The war of words over Trump and the Civil War

I was minding my own business driving home from Libby last Monday when my peace was shattered by a collision — not with a deer as usually happens on that stretch of U.S. 2, but with the latest vitriolic, whiny complaints of self-important conservative talk-show host Mark Levin as he once again questioned the intelligence of President Trump.

The issue at hand wasn’t the Obamacare repeal or whether to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty, but rather the president’s remarks in a radio interview with Salena Zito about the Civil War.

Levin, who acknowledged he was no expert on the Civil War, nonetheless was livid that Trump had ventured an opinion on how President Andrew Jackson might have averted the war had he been president sometime later than when his second term ended in 1837.

The exact quote from Trump was this:

“I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart, and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this.’ People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, 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?”

Like a bunch of liberals who also found fault with Trump’s commentary, Levin argued that the matters of secession and slavery were too complicated for mere mortal man to resolve.

“So let me get this straight,” he complained. “Washington, Franklin, Madison — they couldn’t resolve it. Later Jefferson, he couldn’t resolve it. Monroe, he couldn’t resolve it. Adams, he couldn’t resolve it. If only Andrew Jackson had been alive when Lincoln was alive — that is when Lincoln was president — then we would have avoided the Civil War.

“This is preposterous!”

But is it?

Andrew Jackson actually did keep the United States out of civil war — not THE Civil War, but a civil war that easily could have ensued in 1832 when South Carolina adopted the Ordinance of Nullification declaring certain U.S. laws and tariffs to be unconstitutional. South Carolina was certainly right that the tariffs were an abomination, causing the Southern states to have to pay 62 percent more for imported goods solely to benefit the Northern states that also produced the same goods, but that did not give them the right to reject federal law.

In the lead-up to that fight, Andrew Jackson made a famous retort in response to the South Carolina governor who had taunted him with a toast about states’ rights. In reply, Jackson had said staunchly: “Our Federal Union: It must be preserved.”

And that indeed is how he governed when the Nullification Crisis grew to a head in November of 1832. South Carolina’s Gov. Hayne put together an army of 25,000 troops and yet Jackson’s firm hand avoided a fight. Nor was the matter simply a fight over the tariff. Jackson wrote in an 1833 letter of his belief that “the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question.”

In other words, Jackson — as Trump had declared — was indeed intent on preserving the union, and although himself a slave owner, he was not willing to let the union crumble on behalf of the foul institution of slavery.

Nor do we need to rely solely on Jackson’s own words to see what his fellow Americans thought about the general’s resolute character and forceful nature.

The Warren Mail, in Warren, Pennsylvania, ran an editorial on April 6, 1861, that condemned Lincoln’s predecessor, President James Buchanan, for his feckless leadership in the years leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter and the secession of various Southern states responding to the election of Lincoln.

The Warren paper noted “the extent to which our political disturbances have been permitted to grow, by the cowardly incompetence of Mr. Buchanan and the treachery of his counselors” and pointed to Old Hickory as the corrective antidote the country was lacking.

“The firm spirit of decision manifested by Andrew Jackson, which in 1832 checked a like ebulition of disloyalty, would, if displayed by James Buchanan in 1860, have nipped in the bud the germ of discontent that has now expanded to such ungovernable dimensions, and prevented, at least for the present, the disgraceful scenes which are being enacted throughout the southern portion of our Republic.”

Likewise, the Monroe (Wisconsin) Sentinel, on March 27 of 1861, published an account of an address by Judge William Johnson of Cincinnati, about how Washington, Jefferson and Jackson had handled cases of “armed resistance to law” similar to that which faced Lincoln. His discussion of Andrew Jackson is informative, and perhaps Mr. Levin will take time to read it before he lectures President Trump again.

“The third era of treason, and secession occurred in 1832, during the administration of General Jackson. The ostensible object of complaint then was the revenue laws, which … were oppressive to the people of the planting States. General Jackson believed this a mere pretext on the part of the leaders … Whatever the grievance was, they resorted for their remedy to secession and violence. They pulled down from the custom house at Charleston the flag of the Union, and trampled it under their feet, and passed laws in the Legislature of South Carolina to resist the Federal Government in the collection of the revenues. General Jackson following the example of Washington, remonstrated earnestly with them against their lawless conduct; but, when they refused to listen to reason, he ordered General Scott, with a garrison of eight hundred men, to Fort Moultrie, to see that the laws were faithfully executed. If by transmigration, the soul of Andrew Jackson had occupied the body of James Buchanan, we would have had peace to-day.”

It is no accident that President Trump holds up Andrew Jackson as a role model, nor is it surprising that the same Washington elites who looked down their noses at commoner Jackson continue to be dismayed by Trump’s uncouth manner of speech. But they do themselves a disservice to underestimate Trump just because he speaks imprecisely, or you might more accurately say impressionistically. He uses words as a broad brush to paint the big picture and doesn’t focus on details, yet he is often proven right, as he is in this case.

Yes, Andrew Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War began, so he didn’t really “get angry that he saw what was happening with the Civil War.” But he did get angry at the forces in the South that were steering the country toward Civil War even when he was president, and yes, many Americans wished Jackson had been president instead of Buchanan in the late 1850s.

Let’s hope this discussion remains purely academic, but with our country currently divided as much as it has ever been since the years after the Civil War, that is not a sure thing. For instance, a Calexit movement has started recently in California to separate, or secede, from the more conservative United States. It might be purely coincidental that the South Carolina secessionists of 1832 and 1860 were Democrats, and so too are the California secessionists of 2017. But then again, maybe it isn’t just a coincidence.

On the other hand, we have to give credit where credit is due. Andrew Jackson, although now largely disowned by the party he helped shape, was himself a Democrat, and I’ll give him the last word.

“Our Federal Union: It must be preserved.”

Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana.