Nikki, Nikki, Nikki!

 

(Note:  Today's Ramble features another posting from my old friend, Ranger Bob.  The ranger, who seldom gets downright political, uses this space today to take on GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley over her recent decision, when asked about the causes of the American Civil War, to overlook the big kahuna in that bloody tragedy - slavery.   Bob's well-researched accounting provides a much needed counter-balance to Haley's misreading of history, and, as usual, his insights are spot-on.  - Pa Rock)

Nikki, Nikki, Nikki!

by Bob Randall

"Well, don't come at me with an easy question," said Nikki Haley when asked a question Wednesday night at a New Hampshire town hall.  The question was, "What was the cause of the American Civil War?"  Actually, it had an easy, one word answer:  Slavery.   Nikki didn't say that.  It was so inconvenient to answer truthfully because the base of the MAGA Party really believes her answer, while her more moderate wing of said party, want to hear about government intrusion.  They all want to hear how the government was trying to take away their rights, influence their economy, tell them what they couldn't do to other, lesser people.   They want to take pride in their Southern Heritage, something that the former governor of South Carolina must understand.  

However, Southern Heritage doesn't run very deep in New Hampshire.

South Carolina played a special role in Civil War history.  It wasn't the most fought-over ground.  No, that was Virginia.  It wasn't the second most fought-over ground.  That would be Tennessee.  Maybe, more importantly, it was the first fought-over ground.   Fort Sumter, a fort at the mouth of Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, absorbed the first cannon fire of the Civil War.   South Carolina has another dubious distinction that a former governor should understand.   It was the first state to declare its secession from the United States.   Nikki should have known that South Carolina's Declaration of Secession, while it blathers on and on about states' rights, clarifies in several places that it was the right to hold slaves that they really cared about.   An example:  "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 eloign 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 of servile insurrection."

Nikki, Nikki, Nikki, the answer should have been slavery.

At least Mississippi didn't blather on and on.  In the second sentence of their secession document they come right out and say it:  "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world."  The Vice President of the Confederate States of America, Alexander Stephens, made it clear in the "Cornerstone Speech," that slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy.

While it's possible to make an argument that General Beauregard thought that he was defending South Carolina from the United States, it doesn't seem possible to me that one can make an argument that Nikki Haley doesn't understand that the single "States' Right" that she defended in her New Hampshire town hall, is the right to hold other human beings in bondage.  I believe she does understand that, and her answer says more about her party than it does about her.

Nikki, Nikki, Nikki!