I cannot understand how Donald Trump was confused recently about Andrew Jackson's time in history … because Trump actually visited Jackson's home in March.
Even a cursory glance at the museum notes his presidency took place in the 1820s and 30s. He left office 24 years before the Civil War. There were eight other presidents in those intervening years, all of whom joined Jackson in either ignoring or exacerbating the widening gulf in the country.
It's easy to see why Trump identifies with Jackson, who was – literally -- a take-no-prisoners type, a wealthy slave-owning populist who shook up the Washington establishment. Both men won the presidency by wooing an overlooked population. In Jackson's case, it was white landless southerners.
Jackson was also famously unpredictable and thin-skinned. He never forgot a slight, maintaining grudges for years.
It's possible Trump might not have been so quick to lionize Jackson if he'd known about his treatment of American Indians.
Jackson pursued a policy of aggressive ethnic cleansing in the southeast, both as military leader and president. His Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the relocation of 45,000 American Indians and the death of 4,000 Cherokees on the infamous Trail of Tears.
But now the land was open to whites -- that is, wealthy white landowners whose plantations led to an explosive growth of slavery.
It's hard to imagine how anyone could have averted the Civil War, but least of all Jackson. He was a biased and uncompromising character who paid lip service to the lower classes, but whose sympathies lay with elite slaveowners.
I'm Deborah Booth, and that's my perspective.
