(UnitedHeadlines.com) – Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s answer to a question about the cause of the Civil War was criticized by a voter during a Berlin, New Hampshire, town hall event.
While answering a question on the campaign trail, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador made no mention of slavery causing the war, instead saying the cause of the Civil War came down to the role of government. She said the cause was related to freedom, and the government telling people what they “could and couldn’t do.”
The voter criticized her answer, calling it “astonishing” that she made no mention of slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Haley responded to the voter by asking what the voter would like her to say regarding slavery. The voter thanked her and added, “You answered my question.”
Haley’s answer was called “a slap in the face to Black voters” by Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison. “Condemning slavery is the baseline” for candidates running for President of the United States, Harrison added.
Republican presidential candidates and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign also responded by posting a video of the answer on social media, along with the word “Yikes.”
Haley has faced this question before. She stated the Civil War was fought by two sides fighting for “change” and “tradition” during a 2010 interview. She also stated that the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist” during the same interview. However, following the 2015 mass shooting of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, she had the Confederate flag removed from the Capitol.
In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, citing the “increasing hostility” to the “institution of slavery” from non-slaveholding states as the reason.
Though Haley trails in the polls by 17 points to former President Donald Trump, her support in New Hampshire has risen in the last month, ahead of the New Hampshire presidential primary scheduled for Jan. 23.
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