The minimum acceptable response would include some combination of states’ rights, slavery, the South’s peculiar economic structure, slavery, the ongoing feud over expansion of slavery into Western territories, slavery, the uproar in the North over the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, slavery, the election of anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln — without a single slave-state electoral vote — and, duh, slavery.

At a town hall appearance in Berlin, N.H., Wednesday, Haley, alert HotAir readers know by now, served up a heaping bowl of Lowcountry gumbo (heavy on the duck).

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” she said.

“I mean, I think it all comes down to the role of government,” she added. “We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”

We are reminded of Richard Dreyfus’s Roy Neary molding a mountain out of mashed potatoes and murmuring, “This means something,” but we’re not sure what. National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar suspects it’s not racism, but something subtly worse.

The real gaffe Haley committed on Wednesday was that, when she froze up under an unpredicted question and defaulted to her factory settings in answering, those answers demonstrated such contempt for the intelligence of her voters. … Few politicians look good when caught nakedly pandering in public, but Nikki Haley wears the look witheringly poorly — it knocks out one of the key underlying struts currently upholding her fragile public brand. That’s why this little gaffe, however minor, memorably reveals something about Haley; we rarely get such accidental insight into how little politicians think of their own voters.

Blehar may be onto something.

For his part, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chided his GOP presidential rival for tossing a “word salad” at the crowd. Make it make sense, DeSantis said: “It’s not that difficult to identify and acknowledge the role slavery played in the Civil War, and yet that seemed to be something that was really difficult. And I don’t even know what she was saying.”

His conclusion? “[T]his shows this is not a candidate that’s ready for prime time.”

This does not mean that, under DeSantis, Florida is free from controversies linked to the Civil War. Three, in fact — one some six months old, another as new as Thursday, and yet another pending in the new year — are reliable cudgels wielded by DeSantis critics. Florida Democrats resorted to the oldest one Thursday.

“Maybe you should sit this one out,” wrote Carlos Guillermo Smith, a former Democratic state representative from Orlando and current state Senate candidate, addressing the DeSantis campaign’s comments.

Smith’s reference was to the revised Florida black history standards developed by a committee approved by DeSantis, 216 pages published in July, which include a reference to “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

This is undeniably true, as an exhibit commissioned by the Library of Congress in the early 1990s established. These where not slaves who took skills into the new workplace that followed Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, although they are frequently cited. These were, instead, black humans in abominable bondage who nonetheless found the courage, intelligence, and resourcefulness to improve their plight on the plantation through their learned skills and natural talents.

DeSantis was right to defend the standards then, and to blast critics Thursday, saying the issue was “bastardized intentionally.”

Those looking for additional proof that despite having ended nearly 160 years ago, the War Between the States remains very much with us may cast their eyes to Jacksonville, where Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan ordered removal of the Women of the Southland structure from a downtown park.

Since its erection in 1915 following a reunion of 8,000 Confederate military veterans in Jacksonville the previous year, the monument has borne a plaque honoring the “memory of the Women of Our Southland 1861-1865.”

Having it both ways, the governor who unhesitatingly acknowledged slavery as the spark that launched the Civil War (which later on gave us the insurrection section of the 14th Amendment) dumped on Deegan and anyone else who endeavors to tamper with monuments.

“I’m opposed to taking down statues. The idea that we’re going to just erase history is wrong. You’ve seen it now where they tried to take down Thomas Jefferson, they tried to take down George Washington off schools. It just gets so out of hand. So I don’t support taking down statues, particularly if you don’t have legal authority to do it,” DeSantis said.

“I don’t know what the legal basis was to do it. I just kind of got a report on it, but I would not be taking down statues,” DeSantis added.

So, the shelling of Fort Sumter continues to reverberate, even in the halls of the Florida state capitol, where companion bills designed to protect Confederate monuments have been filed in the House and Senate. 

Sen. Jonathan Martin’s SB 1122 would impose penalties on local officials who removed those and other historical monuments after July 1, 2024, mirroring a House companion in key ways, including potential removal from office by the Governor and civil penalties and required restitution for monument restoration from the responsible lawmakers’ personal accounts.

The Senate bill also gives standing to any aggrieved party to sue if a monument was “removed, damaged, or destroyed on or after October 1, 2020,” as long as they used the edifice for “remembrance,” a loose term with a wide variety of meanings.

What caused the Civil War? Slavery and other ancillary considerations. The better question: What keeps it going more than 158 years after the last shots were fired?