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@kilmeade's comments about Andrew Jackson are wrong. Here's why (Kilmeade's words are in quotes): https://www.mediamatters.org/black-lives-matter/fox-news-host-defends-andrew-jacksons-role-indian-removal-act-trail-tears
"fighting in the [Revolutionary] war at 14": There is no credible evidence that Jackson fought in the Revolution. See Hendrik Booraem's biography, Young Hickory: The Making of Andrew Jackson, for the full context of Jackson's pre-Tennessee life.
"I'd just like to add something real quick on the Trail of Tears. Martin Van Buren was president at the time. . . . Martin Van Buren used the plan that he thought that Jackson left for him": This ignores the fact that other native groups besides the Cherokee were removed (cont.)
under Jackson's administration. And it ignores the fact that Jackson was responsible for much of the process that led to the Trail of Tears, even if MVB was the one who put it in action. The historiography surrounding Indian removal is immense, but see, for example, (cont.)
Christina Snyder's work, Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson https://global.oup.com/academic/product/great-crossings-9780199399062?cc=us&lang=en&
"he also adopted an American Indian son": This is not true. Jackson sent three Creek boys to live with Rachel at their Middle TN plantation: Lyncoya, Charley, and Theodore. None of them were adopted by the Jacksons, and their status, from the little evidence we have, (cont.)
was as companions for Jackson's son Andrew Jr. and one of his nephews, Andrew Jackson Donelson. See Dawn Peterson's work Indians in the Family: Adoption and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737556
"the American Indians were the tribes that fought with the British against us in the War of 1812": Some groups fought with the U.S., some fought with the British, and some fought the U.S. on their own. Jackson also betrayed some of the groups that fought with him during the war.
That Kilmeade, who co-wrote a book on the Battle of New Orleans, doesn't know these basic facts is troubling. That he's on the board of the Andrew Jackson Foundation (formerly the Ladies' Hermitage Association), which oversees Jackson's plantation home The Hermitage, (cont.)
is troubling, to say the least. https://thehermitage.com/about/board/
My previous review of Kilmeade and Yaeger's book on the Battle of New Orleans points out some of the issues with its history: https://jacksonianamerica.com/2017/12/14/review-of-kilmeade-and-yaegers-jackson-book/
