President Andrew Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War erupted at Fort Sumter. | AP Photo Historians see a dark underside to Trump's Civil War riff

President Donald Trump on Monday once again defied the history books, this time claiming that Andrew Jackson was “really angry” about the Civil War – despite having died 16 years before the first shots were fired – and puzzled why a deal wasn’t cut to avoid the war altogether.

“He was really angry that he saw with regard to the Civil War, he said, ‘There’s no reason for this,’” Trump said in a radio interview with conservative writer Salena Zito broadcast Monday.


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

Trump for months has riled up history buffs with a range of eyebrow-raising comments, including his claim that not many people knew Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, his apparent ignorance that famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass died many years ago, and his question about whether anyone had heard of Susan B. Anthony.

And the fact that he didn’t seem to be aware of the extensive literature about the cause of the Civil War is now added to the list.

“It’s probably the most hotly debated issue in American history,” said historian Charles B. Dew, a professor at Williams College, who wrote a landmark 2001 book, "Apostles of Disunion," on the causes of the war.

The president's comments on Monday struck some historians as darker than a history goof, with the president seeming to minimize the painful history of slavery in the United States and to talk up Jackson’s role as a strongman leader who proudly owned many slaves.

“It’s the kind of comment that will get applause from neo-Confederate circles in the South,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

Confederate flags were a common sight at Trump rallies during the 2016 campaign, and monuments to Confederate leaders are common in Southern states.

Some in Trump’s circle, including chief strategist Steve Bannon, have sought to liken Trump to Jackson, a populist. In March, Trump visited Jackson’s gravesite in Nashville, Tennessee, where he declared himself “a fan.”

“Steve Bannon has made Jackson the epitome of the hardscrabble, American folk hero,” added Brinkley. “And Trump has bought into Steve Bannon’s version of Andrew Jackson.”

On Monday night, the president tweeted: “President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!“

Jackson, who was a slaveholder, threatened to use federal military force against South Carolina when the state sought to nullify federal tariffs. He died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War erupted at Fort Sumter.

“What I saw in that comment was his belief, his attraction to a kind of strongman history,” said David Blight, a Civil War historian at Yale University. “It’s so completely out of any knowledge or context to suggest that somehow Jackson would have headed off the Civil War.”

The broad consensus among historians is that the secession of 11 Southern states, and the resulting war, was driven by slavery and the racial order that slavery represented. The Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, said himself that the South’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”

The myth that the Civil War was fought over not slavery, but states’ rights, has become an article of faith for some in the South and those in the white supremacist movement. Some Southern states instituted Robert E. Lee Day, celebrating the Confederate general, to fall on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. Day after Congress established the holiday in 1983.

To have the occupant of the Oval Office cast doubt on the historical consensus could hearten those who downplay the significance that racism had in driving the war, historians said.

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On Monday, as controversy swirled around Trump’s remarks, the white supremacist and outspoken Trump supporter David Duke was tweeting about efforts by the Democratic mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, to remove a Confederate monument.

“Confederate heritage,” Duke wrote, “is America’s heritage.”

Democrats were quick to call out Trump for his remarks.

“President Trump doesn't understand why there was a Civil War. It's because my ancestors and millions of others were enslaved,” wrote Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) on Twitter.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) simply tweeted a quote from the writer James Baldwin: “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

