The presidential candidate Nikki Haley drew criticism this week for what she didn’t say. As she campaigned in New Hampshire, an individual requested her to call the reason for the Civil Struggle.
Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, joked it was not an “simple query.” She then talked about “how authorities was going to run,” “freedoms,” the necessity for “capitalism” and particular person liberties. When the questioner noticed that she hadn’t talked about slavery, she requested, “What would you like me to say about slavery?”
She informed a radio interviewer the following morning that “after all” the conflict was about slavery, that she was not evading the problem however attempting to reframe it in trendy phrases. Whereas we shouldn’t learn an excessive amount of into one video clip, it’s truthful to ask: How is the Civil Struggle’s trigger not a simple query?
The information of our historical past are at present contested — particularly that historical past. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has acted to limit what he sees as woke views of slavery and race in faculties. Different Republican-led states have taken comparable measures, and Donald Trump has provided his personal hazy views of the previous. It’s no surprise Ms. Haley spoke cautiously. The historical past of race has grow to be as fraught a subject on the political proper because it has been on the left.
All this factors to a actuality we might do properly to confront: Some Individuals don’t consider slavery was the reason for the Civil Struggle. I encountered a few of them whereas discussing a latest ebook on Abraham Lincoln.
Just a few days in the past, a caller on C-SPAN recognized as “William in Lansford, Pa.,” asserted this to me: “The Civil Struggle wasn’t about slavery. It was concerning the states combating with each other about cash.”
It was removed from the primary time I’ve heard such claims. It’s not laborious to see why a candidate would possibly keep away from partaking too deeply with voters on this matter.
However the remainder of us can arm ourselves with a couple of base-line information. Way over most historic occasions, the Civil Struggle is debated amongst atypical folks as a lot as amongst historians. (Lincoln referred to as it “a folks’s conflict,” and it’s now a folks’s historical past. I just lately attended the annual Lincoln Discussion board in Gettysburg, Pa., the place students shared the room with lots of of superfans.) If we’re to carry on to our historical past, we are able to put together ourselves to reply calmly and with information when somebody makes a uncertain declare. Proof reveals what the conflict was about. It additionally reveals why some folks suppose it wasn’t about slavery — and why it issues a century and a half later.
The proof is simple. Southern states rejected Lincoln’s 1860 election as a president from the antislavery Republican Get together. South Carolina was the primary of 11 states that attempted to go away the Union, and Confederates fired the primary shot of the Civil Struggle there at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
Leaders of the would-be new republic named slavery as their trigger. Alexander H. Stephens, the vp of the Confederacy, gave a speech in 1861 by which he stated “the belief of the equality of races” was “an error” and “a sandy basis” for the nation he meant to go away.
Greater than 30 years of agitation over slavery preceded the conflict. Northern antislavery leaders denounced the South’s establishment increasingly loudly and at last organized by way of the brand new Republican Get together to achieve political energy. Southern leaders, who as soon as solid slavery as a tragic inheritance from colonial occasions, more and more defended it as ethical and good.
After the South’s defeat in 1865, these plain information had been obscured. Former Confederates solid their conflict heroes, like Robert E. Lee, as defenders of their residence states quite than champions of slavery.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy campaigned for generations to downplay slavery’s function within the conflict. In a 1924 speech to the group’s annual conference, Hollins N. Randolph asserted that “Southern males” had “fought to the demise” for “the freedom of the person, for the house and for the good precept of native self-government.” By no means thoughts that it was “the freedom of the person” to personal different human beings. The speech advocated elevating cash for a fantastic Accomplice monument that also exists at Stone Mountain, Ga.
Past the bombast, historians contested many aspects of the lengthy street to conflict. To provide only one instance from the immense scholarly file: T. Harry Williams, a Twentieth-century author, put some blame for the conflict on Northern capitalists. He stated they foresaw “fats rewards” in knocking proslavery aristocrats out of energy and reshaping the financial system to learn their very own factories and railroads. However actually, such arguments quantity to totally different interpretations of how america got here to battle a conflict over slavery.
At the moment some folks quote Lincoln — precisely — saying his predominant conflict goal was preserving the Union, not ending slavery. However these quotes can’t maintain any argument longer than a social media meme. Lincoln additionally stated that slavery was “the reason for the conflict.” Preserving the Union in the end required slavery’s destruction.
Plainly folks query the historic file much less due to doubt concerning the previous than due to conflicts within the current. Some conservatives really feel that progressives use slavery as a cudgel in opposition to their aspect in trendy debates over race and equality.
The primary Republican president noticed slavery neither as a cudgel nor as one thing that he wanted to obscure. In an 1864 letter, he described slavery as a “nice incorrect” and added that individuals of the North and South alike shared “complicity in that incorrect.”
Complicity. Lincoln affirmed his nation’s accountability for failing to reside as much as its promise of equality. He nonetheless believed within the nation and its promise.
Lincoln by no means claimed to be morally superior to his countrymen. He targeted on an immoral system, which he labored to limit after which to destroy. The top of slavery is now a part of this nation’s legacy. It’s additionally a part of the legacy of Lincoln’s social gathering, although Ms. Haley’s instance reveals it may be laborious for Republican candidates to speak about it.
Steve Inskeep, a co-host of NPR’s “Morning Version” and “Up First,” is the writer of “Differ We Should: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America.”
The Instances is dedicated to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to listen to what you concentrate on this or any of our articles. Listed here are some tips. And right here’s our e mail: letters@nytimes.com.
Comply with the New York Instances Opinion part on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads.