At a campaign event in Iowa, former President Donald Trump recently caused a stir by suggesting that the American Civil War could have been prevented through negotiations. This assertion, made on the third anniversary of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, prompted swift backlash from a range of civil rights groups and historians.
Trump described the Civil War, which began in 1861, as simultaneously “fascinating” and “horrible.” He suggested that the war and resulting casualties could have been avoided through diplomatic negotiations. He stated, “So many mistakes were made… I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”
Immediate reactions to Trump’s remark were overwhelmingly critical. One historian referred to the former president’s claim as “elementary school nonsense” and “historically ignorant.”
Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi NAACP, sharply disagreed with the idea of negotiating over basic human rights.
Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way, a progressive advocacy organization, rebuked Trump’s comments as demonstrating a deep misunderstanding of American history.
LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, accused Trump of tailoring his comments to appeal to Confederate sympathizers and those with white supremacist ideologies.
Various historians have contested Trump’s idea that the Civil War was negotiable. David Blight, a Yale University history professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on abolitionist Frederick Douglass, rejected Trump’s comments as a politically motivated distortion of historical reality.
According to Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar, no reputable historian supports the idea that the Civil War could have been prevented through compromise, as the core of the conflict was the issue of slavery.
James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, suggested to The Washington Post that the unwillingness of southern states to negotiate was, in part, due to the issues surrounding escaped slaves.
Trump’s increasingly contentious campaign rhetoric has led to comparisons to dictatorial figures like Adolf Hitler by his political opponents. His comments on various subjects, including immigration and conspiracy theories, have contributed to the polarizing nature of his public statements.
The comments from the former president reignited conversations about the foundation of the Civil War in slavery. Historians emphasized that southern states had already seceded from the Union by the time Lincoln took office, making any negotiation implausible. Lincoln’s decision to resupply federal bases, such as Fort Sumter in South Carolina, was a crucial event leading to the war.
Before the Civil War, there were several attempts at negotiation and compromise over slavery, including the Missouri Compromise, but these efforts did not resolve the fundamental disagreement over the expansion of slavery. The Civil War resulted in roughly 620,000 fatalities and led to the abolition of slavery while reestablishing the United States as a unified nation.
Trump’s comments about the Civil War have faced criticism for their lack of historical accuracy and for downplaying the significant impact and human toll of the war. As the 2024 election approaches, Trump’s interpretation of the Civil War and his campaign rhetoric continue to ignite passionate debates and criticism, highlighting the deep divisions in historical understanding and contemporary political discourse.