slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Lily Rothman

In an interview with Salena Zito for the Washington Examiner that will air on Sirius XM on Monday afternoon, President Trump expressed his continued admiration for President Andrew Jackson with a remark that struck many as surprising, to say the least.

"I mean, 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. He 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 realize, you know, the Civil War, if 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?"

On the one hand, though Andrew Jackson died in 1845 — nearly two decades before the Civil War began — Trump's belief that Jackson would have prevented the war from happening, while impossible to prove, does have some connection to the real events that happened during Jackson's presidency. Specifically, Jackson was President during the nullification crisis between South Carolina and the federal government over the question of tariffs. During that episode, South Carolina asserted the state's right to void federal law, a preview of the Confederate view that those states could withdraw from the Union.

Jackson responded in 1832 with a proclamation that explained his view that for South Carolina to take up arms to back up that position would be treasonous, and Congress authorized him to use the military to enforce the tariff in question. As Jackson put it, "Our Federal Union—it must be preserved."

The federal government also, however, c*********d on the tax to which South Carolina had objected. South Carolina backed off and no use of force proved necessary. Jackson, then, did express his anger over this particular matter that would come to a head in the Civil War, as Trump put it, and his complicated legacy does include getting credit for heading off an earlier armed conflict.

But the question of "why was there the Civil War" is one that people have in fact been thinking about for more than 150 years.

While a nullification dispute over taxes could be solved without war by the president and Congress, the dispute over s***ery could not. And yes, even Andrew Jackson, in the 1830s, could see that coming. It wasn't "worked out," as Trump put it, because the South was too invested in the continued existence of s***ery to let it be.

The difference between those two situations was explained by none other than Abraham Lincoln himself, in 1865, when he delivered his second inaugural address as the war continued to rage. He dedicated his extremely brief address to exactly that question. Here's the portion of that speech that contains his answer, with emphasis added:

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, dev**ed altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored s***es, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These s***es constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American s***ery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' "

Though Lincoln had a personal stake in this analysis and many people have disagreed about it over the years, historians today generally agree that he was right from the beginning: the short answer is that s***ery (of which Jackson was a defender) was why there was the Civil War.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

Trump was probably thinking about the event where Jackson defied the US Supreme Court, who had sided with the Native Americans, and used Federal troops to remove the Indians from their homes. Jackson justified this as supporting States rights ( heard that recently? ), undermining the very foundation of the law. I wonder, how long will it be before Trump pulls the same stunt, and sends Federal troops to sanctuary cities? After all, Jackson got away with it.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

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

Christopher Wilson

Historians yesterday 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 s***ery. 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 s***ery. Mississippi’s secession declaration, to take just one, is quite direct here: ‘Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of s***ery — 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 s***ery in the old s***e-holding 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 s***ery westward. All fascinating, complicated stuff — but one has to wonder why the 45th president, who has plenty to do, is blithely re-litigating 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 s***ery 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 s***eholder and the Jacksonians were s***eholders 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 ens***ed. Given Trump’s own focus on w***e A******ns over nonw***e A******ns, it’s not surprising that he would fail to see the limits of Jackson’s big-heartedness.”