Nikki Haley gets the Civil War horribly wrong
With the huge and prominent memorial to the Confederacy that sits smack dab in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery finally making the news and coming down this week, I’ve been slowly working my way around to finishing a piece on the country’s monuments that honor the Confederacy. I was just a couple hours away from being able to hit ‘publish’ this morning when my daily ramble through a bunch of newspapers revealed that Nikki Haley, current presidential contender and former governor of South Carolina - the very first state to secede from the Union and to then wage war on the United States by firing canons on Fort Sumpter in order to kill American sailors and soldiers - has no idea what the Civil War was about. That’s beyond bewildering, so today this short-ish history lesson for Nikki, because surely she must be embarrassed to be so ignorant of American and South Carolinian history. Monuments to the Confederacy is hereby saved for tomorrow.
From today’s Wall Street Journal: The statement by the former South Carolina governor at an event Wednesday evening was surprising given that the legacy of the Civil War, the Confederacy and race relations have been a constant theme throughout her decades-long political career.
“What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” a man asked Haley, who is also a former United Nations ambassador.
Calling it not an “easy question,” Haley said the cause was “basically how government was gonna run—the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” before she turned the question back on the man to ask him for his thoughts.
After the man said he wasn’t running for president, Haley returned to discussing the “role of government” and said the nation needs capitalism and 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,” she said.
The man then said that it was “astonishing” that she didn’t mention slavery.
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley responded. “Next question.”
Actually, “What was the cause of the Civil War?” is a pretty easy question to answer. Of the 13 states that elected to part ways with the United States and join the Confederacy, 5 wrote and published immediate open letters which came to be known as the ‘Declaration of Causes.’[1]South Carolina, Nikki’s home state, wrote a long, rambling, somewhat non-sensical letter that included this: … an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to align the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
Ok…perhaps a bit wordy, convoluted and difficult to comprehend. I get it. But Texas was a bit clearer with their letter. Let’s see if Texas was a bit more understandable to the common man or woman: Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the
confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist
in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
…We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
Ok…that seems clear. Secession and thus the war were about slavery. And finally, Alexander Stevens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, was even clearer than either South Carolina or Texas. Stevens gave this speech on March 21st, 1861. 2½ weeks later South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter and began the process of becoming independent from the United States to be able to freely engage in slavery. Stevens: When perfect quiet is restored, I shall proceed. I cannot speak so long as there is any noise or confusion. I shall take my time I feel quite prepared to spend the night with you if necessary. I very much regret that everyone who desires cannot hear what I have to say. Not that I have any display to make, or anything very entertaining to present, but such views as I have to give, I wish all, not only in this city, but in this State, and throughout our Confederate Republic, could hear, who have a desire to hear them.
… Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea (of equality between the races); its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
So there you have it Nikki. But you may ask, “Who cares? Is getting all this right even important? Who gives a hoot and why? It doesn’t seem important to me at all!” It’s important Nikki. But in fairness to you, sadly, you are a part of mainstream America. The Southern Poverty Law Center, based on a Pew research poll, estimates that 48% of American teachers believe that it was the issue of States’ Rights that led to secession, believing in what historians call the ‘ABS’ version of secession. Anything But Slavery.
Prominent historian and best-selling author Loewen, in his own informal poll of thousands of teachers, has concluded that some 55-75% of teachers – regardless of race – conclude States’ Rights as the key reason for secession. Based on leading Civil War expert, former Chief Historian for the National Park Service, and Civil War Era professor at New Mexico State University Dwight Pitcaithley’s own informal poll conducted among the students in his class, "Civil War Era-1820-1900”, the number is closer to 80% to 90%.
But I’ll let James Loewen explain why getting the history of the secession movement right is critically important: “It informs virtually all the attitudes about race that we wrestle with today. “Concealing the role of white supremacy—on both sides of the conflict— makes it harder for students to see white supremacy today. After all, if southerners were not championing slavery but states’ rights, then that minimizes southern racism as a cause of the war. And it gives implicit support to the Lost Cause argument that slavery was a benevolent institution. Espousing states’ rights as the reason for secession whitewashes the Confederate cause into a “David versus Goliath” undertaking— the states against the mighty federal government.
States’ rights became a racist rallying cry for southerners fighting all federal guarantees of civil rights for African Americans. This was true both during Reconstruction and in the 1950s, when the modern civil rights movement gained strength. Today, the cause of states’ rights is still invoked against federal social programs and education initiatives that are often beneficial to Black people.”
In even smaller, more easily understood words - getting the Civil War wrong cedes power to some of the most reactionary, most racist forces in the United States today, letting them, rather than truth, dictate what is taught in the classroom and understood across the nation. Allowing bad history to stand leaves the public ignorant about the past and causes tension, harm, hate, and divisiveness in the present.
Nikki had an opportunity to help heal the Great American Divide. She failed.
[1] https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
Right on!