Donald Trump and the American Civil War

"[1] 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.

"[2] 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.

"[13] 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.

"[14] 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.

[15][16] 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.

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.

"[18] 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.

"[18] 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?

[14] 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,[21][22] arguing that the two share a similar concept of American nationalism.