The Civil War, Nikki Haley, U.S. Grant, and the Difference Between Political Values and Beliefs
The contrast between how U.S. Grant explained the cause of the Civil War in 1885 and Nikki Haley in 2023 says all you need to know about the moral collapse of the Republican Party
I’ve always been fascinated with the American Civil War, the figures, the battles, the results and, yes, the causes. I’ve visited many of the major battlefield sites from that horrific chapter of American history that are etched in the national consciousness: Bull Run, Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, the Wilderness; I’ve gazed at the gravesites where thousands of bodies, Union and Confederate, were buried, in some cases one on top of the other.
Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that I happen to be reading the “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant,” considered by many historians to be among the greatest political memoirs ever written, at a time when the Civil War has again surfaced as a topic of political debate.
As many of you probably know, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has come under intense criticism in recent days for her meandering answer to a question at a town hall about the cause of the Civil War, neglecting to utter the word “slavery” once (and later walking back that omission in the face of a storm of public criticism).
The omission, much like Donald Trump’s “very fine people” comment about the white nationalists at the Charlottesville rally in 2017, tells you all you need to know about the modern-day Republican Party, and how it resembles in no way, shape or form the party that was founded by Abraham Lincoln and to which Ulysses S. Grant was twice elected president of the United States after leading the Union to victory in the Civil War.
Unlike the Republicans of Haley, Trump and Ron DeSantis today, the party of U.S. Grant had no trouble stating in no uncertain terms what caused the Civil War. In the matter-of-fact writing style that made his memoirs famous, Grant says the following on Page 109:
It was very much discussed whether the South would carry out its threat to secede and set up a separate government, the corner-stone of which should be, protection to the ‘Divine’ institution of slavery. For there were people who believed in the ‘divinity’ of human slavery, as there are now those who believe Mormonism and Polygamy to be ordained by the Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid their practice.
So, why could the Republican Haley (who’s considered the “mainstream” Republican in the race) not say in 2023 what the Republican Grant so clearly said 138 years earlier, at a time when racial inequality in America was not only tolerated but often celebrated? We all know the answer, and it explains why roughly 90% of Black American voters will not even consider voting for Republican candidates for elected office, even if they agree with them on many social and economic issues.
Racism, pure and simple.
As was the case once upon a time with the Democratic Party until it experienced its own internal civil war during the 1960s civil rights movement, a significant segment of the Republican Party’s base embraces or at least tolerates racism — or at the very least the whitewashing of America’s history of racism and racial oppression. There’s simply no other way to put it. These conservative “snowflakes,” as I call them, simply can’t handle the truth of the nation’s past, the horrific toll that first slavery, then Jim Crow segregation, and finally more implicit forms of modern day racism inflicted on generations of Black Americans, the legacy of which still impacts their lives today. With their phony patriotism and blind pride in the inherent greatness of America (before “woke liberals” ruined it), they can’t face up to the fact that slavery caused the Civil War, that Jim Crow unleashed another 100 years of racial terror even after slavery was abolished, and that racism continues to be a fact of American life even today.
And their refusal to face up to these truths underscores the difference between holding differing political “values” and holding differing political “beliefs.” It’s different values, not beliefs, that explain why the Republican Party of Trump, Haley and DeSantis in 2023 is not the party of Lincoln and Grant (in my opinion, one of the most underrated presidents in American history) today.
Even before the controversy over Haley’s non-utterance of the word slavery, I had been thinking a lot of this disconnect in politics between “beliefs” and “values” and searching for concrete examples to illustrate it. Who knew that one crystal clear example would come in the form of one of my lifelong passions, study of the Civil War?
The polarization found in American politics today has created a myth that our fundamental differences are simply ones of “beliefs,” that below those honest differences we all share common values as Americans and could focus on those if we would just “listen” to each other more and be respectful of these differing beliefs.
How I wish that were the case.
Since Trump’s election in 2016, I’ve become convinced that the polarization in American politics is not one of “beliefs” but “values.” And it is encapsulated by the controversy over Haley’s initial refusal to utter the word “slavery” as a cause of the Civil War.
A core political value should be a respect for basic truths and facts, including those related to our nation’s history and the role race has played in that history. We can, and should, have differing beliefs about how to truly achieve ideals around equality and fundamental human rights and freedoms in a democratic nation, because these are often complicated problems, without simple answers. But we can’t have those debates when we don’t acknowledge and respect basic facts, because a lack of such respect shows a lack of willingness to act in good faith to work toward realizing the ideals to which we should all aspire.
For much of the nation’s history both before and after the Civil War, large numbers of Americans believed the concept of equality and true freedom should only apply to white Christian men. And for much of that period, such beliefs were not only considered acceptable but admirable.
Thankfully, we’ve moved past the point where such a political value is considered acceptable. So, it is rare to see political figures voice them openly and publicly. But that doesn’t mean that the value itself has been extinguished from our society.
Indeed, the Trump years and rise of the MAGA movement in the Republican Party show that it is alive and thriving.
Values such as racism and white supremacy don’t simply disappear when they become unpopular (something it took me longer to realize that it should have). Rather, they metastasize, take different, more subtle forms, often hidden from the view of daily life. But when a question like the cause of the Civil War comes up, we see the role that history can play in shining a light on the national cancer of racism.
The fact that a top candidate for the presidency can’t provide the answer we all know to be true about what caused the Civil War, for fear of upsetting her party’s political “base” that is determined to whitewash American history and the role of racism in it, should prove once and for all that the true political crisis we are facing in America in 2024 isn’t one of differing political beliefs, but one of differing core values.
The Democratic Party is far from perfect. Those who are active in Democratic Party politics often hold sharply different “beliefs” about how to achieve shared political “values” that lie at the heart of our democracy, and those fights often get intense, even ugly, as personal, special and public interests collide (I know, I’ve engaged in many of them). As unpleasant as it may be, such conflict is a sign of a healthy party and democracy and the way politics should work. The Democratic Party is itself polarized, and while the mainstream media narrative paints that as a negative thing (hence their favorite catchphrase of “Dems in disarray!”), it’s actually quite positive. We don’t need more blind tribalism and cultish politics in America; we need less of them.
The negative thing is when a political party betrays core American values, including a basic respect for uncomfortable historical truths and democratic principles such as the right to vote, equality under the law and the sanctity of elections, in a quest for power at all costs. That is the Republican Party of 2024. And it would make the likes of Lincoln and Grant, who truly made the Republican Party grand, turn over in their graves.
And it’s why Haley’s Civil War answer isn’t just a reflection of her party’s shameless refusal to acknowledge the truths of the past; it’s also a harbinger of what’s at stake for us all us in 2024.
In his memoirs, Grant also provides a reflection that serves as a warning for today, the wishful thinking that calmer heads will ultimately prevail when a political movement such as the Southern Democrats of the 1850s or MAGA Republicans of today become radicalized, unopen to compromise, unwilling to face up to basic truths, determined to win at all costs, no matter what freedoms and rights they trample on in the process. Grant recounts how, even though he was personally aligned with Republican views, he voted for Democrat James Buchanan in 1856 (considered one of America’s most inept, failed presidents) out of the mistaken hope that his election would keep the peace and temper the passions then tearing the nation apart. But all it did was further embolden pro-slavery forces to believe they could not only succeed in saving that evil institution, but in spreading it westward.
In 1860, Grant says, “I still had hopes that the four years which had elapsed since the first nomination of a Presidential candidate by a party distinctly opposed to slavery extension, had given time for the extreme pro-slavery sentiment to cool down; for the Southerners to think well before they took the awful leap which they had so vehemently threatened. But I was mistaken.”
If Grant were alive today, he would caution us not to make the same mistake he did then, not to delude ourselves into thinking today’s MAGA Republicans can turn back from their assault on democracy, decency and a basic respect for historic and modern truths. Appeasement and placation will not save us from this political crisis; it will only worsen it. We have the means at our disposal to save our democracy without falling into an abyss of violence and death seen during the U.S. Civil War. But time is of the essence.
Grant would also be the first to tell Americans today that our polarization isn’t one of beliefs, which are fluid and negotiable, as they should be. They are ones of values, and values that pertain to equality, liberty and democracy cannot be compromised, sacrificed or ignored.
Lincoln once compared Grant to a bulldog, telling him in a dispatch during the war to “hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”
When it comes to the political battle ahead in 2024, I have no doubt that these two Republican giants would tell us all to do the same when it comes confronting those who in their modern-day party who threaten our democracy and persist in embracing and tolerating the racist myths of our past.
Let us all be bulldogs for the political values we hold dear this year, including the lessons to be learned from our nation’s complicated history, and save our democracy in 2024 as Lincoln and Grant did in 1865.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to subscribe to and read my personal Substack newsletter over the past year. Putting my thoughts into words and sharing them with others not only helps me to make sense of our crazy, complicated, beautiful world, but also gives me hope that I’m doing what little I can to make it a better, more just place for us all. For those interested, here are the three most viewed posts I wrote in 2023; I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts and reflections with you as we navigate the pivotal year ahead.