'The cause of the Civil War was slavery': Historian weighs in on Nikki Haley's answer

"What was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

A voter posed the question to Republican presidential primary candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire Wednesday evening.

"I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do," she answered before turning the question back around on the voter.

By the end of the encounter, the voter wondered aloud why Haley didn't mention slavery in her responses.

"What do you want me to say about slavery?" she responded.

The incident drew criticism from both Democrats and other Republican presidential candidates. Haley said in a Thursday interview she knows the Civil War was about slavery, calling it "the easy part." Haley also alleged the voter who posed the question was a 'plant' by Democrats.

USA TODAY posed the same question to Dr. Amy Murrell Taylor, a history professor at the University of Kentucky and a specialist in the 19th century history of the South. Here is what she had to say:

More: Nikki Haley alleged she was set up by Democratic 'plant' after being asked what caused the Civil War

What caused the civil war?

"It's very simple, and it really does boil down to one word," Taylor said. "The cause of the Civil War was slavery."

She said that when trying to understand "why" the North and South went to battle, slavery is the core issue. The issues of state and federal power that led to Southern states seceding answer "how" the Civil War started, Taylor said.

In the mid-19th century, there was growing opposition to allowing slavery in new western territories from Northern states, where manufacturing was booming at the time.

Shortly after anti-slavery candidate Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in 1860, South Carolina seceded from the U.S. followed by 10 more states by June of the following year.

"South Carolina and other Southern states invoked their state's right to secede in order to protect slavery, but they would not have done that...without slavery being the core trigger issue.

Historical documents explicitly name 'slavery' as core issue

Taylor said that historical documentation and news coverage of political debates at the time show how central it was to the conflict.

"[A]n 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 South Carolina Declaration of Secession states, according to the National Constitution Center.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world…and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization," states an excerpt from the Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union also posted on the National Constitution Center.

Government, freedoms and 'what people could and couldn't do'

Instead of saying "slavery" explicitly, Haley said the cause of the Civil War was "basically how government was gonna run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do."

Taylor admits that "freedom" was relevant, but only in terms of the fight for freeing enslaved people.

As reported by the Associated Press, it wasn't the first time Haley glazed over slavery in the history of the South, and Taylor said Haley isn't alone in avoiding it.

"There are a lot of people out there who would have answered that question the same way and have done so for for generations," Taylor said. "So this is a really bigger problem than Nikki Haley."

She said many who fought for the South deliberately sought to downplay the role of slavery, starting almost immediately after the war ended. The United Daughters of the Confederacy published textbook guidelines to expunge the subject of slavery, she said.

"Former Confederates, they really, they may have lost the war but, as people say, they won the memory of it," Taylor said.

'What do you want me to say about slavery?'

Taylor said her students are always surprised to see the archives name slavery so prominently after growing up in a culture that obscures the history.

"This history is not that long ago if you really stop and think about it," Taylor said. "And so for some families, white Southern families, it's a very uncomfortable thing to think that their ancestors sought to protect and defend slavery."

Taylor said Haley's response, "What do you want me to say about slavery?" reflects a larger impulse to avoid the uncomfortable and leave the past in the past.

"But the problem is, the country never fully grappled with slavery and its aftermath and tried to move on without doing so," Taylor said. "That has meant that we continue to struggle with questions of racial equality and rights and justice today."

Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi, Jacob Livesay, USA TODAY; Brian Lyman, Montgomery Advertiser

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What caused the civil war? Simple: Slavery, professor says