Not up on history

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  1. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    [​IMG]A portrait of former US president Andrew Jackson hangs on the wall behind President Donald Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, in the Oval Office. Photo: AP
    Donald Trump questions American Civil War: could it not have been 'worked out?'

    DAVID ALEXANDER

    Washington: US President Donald Trump has shown a fascination with populist 19th-century US president Andrew Jackson since he has occupied the Oval Office, hanging Old Hickory's portrait in the Oval Office, visiting his plantation in Tennessee and placing a wreath at his tomb.

    In an interview that aired on Sirius XM satellite radio on Monday, Trump suggested that if Jackson had governed a little later than his 1829-1837 terms, the American Civil War might have been averted. Then Trump questioned why the bloody conflict had to happen.

    "Had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart," Trump told his interviewer, Salena Zito. He said that although Jackson was a "swashbuckler," after his wife died, Jackson visited her grave every day.

    Jackson, a slave owner who was instrumental in the forced removal of Native-American tribes from the US Southeast in the so-called Trail of Tears, died nearly 16 years before the start of the Civil War.

    But Trump told Sirius XM that Jackson "was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War". "He said, 'There's no reason for this,'" Trump said. "People don't realise, you know, the Civil War — if you think about it, why?

    "People don't ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

    It was not clear what Trump believed Jackson would have done to avert the 1861-65 conflict or whether he was suggesting that, had he been around at the time, he could have struck a deal to change the course of history.

    The events leading to the Civil War have been extensively researched, with slavery being one of the root causes. Slavery and its legacy have been a source of division in the United States since.

    By the time of his death, Jackson owned about 150 slaves who lived and worked at his plantation, the Hermitage. During his time in office, Jackson denounced the growing activity of abolitionists seeking an end to slavery.

    Trump and his supporters have likened his election victory to Jackson's triumph in 1828, when Old Hickory became the first US president from what was then the western frontier of Tennessee.

    The populist Democrat famously opened the White House to all comers after his inauguration, turning the normally dignified executive mansion into a mob scene.

    Trump's comments, among several he made about Jackson in the interview, quickly drew condemnation from his critics and from historians who said they appeared to show the President profoundly misunderstanding US history.

    Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, called Trump's comments on Jackson and the Civil War the "height of inaccurate historical revisionism".

    Jon Meacham, the historian whose 2008 biography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, won a Pulitzer Prize, said he thought that Trump may have been referring to the nullification crisis, which did occur during Jackson's lifetime.

    The crisis, which began in 1832, was a conflict between the federal government and South Carolina, a Southern state that would later be instrumental in the movement for secession.

    During the crisis, Jackson "took a firm stand on the side of the union," Meacham said, adding, "There are two stray Trumpian ideas that collided into each other when he talked."

    Trump has questioned the necessity of the Civil War before, in an interview with Meacham before the election. At the time, Trump said that he had "always felt that the South overplayed their hand".

    Had Jackson been alive at the start of the Civil War, Meacham said, it would be difficult to predict his reaction. It would have brought his commitment to the Union into conflict with his identity as an unapologetic slave owner. Jackson was from Tennessee, which fought for the Confederacy. Trump visited his tomb there this year.

    But any president would have had to contend with the South's attempt to expand the institution of slavery into territory newly acquired by the United States. It's what Meacham called the unavoidable historical question.

    "The expansion of slavery caused the Civil War," he said. "And you can't get around that. So what does Trump mean? Would he have let slavery exist but not expand? That's the counterfactual question you have to ask."

    Reuters, New York Times
     

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