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American presidentDonald Trump has periodically had occasions to share his views on theAmerican Civil War, which has been described as "the central event in America's historical consciousness."[1] Trump has been especially interested in the way theantebellum 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.
Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016 atGettysburg National Military Park, stating, "It's my privilege to be here in Gettysburg, hallowed ground where so many lives were given...President Lincoln served at a time of division like we've never seen before. It is my hope that we can look at his example to heal the divisions we are living through right now."[2] His most notable statement at this campaign stop was aboutsexual 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."[3]
Trump visited the historicGettysburg battlefield again in 2024 and offered an inaccurate retelling of thethird and final day of the battle, commenting, "The statement of Robert E. Lee—who's no longer in favor, did you ever notice that?...No longer in favor—'Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.' They were fighting uphill. He said, 'Wow, that was a big mistake.' He lost his great general, and they were fighting. 'Never fight uphill, me boys!' But it was too late."[4] Trump used several adjectives to characterize the battle, includingbeautiful,horrible,interesting,unbelievable, andvicious.[4] Trump did not specify which "great general" whose death in battle he considered central to the Confederate defeat, but the options areLewis Armistead,William Barksdale,Richard B. Garnett,William Dorsey Pender,J. Johnston Pettigrew, andPaul Jones Semmes. It was Lee who ordered the attack on thehigh ground held by U.S. Army soldiers led byGeorge Meade. Confederate generalJames Longstreet discouraged Lee from attempting the assault uphill, over nearly a mile of field, in broad daylight, against an entrenched enemy, but Lee was not dissuaded. Waves of Confederates were shredded by long-range artillery, shrapnel, and musket fire in the attack known to history asPickett's Charge. The battle was lost, thehigh-water mark of the Confederacy was set down on aridgeline in southernPennsylvania, and through romanticized retelling, Pickett's Charge evolved over time into an emotional keystone of theLost Cause mythology.[5][page needed]
In the early 2010s, Donald Trump placed the so-calledRiver of Blood monument on his Virginia golf course, commemorating an imaginary battle of the American Civil War.[6]
AmidstIran–U.S.saber-rattling in June 2025, Trump gestured toward a framed copy of theDeclaration of Independence mounted on the wall of theOval Office, and stated, "[I] see the Declaration of Independence and I say I wonder if you—you know the Civil War?—it always seemed to me maybe that could have been solved without losing 600,000 plus people so..."[7]
The Declaration of Independence was published in 1776, immediately prior to the beginning of theAmerican Revolutionary War.[8] The American Civil War began in 1861.[9] Recent statistical analyses have revisedAmerican Civil War casualty figures upward, with an estimated 698,000 American deaths resulting from the conflict.[10]
Trump's suggestion that the American Civil War was a consequence of "diplomatic" failures by inept politicians or other strategic errors are comparable to the revisionist view of the American Civil War of the early 20th century. The revisionist school of historians, includingAvery O. Craven,Charles W. Ramsdell, andJames G. Randall, sought to revise the "nationalist perspective that viewed the war as justly fought to save the union andabolish slavery."[11] These historians characterized antebellum U.S. politicians as "blundering," and argued that the war was the product of a "breakdown in democracy and the actions of fanaticalabolitionists. They portrayed slavery as a benign but unprofitable institution and assumed it would have died out, probably in the near future."[11] The revisionist school has been abandoned by working historians since the end of thenadir of American race relations era, so revisionism is now largely the province of "right-wing polemicists,neo-Confederate apologists, and somelibertarians."[11]
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Trump has suggested that the average American is unfamiliar withAbraham Lincoln'spolitical party affiliation.[12] Lincoln had been aWhig during his single term as aRepresentative toCongress from Illinois, but he was ultimately the first president elected from the then-newRepublican Party, after the collapse of the Whigs andthe bifurcation of theDemocratic nomination cleared the way for his election in 1860, which opened the American political era known as theThird Party System.[13]
Trump has repeatedly described himself as the best president in U.S. history, with the possible exception of Lincoln.[14] However, Trump claims that Lincoln has been overrated, arguing that in fact he was responsible for the American Civil War, which could or should have been prevented by superior executive leadership.[14] Historian Harold Holzer told the Associated Press that Trump's historical analysis demonstrates "malice toward Lincoln."[14] Abraham Lincoln, who was often referred to as "the martyr president" in the immediate wake ofhis assassination,[15] istypically ranked as the greatest American president by professional historians, and is a rare figure of near universal respect in the American civic pantheon. According to one writer, "We measure presidents by how they represent ourselves, and how we wish to be. Lincoln,the rail-splitter raised to destiny by war and to near-divinity by assassination, embodies both. More thanGeorge Washington orThomas Jefferson, Lincoln is our sage and aspiration, the ordinary and unexpected man of greatness, the victor and martyr of the great American narrative, the Civil War."[16]
In the 2008 bookTrump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success, coauthored by Trump andMeredith McIver, Abraham Lincoln andWinston Churchill are listed as the two historical figures Trump admired, stating that Lincoln "was president at the most difficult time in our country's history."[17] The opening paragraph of chapter 12 of the same book stated "courage made [Lincoln] extraordinary."[18]
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Trump has also contended thatformer slave trader, militia leader, and seventh presidentAndrew 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. He said: 'There's no reason for this.'"[19] Interviewed by the BBC, historian David Blight commented, "Jackson had absolutely no vision of any kind of racial egalitarianism. He had no hint of any kind of anti-slavery movement. And if President Trump doesn't understand anything about why we had a civil war, what can he understand about race relations now? Or about our problems with inequality? And he thinks Andrew Jackson would have prevented the war...Where do I start?"[19] 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.[20][21] According toRobert V. Remini, who wrote a major three-volume biography of Old Hickory, Jackson's allies believed that "slaveholding was as American ascapitalism,nationalism, ordemocracy...the white southern celebration of liberty always included the freedom to preserve black slavery. That states Jackson's own position precisely."[22]
On the same occasion where he shared hisalternate history fantasy about Jackson living to disrupt thesecessionist movement in theslave states, Trump commented, "People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if 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?"[23] In 2012, authors James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier estimated that since 1865 more than 100,000 books and articles have been published about the American Civil War, writing, "No event in American history has been so thoroughly studied, not merely by historians, but by tens of thousands of other Americans who have made the war their hobby."[24] A number ofthose books address thecauses of the American Civil War.
One historian suggested that perhaps Trump had confused Andrew Jackson andAndrew Johnson.[19] Johnson was president in the final days of the American Civil War and oversaw the first years ofReconstruction before he was defeated for re-nomination byHoratio Seymour and/orUlysses S. Grant. Other historians have suggested that theAndrew Johnson administration is the most appropriate historical analogue forTrump's first presidential term,[25][26] arguing that the two share a similar concept ofAmerican nationalism.
The progressive periodicalThe American Prospect has argued that Trump is analogous to Confederate presidentJefferson Davis, arguing that his agenda is civil war and that "the degradation that was at the center of slavery is also at the center of Trump's mindset and policies—not, in this case, centered on race, but on everyone who fails to show him sufficient fealty."[27]
