Donald Trump and the American Civil War

Confederate flags and Trump flags for sale in Humble, Texas

American president Donald Trump has periodically had occasion to share his views on the American Civil War, which has been described as "the central event in America's historical consciousness." Trump has been especially interested in the way the antebellum presidents dealt with sectional conflict and how they approached the constitutional and ethical issues involved in the use of U.S. military resources to resolve domestic crises, as well as taking note of the best practices of the civilian leadership and battlefield commanders of the era.

Battles of the American Civil War

Main articles: Battle of Gettysburg and The River of Blood (monument)

Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016 at Gettysburg National Military Park, stating, "It's my privilege to be here in Gettysburg, hallowed ground where so many lives were given...President Lincoln served at a time of division like we've never seen before. It is my hope that we can look at his example to heal the divisions we are living through right now." His most notable statement at this campaign stop was about sexual misconduct allegations that had been made against him, regarding which he said, "Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign—total fabrication...All of these liars will be sued after the election is over."

In 2013, Civil War reenactors form lines before the march on Cemetery Ridge, part of a recreation of Pickett's Charge for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg

Trump visited the historic Gettysburg battlefield again in 2024 and offered an upside-down inaccurate retelling of the third and final day of the battle, commenting, "The statement of Robert E. Lee—who's no longer in favor, did you ever notice that?...No longer in favor—'Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.' They were fighting uphill. He said, 'Wow, that was a big mistake.' He lost his great general, and they were fighting. 'Never fight uphill, me boys!' But it was too late." Trump used several adjectives to characterize the battle, including beautiful, horrible, interesting, unbelievable, and vicious. Trump did not specify which "great general" whose death in battle he considered central to the Confederate defeat, but the options are Lewis Armistead, William Barksdale, Richard B. Garnett, William Dorsey Pender, J. Johnston Pettigrew, and Paul Jones Semmes. It was Lee who ordered the attack on the high ground held by U.S. Army soldiers led by George Meade. Confederate general James Longstreet discouraged Lee from attempting the assault uphill, over nearly a mile of field, in broad daylight, against an entrenched enemy, but Lee was not dissuaded. Waves of Confederates were shredded by long-range artillery, shrapnel, and musket fire in the attack known to history as Pickett's Charge. The battle was lost, the high-water mark of the Confederacy was set down on a ridgeline in southern Pennsylvania, and through romanticized retelling, Pickett's Charge evolved over time into an emotional keystone of the Lost Cause mythology.

In the early 2010s, Donald Trump placed a monument on his Virginia golf course commemorating an imaginary battle of the American Civil War.

Views on Civil War presidents

Abraham Lincoln

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Vice President Pence, and President Trump participate in a virtual town hall at the Lincoln Memorial in 2020

Trump has suggested that the average American is unfamiliar with Abraham Lincoln's political party affiliation. Lincoln had been a Whig during his single term as a Representative to Congress from Illinois, but he was ultimately the first president elected from the then-new Republican Party, after the collapse of the Whigs and the bifurcation of the Democratic nomination cleared the way for his election in 1860, which opened the American political era known as the Third Party System.

Trump has repeatedly described himself as the best president in U.S. history, with the possible exception of Lincoln. However, Trump claims that Lincoln has been overrated, arguing that in fact he was responsible for the American Civil War, which could or should have been prevented by superior executive leadership. Historian Harold Holzer told the Associated Press that Trump's historical analysis demonstrates "malice toward Lincoln." Abraham Lincoln, who was often referred to as "the martyr president" in the immediate wake of his assassination, is typically ranked as the greatest American president by professional historians, and is a rare figure of near universal respect in the American civic pantheon. According to one writer, "We measure presidents by how they represent ourselves, and how we wish to be. Lincoln, the rail-splitter raised to destiny by war and to near-divinity by assassination, embodies both. More than George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln is our sage and aspiration, the ordinary and unexpected man of greatness, the victor and martyr of the great American narrative, the Civil War."

Further information: Political career of Abraham Lincoln (1849–1861), 1860 United States presidential election, Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham Lincoln and slavery

See also: 1864 United States presidential election and National Union Party (United States)

Andrew Jackson

In 2018 Trump spoke about Christmas from the Oval Office while sitting at the Resolute desk; on the wall in the background is Ralph R. W. Earl's 1835 portrait of Andrew Jackson

Trump has also contended that former slave trader, militia leader, and seventh president Andrew Jackson—had he lived into his 90s and still been engaged in national politics—would have found a non-violent conclusion to the sectional conflict, stating "[Jackson] was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said: 'There's no reason for this.'" Interviewed by the BBC, historian David Blight commented, "Jackson had absolutely no vision of any kind of racial egalitarianism. He had no hint of any kind of anti-slavery movement. And if President Trump doesn't understand anything about why we had a civil war, what can he understand about race relations now? Or about our problems with inequality? And he thinks Andrew Jackson would have prevented the war...Where do I start?" Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the beginning of the American Civil War, but had he engaged in the politics of the immediate antebellum period, he would have possibly experienced a conflict between his patriotism, his militarism, and his paternalistic beliefs about slavery. According to Robert V. Remini, who wrote a major three-volume biography of Old Hickory, Jackson's allies believed that "slaveholding was as American as capitalism, nationalism, or democracy...the white southern celebration of liberty always included the freedom to preserve black slavery. That states Jackson's own position precisely."

Further information: Presidency of Andrew Jackson and Andrew Jackson and slavery

See also: Nullification crisis and Secession in the United States § Pre-Civil War political and legal views on secession

Trump's comments are comparable to the revisionist view of the American Civil War of the early 20th century. The revisionist school of historians, including Avery O. Craven, Charles W. Ramsdell, and James G. Randall, sought to revise the "nationalist perspective that viewed the war as justly fought to save the union and abolish slavery." These historians characterized antebellum U.S. politicians as "blundering," and argued that the war was the product of 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." The revisionist school has been abandoned by working historians since the end of the nadir of American race relations era, so revisionism is now largely the province of "right-wing polemicists, neo-Confederate apologists, and some libertarians."

Further information: Historiographic issues about the American Civil War

On the same occasion where he shared his alternate history fantasy about Jackson living to disrupt the secessionist movement in the slave states, Trump commented, "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?" In 2012, authors James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier estimated that since 1865 more than 100,000 books and articles have been published about the American Civil War, writing, "No event in American history has been so thoroughly studied, not merely by historians, but by tens of thousands of other Americans who have made the war their hobby." A number of those books address the causes of the American Civil War.

Further information: Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, History of the United States (1815–1849), and History of the United States (1849–1865)

See also: Category:Bibliographies of the American Civil War

Andrew Johnson

One historian suggested that perhaps Trump had confused Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson. Johnson was president in the final days of the American Civil War and oversaw the first years of Reconstruction before he was defeated for re-nomination by Horatio Seymour and/or Ulysses S. Grant. Other historians have suggested that the Andrew Johnson administration is the most appropriate historical analogue for Trump's first presidential term, arguing that the two share a similar concept of American nationalism.

Further information: Johnson's presidential Reconstruction and Andrew Johnson and slavery

See also: 1868 United States presidential election

Slavery and the American Civil War

In 2017, Trump displayed his knowledge of 19th-century American civil rights leaders when he told a crowd of 21st-century American civil rights leaders, "Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice." Douglass, who is considered "a central figure in U.S. and African American history," has been famous since the publication of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself in 1845. Douglass died in 1895.

Further information: Slavery in the United States, Slavery during the American Civil War, Civil rights movement (1865–1896), and African American founding fathers of the United States

See also: Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

See also

• Donald Trump and fascism
• Modern display of the Confederate battle flag
• Timeline of voting rights in the United States

References

Sources

• Remini, Robert V. (1988). The Legacy of Andrew Jackson: Essays on Democracy, Indian Removal, and Slavery. The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-1407-0. LCCN 87024137. OCLC 16685223.