What Trump Gets Right—and Progressives Get Wrong—About Andrew Jackson

In an interview excerpt that ricocheted around the internet Monday morning, Trump implied that the Civil War didn’t have to happen, and had Andrew Jackson been the president, it might not have happened because he would have talked some sense into the parties. Or something.

In this same interview, the president also sang the praises of the people of Tennessee who, he assured us, love Andrew Jackson. Let me fact-check this segment: We Tennesseans are indeed “amazing,” though I’m not sure we all love Andrew Jackson. Going off demographics alone, the small number of Native Americans who remain in Tennessee despite the Trail of Tears certainly do not love Andrew Jackson. The roughly 17 percent of Tennesseans who are African Americans likely do not as well. And my fellow Chattanoogan, Jon Meacham, wrote a Pulitzer-winning political biography of the man that was fair but certainly critical.

And then there are contemporary progressives, in Tennessee and elsewhere. Many who swooned over are and see in his recent visit to Jackson’s grave and estate outside Nashville.