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One hundred sixty-three years after multiple Southern states seceded from the Union rather than accept a new president who was hostile to slavery, the origin of the Civil War is looming over another presidential election. The country is again contending with how to remember its original sin and with White supremacy, which remains a threat today.
On Monday, President Joe Biden compared Trump supporters who won’t accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election with former Confederates who embraced the “lost cause” view of the Civil War, which saw the war from the perspective of White Southerners and sidestepped the issue of slavery.
“Now, we’re living in an era of a second lost cause,” Biden said. “Once again, there are some in this country trying to turn a loss into a lie. A lie which if allowed to live will once again bring terrible damage to this country. This time the lie is about the 2020 election.”
This 2024 focus on the Civil War started when former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, whose state was the first to secede before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration all those years ago, failed last month to list slavery as a cause of the war during an appearance in New Hampshire as she seeks the GOP presidential nomination.
She later recalibrated her response to make clear “of course the Civil War was about slavery,” but also about individual freedoms, an issue that motivates Republican primary voters.
Haley should know how the Confederacy and racism echo still in the US; she was the Republican governor who removed the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds after a mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston in 2015.
Notably, it’s from the pulpit at that church…
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