Nikki Haley declines to say slavery was cause of US civil war

Republican presidential candidate discussed role of government, not slavery, in response to voter asking about reason for war

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley declined to specify that slavery was a cause of the civil war on Wednesday, wading into an area of history that continues to reverberate and in some ways define US politics nearly 160 years after it concluded.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina where the first shots of the north-south conflict were fired by Confederate soldiers in April, 1861, was asked by a New Hampshire voter about the reason for the war but didn’t mention slavery in her response.