Here is what was overlooked in the brouhaha about Trump's comments on Andrew Jackson

[DonViejo]

HISTORY NEWS NETWORK
05 MAY 2017 AT 14:18 ET

Often overlooked in the brouhaha about Donald Trump’s comments on Andrew Jackson and the Civil War is the revisionist perspective that he offers. The President suggested that Andrew Jackson would have prevented the Civil War and the conflict could have been avoided. “Had Andrew Jackson been a little later,” said the President, “you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.

Such a view claiming that the war was avoidable is not mere innocent counterfactual speculation. It is a view that dates back to the aftermath of World War I, when historians questioned the conflict’s inevitability. Scholars such as Avery O. Craven, Charles W. Ramsdell, and James G. Randall saw the Civil War as a tragedy that might have been prevented. They blamed it on a breakdown in democracy and the actions of fanatical abolitionists. They portrayed slavery as a benign but unprofitable institution and assumed it would have died out, probably in the near future. According to them, the war was irrational, needless, brought on by a “blundering generation.” This interpretation of the war came to be known as “revisionist,” revising the nationalist perspective that viewed the war as justly fought to save the union and abolish slavery.

In the aftermath of World War II and during the Civil Rights movement, the idea of the Civil War as necessary and principled regained a foothold, but Civil War revisionism was never far below the surface and it has returned with a vengeance as debates over the Confederate flag and expressions of white supremacy fill the news. The implications are that the Confederate cause was noble, that emancipation turned into a northern rampage against southern society, and that political gimmicks, not moral principles, motivated leaders such as Abraham Lincoln. Few, if any professional historians have embraced this view, which is largely championed by right-wing polemicists, neo-Confederate apologists, and some libertarians.

Lincoln too has been a subject of Trump’s comments. After asserting that most people did not realize Lincoln was a Republican, he called him a “great president.” Of course this is at odds with Trump’s belief that the war could have been avoided. Why was Lincoln unable to do what Trump believes Jackson could have done? Lincoln certainly tried. He reassured southerners that he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed (though he remained steadfast in opposing its expansion beyond the fifteen states where it existed). He supported a constitutional amendment that would have forever barred the federal government from abolishing slavery. He made it clear to the secessionists that the question of war rested in their hands, not his.

Lincoln also admired Jackson – both he and Trump hanged his portrait in their office. Lincoln did so because of Jackson’s commitment to the Union and his willingness to use force to prevent disunion. Trump has done so because Jackson was a populist, beloved by the people. Trump of course is wrong to say Jackson would have prevented the Civil War. If anything, he would have fired the first shot, despite his support for slavery. “Disunion by armed force is treason,” declared Jackson during the nullification crisis.

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http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/here-is-what-was-overlooked-in-the-brouhaha-about-trumps-comments-on-andrew-jackson/

[demmiblue]

1. In case anyone would rather give traffic to the original source:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/165846

[niyad]

2. thank you

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. First off, I think there's no way of knowing

if Andrew Jackson would have stuck with the union or stayed with the South and slavery. I'm inclined to believe the latter. Was there ever any indication he was willing to emancipate his slaves? Or that he imagined life without them?

Indeed, I don't know of any slave owner who, as the Civil War came near, realized that slavery was utterly wrong, freed his slaves, and supported the Union. That says a lot.

And that post WWI revisionism is despicable, especially as it shows slavery as benign and on its way out. It was neither.

I do recall very clearly the revisionism at the time of the Civil War Centennial, which claimed that slavery had NOTHING to do with the war, it was all about States' Rights and it was the mean Federal Government that was to blame. That was equally wrong.