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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    11 months ago

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

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    ”Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals 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.”

    Except if you’re trans. Or any variety of LGBTQ. Or black. Or from another country (the shithole ones anyway), or if you’re a woman of child bearing years, or if you’re not Christian. In those fringe cases, the government needs to know things about your body, and they ABSOLUTELY can should and must tell you what to do. Unless you’re a capitalist with loads of money. Then I’m sure we can work something out.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      11 months 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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        11 months 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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        11 months 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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      11 months 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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    11 months 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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    11 months 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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    11 months 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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      11 months 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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        11 months 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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          11 months 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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      11 months 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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      11 months 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.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      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.