Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley found herself embroiled in a controversy on December 28 after she declined to say that slavery was one of the causes of the U.S. Civil War, an omission that drew rebukes from Democrats and some of her 2024 opponents.When asked by an audience member what she believed to be the cause of the Civil War at a town hall in New Hampshire, the former governor of South Carolina at first paused, and said, “Well, don’t come at me with an easy question.”She then added: “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, what you could and couldn’t do, the freedoms in what people could and couldn’t do.”After some back and forth, the man who asked the question responded: “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.'”On Friday morning, Haley clarified her comments, saying at another New Hampshire campaign event, “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s unquestioned. Always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery, but it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.”There is broad consensus among scholars that slavery was the main cause of the war, which occurred between 1861 and 1865. The Southern states, which seceded, opposed attempts by Northern states to limit the institution of slavery, particularly in Western territories.Haley, like many public officials from the U.S. South, has a history of defending aspects of the Confederacy, as the states that seceded are known. She served as governor of South Carolina, the first state to secede, from 2011 to 2017.Haley said in 2010 that the state had a right to secede. In 2015, she signed a bill into law removing the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol following the murder of nine Black churchgoers by white supremacist Dylann Roof.