![\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ACivil_war_reenactment_1.jpg;](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/05\/800px-Civil_war_reenactment_1.jpg\")
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In the news today, President Trump said that Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War from happening, had he lived a bit later in time. \u00a0And twitter freaked out and was convinced he was a moron.<\/p>\n
What he said, specifically, was this<\/a>:<\/p>\n I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn\u2019t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart . . . He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, \u2018There\u2019s no reason for this.\u2019<\/p>\n . . . People don\u2019t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don\u2019t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, as it turns out, Jackson was president during a precursor incident, the Nullification Crisis (see wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0as well as a PJ Media article<\/a>\u00a0by Tyler O\u2019Neil), in which South Carolina asserted that it nullified federal tariffs that it opposed. \u00a0Jackson responded by sending warships to South Carolina, rejecting the notion that a state had the ability to nullify a federal law as tantamount to treason, and worked to get Congress to pass a bill authorizing military force to enforce the tariffs, while at the same time, compromising by reducing the tariff itself, and South Carolina backed down.<\/p>\n In May 1833, Jackson wrote that \u201cthe tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question.\u201d<\/p>\n These words are quite frankly stunning. In 1861, South Carolina would again nullify federal law, formally seceding from the Union, mentioning the slavery question. A later president, Abraham Lincoln, would also argue that if states can nullify laws or leave the Union, the U.S. is not a nation.<\/p>\n Chillingly, the Civil War started in that same Charleston harbor, as Confederate troops fired on the Union outpost of Fort Sumter, and the rest is history.<\/p>\n Trump is correct \u2014 Jackson condemned the movement which later birthed the Confederacy and the Civil War. He even took two of the exact same actions Abraham Lincoln would later take \u2014 defending Charleston harbor and declaring that nullification\/secession is a cause for military force against the South.<\/p>\n Jackson was able to bring about a compromise that averted the Civil War in 1833. It is impossible to know if he would have been able to achieve this in 1861.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, to be sure, it\u2019s possible that Trump really had no idea what he was talking about. \u00a0It\u2019s likely that he only heard a broad statement rather than knowing particularly many details, and whether Trump thought Jackson was alive, just retired from politics at the time of the Civil War, or whether he misspoke and was thinking of the prior crisis, we don\u2019t know. \u00a0After this flew through Twitter, Trump himself tweeted what seems to be a clarification of this latter item, or at least a claim of such:<\/p>\n President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!<\/p>\n \u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n