Donald Trump ridiculed after asking 'why was there the Civil War?'

[Tony Stark]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ident-doesnt-know-basic-details-a7711841.html

Donald Trump ridiculed after asking 'why was there the Civil War?'

Donald Trump has been ridiculed for comments that appear to display a lack of knowledge about the US Civil War and the reasons that led to it.

In an interview broadcast on SiriusXM, the 45th president said that the country’s 7th president, Andrew Jackson, could have stopped it, had he served later.

“I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart,” Mr Trump said.

https://twitter.com/x/status/859020505034231809

“He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said ‘There's no reason for this’.”

Mr Trump was immediately criticised for his comments that appeared to suggest a lack of basic knowledge about the civil war, and one of his predecessors in the White House.

Mr Jackson, who was a slave owner, died in 1845, 16 years before the outbreak of the US Civil War, which was fought essentially about the American south’s desire to retain slavery.


“Jackson died in June 1845. He did not have any opinions about the Civil War. He was also a slave owner,” Kevin Kruse, Professor of History at Princeton, told The Independent.

“This highlights a lack of knowledge about basic familiar history.”

During the interview with Salena Zito of the conservative Washington Examiner, Mr Trump questioned why the country could not have solved the issues between the north and south, rather than embarking on four years of brutal fighting that resulted in more deaths than those in World War I and World War II combined.

“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why,” he said. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

https://twitter.com/x/status/859054043615944704

During the interview, the president also compared his win to that of Jackson.

“My campaign and win was most like Andrew Jackson, with his campaign. And I said, when was Andrew Jackson? It was 1828. That’s a long time ago.”

He added: “He had a very, very mean and nasty campaign. Because they said this was the meanest and the nastiest. And unfortunately, it continues.”

 

[Tony Stark]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/historia...s-entirely-wrong-every-respect-181325014.html

Historians react to Trump’s Civil War comments: ‘That’s entirely wrong in every respect’

Christopher Wilson
Editor
Yahoo NewsMay 1, 2017


Historians Monday valiantly tried, and mostly failed, to understand and interpret President Trump’s remarks about President Andrew Jackson. Among other comments, Trump seemed to assert that Jackson, who died in 1845, could have prevented the Civil War, which began in 1861, and that the causes of the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history have not been addressed or discussed.


“I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” said Trump in an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito. “He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart, and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this.’ People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question. But why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

The comments, published Monday morning and broadcast on SiriusXM Radio, led to confusion over Trump’s understanding of Jackson’s beliefs and general American history.

“First of all, historians have actually talked about the reasons for the Civil War quite a bit,” said Kevin Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton, in an email to Yahoo News. “Second, there’s an overwhelming consensus among historians that the Civil War came about because of slavery. Simply put, the war came because the southern states seceded, and they seceded — as they quite clearly said themselves at the time, over and over again — because of slavery. Mississippi’s secession declaration, to take just one, is quite direct here: ‘Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.’”

“The question of why the Civil War should have happened is not only central to the study of U.S. history but to our entire national mythology,” said Eric Rauchway, a professor of history at UC Davis, in an interview with Yahoo News, “and Lincoln’s answer to that question is literally chiseled on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial about a mile’s walk from the White House.”

Historians of the U.S. were surprised to learn that nobody asks why the Civil War happened, as it’s one of the central questions of American history,” said Nicole Hemmer, assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, to Yahoo News. “It’s even featured on the test for American citizenship. But when Donald Trump marvels at the ignorance or incuriosity of the masses, what he’s really doing is expressing his own ignorance and incuriosity. He’s saying that he’s never asked about the origins of the Civil War.”

Jon Meacham, author of “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” attempted to parse Trump’s historical commentary.


“The president seems to be conflating two things,” said Meacham in an email to Yahoo News. “The first is Andrew Jackson’s determined stand for the Union against South Carolina nullifiers in 1832-33; Old Hickory believed in the primacy of his federal government and faced down John C. Calhoun and others over the supremacy of federal law. The second is Trump’s thought — one he first expressed to me in an interview for Time last year — that perhaps a deal of some kind could have averted the Civil War.”

“The problem with the latter,” added Meacham, “is that any accommodation with the South would have to have ratified the continued existence of slavery in the old slaveholding states — which, to be fair, was a mainstream possibility in the prewar days. What finally drove secession was Lincoln’s refusal to allow the expansion of slavery westward. All fascinating, complicated stuff — but one has to wonder why the 45th president, who has plenty to do, is blithely relitigating what Shelby Foote called ‘the crossroads of our being.'”


Rauchway also suggested that Trump might have been thinking about Jackson’s actions against former Vice President Calhoun.

“To give the president the benefit of the doubt,” said Rauchway, “I imagine he is thinking there of the Nullification Crisis where Jackson faced down John C. Calhoun over the South Carolinian attempts to nullify a federal tariff law and that therefore Jackson is sometimes referred to as being a strong Unionist, which I suppose is fair enough. But at that point the issue of slavery wasn’t directly at issue or its expansion wasn’t directly an issue, and I don’t think Jackson would have been effective in dealing with that issue in any way.”

There was also pushback against Trump’s musings that Jackson could have prevented the Civil War and his suggestion that the seventh president — whose Indian Removal Act essentially legalized genocide — had a “big heart.”

“Andrew Jackson himself was a slaveholder and the Jacksonians were slaveholders and they despised the abolitionists,” said Rauchway, “so it’s hard for me to believe that they would have been able to prevent the Civil War. And actually it was Jacksonian policies – particularly those of James K. Polk, who styled himself as Young Hickory, as a direct heir to Andrew Jackson – which precipitated the Civil War. That’s entirely wrong in every respect.”


“Jackson had a big heart for white farmers,” said Hemmer, “Less so for the American Indians he slaughtered and the African-Americans he enslaved. Given Trump’s own focus on white Americans over nonwhite Americans, it’s not surprising that he would fail to see the limits of Jackson’s big-heartedness.”

 

[java]

It would have been better for all if they had worked it out peacefully at Mia Largo. Or simply cut off all federal funding for states which allow slavery.

 

[jem]

I think the articles should have expanded on what Rauchway touched.

even the huffpost... knows...

there are plenty of people who explain the war was also about the states rights to not be crushed by the Feds.
That war is still going on today... with states nullifying federal pot laws and CA threatening to secede.

So while I not giving my opinion here... I am selling plenty of historians argue it was about states rights.

i have also read others and others who argue it was also about whether the country should be pursuing trade policies which supported agriculture in the south(free trade) vs manufacturing in the north (protectionist policies) .




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/slavery-and-the-civil-war_b_849066.html
I disagree. Yes, slavery was of course the central point of contention, but as an example of state sovereignty versus federal authority. The war was fought over state’s rights and the limits of federal power in a union of states. The perceived threat to state autonomy became an existential one through the specific dispute over slavery. The issue was not slavery per se, but who decided whether slavery was acceptable, local institutions or a distant central government power. That distinction is not one of semantics: this question of local or federal control to permit or prohibit slavery as the country expanded west became increasingly acute in new states, eventually leading to that fateful artillery volley at Fort Sumter.

Specifically, eleven southern states seceded from the Union in protest against federal legislation that limited the expansion of slavery claiming that such legislation violated the tenth amendment, which they argued trumped the Supremacy Clause. The war was indeed about protecting the institution of slavery, but only as a specific case of a state’s right to declare a federal law null and void. Southern states sought to secede because they believed that the federal government had no authority to tell them how to run their affairs. The most obvious and precipitating example was the North’s views on slavery. So yes, the South clearly fought to defend slavery as a means of protecting their sordid economic system and way of life, but they did so with slavery serving as the most glaring example of federal usurpation of state powers of self-determination. The war would be fought to prevent those states from seceding, not to destroy the institution of slavery. The war would be fought over different interpretations of our founding document.

 

[Cuddles]

Trump's so dumb he thinks the Cold War was fought in the winter.