US President Donald Trump has raised eyebrows after an interview with Sirius XM in which he speculated about the history of the US Civil War.
“Why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?,” President Trump said.
The Civil War erupted in 1861 following the secession of 11 Southern ‘slave states’ from the Union.
Countless historians have delved into the war’s origins – the South’s desire to maintain a system of slavery is widely considered to be the primary cause of the four-year conflict.
President Trump also suggested that former president Andrew Jackson, himself from the Southern state of Tennessee, would have been able to avoid the bloodiest conflict in US history.
“I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” he said.
“He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said: ‘There’s no reason for this’.”
The President’s comments were described as ‘bizarre’ and ‘puzzling’ in the US media.
President Jackson died in 1845. The Civil war broke out 16 years later under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.
In a tweet on Monday evening, President Trump clarified that Jackson “saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!”
Some have speculated that in the interview, the president may have been referring to South Carolina’s 1932 threat to secede over a tariff dispute.
In that dispute Andrew Jackson – who President Trump described in the interview as a “swashbuckler” – threatened military action against South Carolina while also passing a compromise tariff bill.
“He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart,” President Trump said of President Jackson, who also owned slaves.
President Trump is often compared to Jackson, a populist, forceful former president. In March the president laid a wreath at his predecessor’s tomb in Tennessee.
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