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. [...]
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. [...]
“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.” [...]
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.
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