President Donald Trump Asked If Andrew Jackson Could Have Prevented the Civil War, Here's the Answer
The scholar tends to think the differences were not reconcilable.
Believe it or not, I agree with Trump, based on this simple logic: If Jackson had lived later and had been elected in 1860 instead of Lincoln, the South never would have seceded. Why would they? They would have had the nation's most notorious racist and a fellow slave holder in power! So Trump is actually right. There presumably would have been no Civil War AT THAT TIME ...
... but of course, slavery would have continued, a fact that seems too big to ignore!
Could slavery eventually have been ended without a civil war at some time? I don't know. Maybe. I don't have the background in history to evaluate that. But I'm pretty sure it would not have been a simple matter, and let's not lose sight of the big picture, which is that some human beings would have continued to be slaves longer if Andrew Jackson's life had magically been postponed long enough to allow him to be elected in 1860.
I was wondering if, possibly, Trump was vaguely remembering something about the Nullification Crisis, which was South Carolina threatening to secede, as related to the eventual actual Civil War.
ReplyDeleteTwo cents.
If that's what it was, his history was still wrong. Senator (and former Speaker of the House) Henry Clay negotiated the compromise that averted war over the Nullification Crisis.
DeleteHe used President Jackson's war threat as leverage with South Carolina, but it seemed pretty clear to me that while President Jackson was willing to let the crisis be settled by negotiation, he was also perfectly willing to either go to war with South Carolina over it (less likely) or, more likely, show that he really was serious about waging war and forcing South Carolina to either fight, which would have been devastating for them, or to unconditionally surrender.
I'm not defending the idiot, I'm just trying to understand how what exists of his mind actually works.
DeleteI did not mean to imply in any way that you were defending Trump.
DeleteWhile it's a great notion, and one I'd love to believe, that the war was over state's rights, it's just not true. The right they cared about was having slaves. One of my favorite phrases is 'free the slaves then fire on Fort Sumter' but that wouldn't have happened. Trump can imagine it would, but that's delusional. It's also true, however, that there were plenty of slavery fans in the North who supported the war to claim the resource-rich South, but not enough to swing things.
ReplyDeleteState's rights was always a load of nonsense as the Southern States defense of slavery always depended on imposing its demands on other states and territories in at least three areas.
Delete1.The Fugitive Slave Act that mandated that Northern States had to assist in returning run-away slaves.
2.The banning of anti slavery tracts and other publications in the North.
3.The attempt by the Southern States to prevent the western territories from outlawing slavery in their territories or when they applied for statehood.
Based on the Dredd-Scott decision, it was clear that before the Civil War, that the Southern States who were controlled by pro slavery extremists were trying to get 'private property' rights to be the same throughout the United States, which would have meant that slavery would have been extended to the Northern States.
That was the meaning of Lincoln's 'A House divided against itself cannot stand.' Lincoln's view was that either slavery had to be legal throughout the entire United States or that no states could have slavery.
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