that "freedom" and "people" were indeed in the picture, but usually they are quite a bit more precise about which people did and did not have freedom and how this fit into the big picture.
The questioner said Haley's answer was astonishing, since she didn't mention, you know, slavery. This exchange could cause problems for her in New Hampshire, which was most definitely not a pro-slavery state in 1861. No doubt she was thinking ahead to the South Carolina primary, where her answer would probably be a plus with Republican primary voters. Her surge in the polls against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Donald Trump has led some people to think Haley is some kind of closet liberal. She is not. She is as conservative as all the other Republicans. People are starting to forget that, and her remarks in New Hampshire may remind them that she is a conservative Southern Republican at heart. The difference between her and the rest is that she isn't crazy.
Afterwards, Haley said the question was from a "Democratic plant." In other words, questions from Democrats don't count. Of course, if she gets the GOP nomination, there will be many questions from Democrats, so she better get used to it. In fact, she better get used to it right now. After the town hall, Joe Biden piped up and gave the correct answer. He said: "It was about slavery." And remember, Biden is from a slave state (Delaware), even though it fought for the Union.
Haley's comments quickly became big news and she realized she had made a boo-boo. About 12 hours after the initial statement, she tried to reverse course when she told a local radio interviewer: "Of course the Civil War was about slavery." Maybe she boned up on the Civil War by reading the Wikipedia article on it after the town hall. The first sentence of the article tells when it happened and who the belligerents were. The second one reads: "The cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction." If you're going to distill it down to one sentence, that kind of nails it.
The combination of evading the question at first and then conceding when she got called on it tends to make Haley look less like The Never Trump savior and more like just another sleazy politician. She should have known better and just answered the question correctly the first time. (V)