Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina (where the Civil War began) and current presidential candidate, found herself in a bit of hot water over the long weekend when she fumbled a pretty easy question for some reason. The question was “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
Her response was both hollow and telling. “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run,” she began. “The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do…I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government…We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure we do all things so that individuals can have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.” When the questioner asked her how she could answer that without even mentioning the word slavery, she responded rather churlishly, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.”
Honestly, this boiler-plate rattling off of traditional conservative talking points such as freedom, capitalism, small government, etc. is reminiscent of the vacuous answers we used to get from former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin when asked about any subject matter. “Well, we need to, ya know, protect job creators by lowering taxes and take on the fat cats in Washington with the…” Zzzzz.
But one would have expected more from Gov. Haley. As such, I found her rather robotic answer, quite frankly, puzzling. Ever the more so because it seems to imply that there is still serious debate as to what was the reason for the Southern Confederacy’s formation and why they were willing to plunge the United States, just 74 years after ratifying the Constitution, into the most lethal war in our history.
[South Carolina batteries fire on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861 triggering the Civil War]
I’m not sure why someone would take the time to ask a 2024 presidential candidate about a war that ended in 1865, but the questioner was correct in admonishing Ms. Haley for not even mentioning slavery as the true casus belli between North and South. All the peripheral issues those in the revisionist Lost Cause camp mention—taxation, tariffs, free navigation of the Mississippi—were either window-dressing or mere offshoots of the Southern Confederacy’s core beef: They saw an ever more populous and powerful North as a threat to what they called their “peculiar institution” better known as human bondage.
With the ascent of the nascent Republican Party, a party founded on preventing the expansion of slavery into the new territories with an eye towards eventual abolition, the South saw the handwriting on the wall. For the South, the 1860 election of the first GOP president, Abraham Lincoln, was the last straw. If they could not expand one-free-to-one-slave-state as new states came into the Union—as had been a key component of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and California Compromise of 1850—there was no way to maintain representative parity in the Senate which is two per state regardless of population; they’d already lost power in the population-determined House. They could not afford to lose the Senate as well if slavery was to survive.
So, for the South it was either, lose slavery and the entire economic, political, cultural, and social way of life that defined them since Colonial times, or leave the Union entirely and start a new nation.
An argument is sometimes made that slavery was not the real issue because at the beginning of hostilities neither side declared it so, and only later did Lincoln make emancipation the Union’s primary aim. Furthermore, the North could be just as racist as the South, as the 1863 New York Draft Riots that saw the indiscriminate lynching of blacks “for the crime of Negritude” as one New Yorker offered, demonstrated. Perhaps. But the question of the war isn’t who disliked blacks more, rather what caused the divide? What led to war? And clearly, as far as the South was concerned, they were not going to give up slavery without a fight. To say that both sides didn’t want to admit as such from the outset means little. After all, two men may claim their arguments are over the sunrise, and have nothing to do the rotation of the earth, but we know where the heart of the matter rests.
Ms. Haley touches on the typical bullet points of the role of government and what have you, but this begs the question “the role of government where?” The South argued they were fighting for “States’ Rights” (which to an old-school Federalist like me is a warm and fuzzy term). But, in this particular case the question must be asked “The right to do what exactly?”
The answer is obvious: the “right” to paradoxically deny other Americans their own God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so as to continue to prosper via an antebellum agricultural business model that could not compete without unpaid, overworked, slave labor. In this case, then, the power of the Federal government to free fellow Americans from bondage superseded the power of the states to keep them in chains. After all, even if one believes that a state has a right to secede and set up shop as its own country right next to ours in our sphere of influence, it does not have the right to do so for any reason whatsoever. No state, for example, should be permitted to secede so it can legalize child sex trafficking.
[Families being auctioned in a slave market]
And what would have been the cornerstone of a new Southern country? As the newly elected Vice President of the Confederate States Of America, Alexander Stephens, stated in no uncertain terms in March 1861: “Our new government['s]...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”
Should one believe that Stephens was only speaking for himself and not the Confederate government as a whole, then it might behoove the likes of Ms. Haley to peruse the Declarations of the Causes Of Seceding States. In these public statements put out by Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and her own state of South Carolina, slavery is mentioned eighty-five times. How about taxation? Once. Tariffs? Not at all.
Said Mississippi, for example: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world…A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union…”
Although for the South, protecting “States Rights” was the rallying cry, it was merely a smoke-screen. A euphemism for slavery. We know this, of course, based on how they supported the 1850 Fugitive Federal Slave Act. Its passing meant states in the North that had abolished slavery nevertheless would be required by law to apprehend and remit to their “owners” any runaway slaves they were harboring. In other words, as far as the South was concerned, States Rights yes…unless the matter of slavery was on the table. Then, by God, the Federal government should have the power to override any state’s own abolitionist laws. Sheer disingenuousness and hypocrisy.
Did every southern boy who signed up with rifle in hand to whip the Yankees do so to protect slavery? Did most even own slaves? Not really. But most of them did in one way or another benefit from it. And certainly if they could have afforded slaves they most probably would have taken part in the institution. And they had to know, especially after the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was announced in September 1862 that if they lost the war, slavery would be gone. (And if their penchant for chasing down runaways or free blacks during Lee’s brief foray into Pennsylvania before Gettysburg is any indication, few had any qualms about the practice itself.)
Although the matter of the legality of secession was still very much undecided in 1860, it should have been clear that in the case of the self-described “Slave-Holding Confederacy” (as they repeatedly referred to themselves in their declarations) no state had the right to leave the country for the stated purpose of stealing away with three million fellow Americans hauled off in chains to do their work.
It should also be noted that although the agrarian states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, etc. had more in common with fellow planters in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia than the industrialists in New York, Massachusetts, or Connecticut, not one free state joined the Confederacy. This is telling.
Slavery, then, was the issue of the war. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, announced to his cabinet just 15 months after Fort Sumter, was merely playing catch-up to the real point of contention that had driven a dangerous sectional wedge through the nation from its founding. And when the guns finally went silent at Appomattox, the issue was resolved. And a freer (albeit still imperfect) nation emerged out of the carnage.
So the next time Gov. Haley is asked what caused the Civil War, a one-word answer will suffice: “Slavery”. This shouldn’t be so hard for someone asking us to trust her with the nuclear codes. That it was not an easy question for her to answer unsettlingly tells us one of two things about Nikki Haley: 1) she really doesn’t know much about US history; or 2) she does, but is such a pre-programmed neo-conservative cyborg that she is incapable of answering a question without rattling off cliché Reagan-era talking points that her donors love to hear. Either way, it was not Ms. Haley’s finest hour.
I really enjoy your articles.
Do you think the war could have been about different things to different people? I am curious if you’ve read S.C. Gwynn’s book about Stonewall Jackson, which discusses different anecdotes:
(1) Jackson’s wife said he never would have fought over slavery. (2) Virginia only seceded after learning that the Federal Government demanded that VA send troops into the south (3) John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry, illustrating the sheer hatred many northerners felt for the south (4) something like 90 percent of southerners didn’t own slaves. (5) various quotes from southern soldiers openly stating they were only fighting because the north invaded them
I do believe slavery was the overriding issue though perhaps it is more nuanced. I suspect that the whole ordeal was driven by the rich men that really benefited from slavery, I.e. “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
I am no expert, this is a fascinating conversation though.
Spot on. My issue with Gov. Haley is not that she didn’t answer the question, it’s how she answered the SECOND question. The condescending tone was remarkable.