THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR PART II
A portrait of Andrew Jackson graced Donald Trump’s Oval office.
The historian H W Brands reminds us that Andrew Jackson was probably the most celebrated American of the first half of the nineteenth century; A hero in the eyes of the majority of the American population.
The 45th President of the US Donald Trump, called the 7th President of the US Andrew Jackson “A swashbuckler”. The Cherokee called him “Indian killer”.
7th U.S President 1829-1837
American General/Politician.
DONALD TRUMP
(1946 – ?)
45th U.S President 2017-2021
Property developer/Entrepreneur.
Anti-establishment.
Populist, Demagogue.
(Pro “the common man”).
(Against “Corrupt aristocracy”) (“draining the swamp of elites”)
‘White Supremacy’ Wealthy Slave plantation owner.
Signed Indian Removal Act (1830) Oversaw ‘Cherokee Trail of tears’.
Drove the Seminole from their ancestral lands of Florida.
Censored anti-slavery mailing
by Northern abolitionists (1835)
‘White Supremacy’
1973 Sued by the US Dept Of Justice: For housing discrimination against African-American renters.
1989 Campaigned for
death penalty of 5 ‘Black & Latino youths’ falsely
charged by Police of raping a ‘white’ woman in Central Park, NYC.
1
Anti-establishment. Populist, Demagogue. (Pro “Blue collar guy”)
21st Century Trump
2011 Trump was the leading proponent of a debunked ‘Birther’ conspiracy theory, falsely claiming President Obama was not born in the United States of America.
2015 CNN Interviewer twice asked Trump to condemn groups like the KKK and White Supremacists.
Trump hesitated before his tepid response.
“But you may have groups in there that are totally
fine, and it would be unfair.”
2016 Trump’s presidential campaign statement on Mexican immigration “They’re bringing drugs – they’re bringing crime
they’re rapists” — “Build that wall.”
2017 In the wake of the murder of Heather Heyer, killed by a White Supremacist supporter, after he rammed his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing the young ‘white’ woman who was campaigning against monuments to the Confederacy, President Trump said at a news press conference that there were —“very fine people on both sides.”
2018 At an Oval Office meeting President Trump referred to: African nations, El Salvador, and Haiti as — “Shit holes”.
2019 President Trump tweeted, citing three American born democrat congresswomen (mixed ethnicity): “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”
2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Since Trump lost the election on 3 November, the federal government has put to death three Prisoners: All three Trump lame duck executions involved ‘Black men’. (Guardian Newspaper – 16/12/2020)
‘Skin in the game’
You can find a plethora of social historians and political apologists in this world who are more than happy to deny that there are any parallels between the personalities of Andrew Jackson the slave owning 7th President and Donald Trump the 45th President of the USA. Many of these commentators will trot out the usual tired disclaimers.
Jackson was an actual battlefield soldier, they will be quick to remind you. A nineteenth century dueller, a brawler, a real hard man; Whereas, Trump as we know never got beyond playing ‘Toy soldiers’ at military academy and then went on to dodge the Vietnam draft, twice.
“Jackson the self made man” Dixie-Democrats will proudly cry! (Though, of course, little will be said about the origins of his wealth as a Slave trader.) By comparison we have Trump’s family trust fund as his worldly launching pad.
It may well be true, as many historians claim, that there is little evidence to suggest that Jackson was ever explicitly involved in corruption. Certainly his eagerness to clear the Seminole tribes from the lands of Florida, only to hurriedly re-populate those same Indian lands with slave plantations — benefitting himself in the process as a wealthy slave owner — is at the very least morally corrupt.
And what of the six times bankrupted Trump and his Wall Street reputation in ‘The art of the deal’? – Well! Enough said.
So the question remains to be answered: Why should so many ‘learned scholars’ be so quick to ignore the very umbilical cord that binds these two men to a common womb?
Dare we utter the words ‘White Supremacy,’ and suggest it still thrives in ‘the land of the free’ and ‘Mom’s apple Pie’;
Just in case we offend those who would prefer that the whole matter simply just go away.
After all, racism is now illegal in America – Isn’t it?
JACKSON
TRUMP
Man and Myth
Hero of New Orleans
Sent British packing in 1815.
In fact the 1815 battle was fought 18 days after Anglo/US armistice had been agreed.
The peace document was delayed in transiting the Atlantic Ocean.
TEMPERAMENT
Quick tempered rally rouser nicknamed: ‘King Mob’
‘Old Hickory’ A bit of a bully.
On the last day of his presidency, Jackson confided his only two regrets:
That he had been unable
to shoot Henry Clay (Political opponent)
and to hang John C. Calhoun (Political opponent)
Man and Myth
Man with the Midas touch
Fact. Bankrupt 6 times. Climate change denier. Covid19 virus denier. (hospitalised with Covid. Nov 2020)
TEMPERAMENT
Quick tempered rally rouser who organised mass rallies during a global pandemic.
A bit of a bully.
Taunted his presidential opponent H. Clinton with the chant “Crooked Hillary, lock her up, lock her up”.
POLITICAL CONTROVERSY
After defeat in the 1824 presidential election, Jackson’s Supporters called his opponent’s victory a “corrupt bargain”.
Throughout his presidency, Jackson was accused of nepotism and cronyism.
LEGACY
Jackson’s mishandling in 1835 of the US Second Bank Federal policy led directly to a decade long economic depression. It became one of the worst financial periods recorded in US history.
Jackson’s avowed hatred of slavery abolitionists helped to further ferment racial tensions in American society in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Social division within the United States would reach a zenith less than two decades after Jackson’s death, when in 1861 the slave owning Confederate states embarked on a Civil War with their neighbouring Union states.
POLITICAL CONTROVERSY
After defeat in the 2020
presidential election,
Trump and his supporters
called his Democratic
opponent’s victory
“a rigged election”.
Throughout his presidency Trump was accused of nepotism and cronyism.
LEGACY
Trump’s continual claims that Covid 19 virus was
a “hoax” contributed to a death toll of more than 330,000 US citizens linked to Covid infection in 2020.
Trump’s repeated toleration of White Supremacy groups such as the ‘Patriots’ only further emboldened aims of the ‘Alt-Right’.
Social division within the United States has been described by some observers as being at its worst since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING
We were taught in our schools that the USA was once a divided nation that had engaged in a mighty conflict which historians now call, ‘The American Civil War’.
We were taught that this internecine strife brought forth a series of battles pitching brother against brother, families against families; Starting in the spring of 1861 and raging on until its exhaustion in the spring of 1865.
The American Civil War claimed the lives of at least three quarters of a million Americans (so the record books say); It centred around a confederation of slave owning Southern states seceding by means of warfare from a Union with its neighbouring northern industrialised – Free States, mainly based north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
And, of course, in the best traditions of a classic Hollywood movie ending — with the impious Confederacy shown to be beaten and in tatters by 1865 – we fresh faced schoolchildren were regaled with the noble deeds of the hero of the piece – President Abraham Lincoln – who, it was said, inspired his Union forces in their righteous victory over the rebellious Confederacy, before finally going on to free all the slaves.
More than a century and half on, and a defeated President Trump throws fury about his Oval Office like a petulant supercharged baby hurling their toys from their cot.
Trump protests to his 74 million plus voters and anyone else who will listen. Whining on that he won the 2020 Presidential election which he publicly declares was stolen from him by ‘Vote rigging Democrats and Leftists’.
Tragically many of these Trump supporters (some still proudly bearing their Confederate flags) actually believe him, despite the empirical facts attesting Trump’s definitive loss of the 46th presidential election.
Interviewed in November 2020 as to the reasons why things have currently become so divisive in American society, the 44th President of the United States – Barak Obama – said: “Trump is an accelerant of division, not the cause”.
In a flashback to the spring of 1865, one is bound to ask. Did the American Civil war truly end? (As our history books would have us believe.)
And as for the motivation spearheading the confederate population, who brought on that war with false notions that: ‘Negroes are an inferior race destined to perpetual subservience to superior white masters’ – Were these notions ever truly vanquished in the USA, by their many opponents?
Andrew Jackson died in 1845, some sixteen years before the Civil War had begun, so he certainly could not be accused of leading the charge of rebel Confederacy troops into battle. Throughout his political lifetime Jackson was known as a staunch Unionist. Paradoxically, he was also known for being a proud southerner, unapologetic advocate of slavery and a man with fanatical hatred of Northern abolitionists.
Historians know that conflicts begin long before battles
just as surely as cause leads to effect. Generals need their orders which come from on high, drawn up in the spirit of the age, a preserve of politicians and politics of the era.
By 1861 American society had been drenched in more than a century of White Supremacy, demonstrable in the enslavement of millions of people descended from Africa. A woeful tragedy of historic proportion, and driven in large part by the twisted ethics of shameless human beings like Andrew Jackson.
There are those historians who might scoff at this reading of ‘Old Hickory’ (as Jackson is sometimes affectionately known), ‘The darling of the South,’ where everyone knows their place.
Professor HW Brands (Texas University), a recent biographer of Andrew Jackson, refutes any parallels between Donald Trump and Jackson. Instead Brands chooses to offer observers a much more saccharine account of Jackson’s life and presidency, and in doing so pays Jackson much more respect than some people believe he deserves.
Brands’ own take on the 7th President of the United States is heavy on Jackson’s unswerving faith in the Union; His dare- devil exploits in battle, and even his courteous southern style gallantry toward the ‘fairer sex’.
Sadly though, Professor Brands is rather less expansive when it comes to his subject’s other unswerving faith; that being Jackson’s self belief in his God given right to be a whip wielding slave owner and a systematic Indian killer.
Once again, here and now, we are presented with a fiercely divided America; And even though the days of slavery are over, racists and far right supremacists have persisted and continue to spill a cursed poison across American society. Imagine how easily in the 21st century those old Jim Crow ideas of racial supremacy can now be propagated; like the putrified words of nagging ghosts echoing back from the past.
As the cult of Jackson was to America in the early nineteenth century, which split the old Republican Party, the growing cult of Trump in the twenty-first century is proving to be a frighteningly real phenomena.
Literally millions and millions of American voters hang on Trump’s every tweet, believe in Trump’s every twisted and warped QAnon conspiracy theory, and stand ready to mimic Trump’s every racial slur. For many of these MAGA waving zealots there can only ever be one rightful President,
and it isn’t Joe Biden.
Are we witnessing the emerging confederation of “Trumpsters”? Former Tea party activists – QAnon nut jobs – Pistol toting Patriots – Home-spun WASP’s and White supremacists.
To those of us who believe in science and facts, a hybrid opposition; A conglomeration of the abhorrent that to date has given over $200 million dollars in small individual donations to a Trump ‘war chest’. So will these Trumpsters simply evaporate into thin air once the new messiah is forced to vacate the White House? We can but hope.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters, ok? It’s like incredible”. (D.Trump 23 January 2016)
Facebook, Twitter and a myriad of social media platforms and chat rooms have been put to work as the perfect incubators for breeding historic discrimination.
The nineteenth century Civil War pamphleteers have long since been replaced by the electronic propaganda systems requiring only the touch of a key to enable users to spew forth their supremacist bile onto future generations.
On April 9, 1865 Confederate General Robert E. Lee, at Appomattox county, Virginia, led his forces into the last major battle of the war against the Union army.
On April 12, 1865, Lee’s forces formally surrendered to the Union army chief, General Ulysses S. Grant; and though many weeks would pass before Confederate troops had surrendered elsewhere in states like Texas, the rebel army had clearly been broken.
Over a hundred and fifty-five years have elapsed following that momentous day at Appomattox County; Yet the emergent modern society, the United States of America, appears to be more entrenched in its opposing view of itself than at any time since General Lee’s guns were silenced.
Evidence would suggest that latent racism in the USA has once again been stoked by a President who shows little empathy for others; Indeed, Donald Trump is clearly a nativist wrapped up in his own narcissism, both a victim of himself and a willing victimiser of others. A man so insecure in his own skin that he feels a need to identify with the very worst and most divisive notions of a past confederacy of white supremacy.
Certainly, the many still suffering from racial oppression are still willing to fight back in their open resistance to the institutions that erstwhile serve to discriminate.
The oppressed continue to oppose racial inequality in the United States just as the Civil Rights activists did in yesteryear, and the abolitionists and the Buffalo soldiers did before them, and Black Lives Matter activists do today.
Societies must reject any racial claims to supremacy.
Such claims have no merit, they are bogus and if they are left to go unchallenged, unchecked, they will grow as potent as a malignant cancer on the body politic of any society.
Societies would do well to learn from the battles waged by their forbears, lest they ignore the inherent dangers in once again passing on inequitable legacies to future generations; And though the very worst excesses of human bigotry and discrimination may, for now at least, lay dormant in the slumbers of our darkest histories, the good in us should not rest too soundly; For it is our shared histories warning us that the ongoing war to prevent such prejudices from reawakening is still yet to be won.
‘Did the American Civil war ever truly end or is it simply the longest ceasefire in history?’
Stephen T. Ridley December 2020
BAME NEWS December 2020
ridley@bolash1.com
Note on the author.
Stephen Thomas Ridley was born in London,UK.
Writer & Lecturer (Social Sciences).
Stephen has taught and lectured in many parts of the world, including:
Spain, Russia, France, and more recently the UK where he is currently employed by Cambridge University (English Language Assessment department)
MA Applied Linguistics (The University of London) BA Social Anthropology (The University of Sussex)