Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
When America fails to teach society about its history, you get the Republican Party and its attitudes toward the Civil War. This country is awfully ignorant when it comes to American history because that history is not taught correctly, truthfully or with any context or sensitivity. And this is how Republican presidential candidates can exploit a public lack of knowledge and just say whatever they want and proclaim things that never happened.
Donald Trump — the former president who aspires to retake the White House and stay there forever — recently said the Civil War could have been negotiated and President Abraham Lincoln should have done more to stop it.
“So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you,” Trump said at an Iowa campaign stop. “I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”
Trump, regarded by absolutely no one as a student of history, signed legislation in 2017 honoring the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved statesman and abolitionist. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice,” Trump said.
And in a recent town hall rally in New Hampshire, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley failed to mention slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Yeah, I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run – the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said.
And back in 2010, Haley told the Sons of Confederate Veterans that the Civil War was “tradition versus change,” and said states have a constitutional right to secede — which is not true.
A knowledge of history is important. The Civil War was fought…
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