Do any of you remember learning about the Civil War in your American History class? Yes? Then what was the Civil War fought over? If you answered “slavery”, then congratulations! You’re familiar with one of the most basic concepts in American history.
Unfortunately, White House chief of staff John Kelly did not win at this game of “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader.” On Laura Ingraham’s show Monday night, Kelly stated that, “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.” Excuse me, but…what?
Here’s some context: Remember over the summer when cities started removing their Confederate statues and all hell broke loose? A white supremacist rally occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, and a woman protesting white supremacy was killed. Trump famously responded by saying, “I think there is blame on both side. You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.”
Last night, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that the Civil War was a product of our failure to “compromise” and praised Robert E. Lee. It was straight Lost Cause-ism, no chaser.
He should watch this video. Everyone should. pic.twitter.com/KHYdNBd9UD
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 31, 2017
Now, the topic has come back up, and Kelly isn’t doing too hot of a job at reassuring the public that the White House is, in fact, anti-racism. In addition to claiming that the Civil War was due to a “lack of an ability to compromise”, he called Robert E. Lee “an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state,” and alleged that “men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.” Standing where your conscience makes you stand is all well and good on topics that are worthy of debate, but it’s disturbing that he claims that you can be “of good faith” and against the abolition of slavery.
The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah decided to give Kelly a quick history lesson Tuesday night, sarcastically quipping, “You know what? John Kelly is right. There are a lot of despicable things in history that were accepted at that time that we don’t accept today. We can’t change that. Like Crocs. It happened. But not all things in history are equally excusable—like slavery. Because you realize, even at the time, half of America was against slavery. We know this because they fought a war.”
Resident revisionist historian Dr. @MichaelKosta explains why John Kelly’s Civil War comments were 6000% correct. https://t.co/y3o1zI3RQA
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) November 1, 2017
Jokes aside, this is an extremely weighty topic. Many people cite the Civil War as a prime example of the federal government infringing upon states’ rights, and, in that sense, it was fought over a “lack of ability to compromise.” The Confederacy wanted to secede from the Union—that’s also a basic fact from American history. But this doesn’t give us any reason to erect statues honoring Confederate “heroes”, and it especially doesn’t give us reason to ignore the atrocities that occurred in the Old South.
The fact is, the Confederacy wanted to secede because they were against the abolition of slavery. They wanted to continue to own slaves, and if the United States couldn’t “compromise” on whether they could own slaves, they didn’t want to be a part of the United States. So while there’s nothing wrong with advocating for states’ rights, using the Civil War as an example is extremely dangerous because it values the rights of the states over the rights over the rights of the people who were being held as slaves.
When Kelly states that the Civil War was fought over a “lack of ability to compromise”, he implies that the United States should have compromised on slavery instead of fighting a war over it. In today’s racial climate, we should be incredibly careful that we use our words only to promote a culture of love and acceptance. Anything that even borderline justifies slavery is about a million steps backwards. As Bernice King, MLK’s daughter tweeted, “It’s irresponsible & dangerous, especially when white supremacists feel emboldened, to make fighting to maintain slavery sound courageous.”