John Kelly Pins Civil War on a ‘Lack of Ability to Compromise’ Image John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, in the Oval Office last week. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times 
 
 If, by appearing on Laura Ingraham’s show on Monday night, John F. Kelly was trying to do damage control after the indictments of Trump associates earlier in the day, it did not work. 
 
 Instead, Mr. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, resurrected the debate over Confederate monuments — previously fueled by his boss, President Trump, over the summer — and the Confederacy itself. He called Robert E. Lee “an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state,” said that “men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand,” and argued that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.” 
 
 Christina Wilkie, a reporter for CNBC, used Twitter to live-blog Monday’s interview, on the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle.” Her tweet quoting Mr. Kelly’s “lack of an ability to compromise” statement spread quickly. 
 
 The reaction was swift and unforgiving, with many commenters ridiculing Mr. Kelly for suggesting that slavery was an issue on which a compromise could or should have been reached. 
 
 Within less than two hours, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King had weighed in on Mr. Kelly’s description of Robert E. Lee as “honorable,” calling his comments “irresponsible” and “dangerous” and criticizing him for making “fighting to maintain slavery sound courageous.” 
 
 On Tuesday, the White House did not back down. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, said there was “pretty strong consensus” among people from “the left, the right, the North and the South” that a failure to compromise contributed to the war. 
 
 That consensus, she said, holds that “if some of the individuals engaged had been willing to come to some compromises on different things then it might not have occurred.” 
 
 But the response on social media and from Democratic lawmakers suggested anything but consensus. 
 
 Other people referred disapprovingly to Mr. Kelly’s reputation as a voice of reason and discipline within the Trump administration: the “adult in the room”; the person keeping, or at least trying to keep, Mr. Trump under control. 
 
 And many pointed out that, in fact, many attempts were made to avert the Civil War through compromise — that is, by agreeing to allow slavery in some places. 
 
 The Missouri Compromise, in 1820, admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state; in exchange, it admitted Maine as a free state and barred slavery in most parts of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of a specified latitude. The Compromise of 1850 eliminated the slave trade from Washington, D.C., but also required citizens of free states to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which replaced the Missouri Compromise in 1854, let citizens of Kansas and Nebraska decide whether to allow slavery. 
 
 And, of course, there was the compromise that aided the very passage of the Constitution: the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of congressional districting. 
 
 “If John Kelly isn’t a complete idiot,” John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy research organization, tweeted late Monday, “he’s at least 3/5ths of the way there.” 
 
 In a lengthy series of tweets, the author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that the “notion that Civil War resulted from a lack of compromise is belied by all the compromises made on enslavement from America’s founding.” 
 
 Correction : An earlier version of this article misstated how many Trump associates were indicted on Monday. It was two, not three; the third associate had pleaded guilty weeks before. Daniel Victor contributed reporting. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 White House chief of staff John Kelly waded into the debate over Confederate statues late Monday, stating in an interview that the civil war was prompted by an inability to compromise, while suggesting both sides acted in “good faith”. 
 
 Speaking with Fox News in a rare interview, Kelly described Confederate general Robert E Lee as “an honorable man” while discussing the recent push to remove monuments and symbols memorializing the pro-slavery Confederacy. 
 
 “There are certain things in history that were good, and other things that were not so good,” Kelly told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. 
 
 Kelly went on to say that Lee, the general of the Confederate army during the American civil war, “was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state”. 
 
 
 
 “It was always loyalty to state first back in those days,” said Kelly, while adding: 
 
 But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the civil war. And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand.” 
 
 Kelly’s comments echoed those made by Donald Trump in the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, when a white supremacist drove his car into counter protesters, leaving one woman dead and several others injured. 
 
 The president sparked controversy in the days that followed by blaming violence “on both sides”, appearing to put neo-Nazis and white supremacists on equal footing with those demonstrating against them. ||||| A Twitter thread by author Ta-Nehisi Coates in response to White House chief of staff John Kelly John Francis KellyMORE’s comments that the Civil War started from a “lack of ability to compromise” is gaining traction. 
 
 The 31-tweet thread, which can be read in full here, has garnered thousands of likes and retweets. It addresses Kelly’s comments, slamming them as inaccurate, “sad” and “racist.” 
 
 Regarding John Kelly's creationist theorizing on Lee and the Civil War, its worth pointing out a few things. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017 
 
 “Been a lot of hemming and hawing over the term ‘white supremacist.’ Fools who won't be satisfied until Trump literally lynches someone,” Coates wrote. “People out here asking me for ‘hope.’ Meanwhile, the adult in the room thinks the Easter Bunny caused the Civil War.” 
 
 You really do see the effect of white supremacy. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017 
 
 Coates pointed out several instances where "compromise" was a key factor in the Civil War, including former President Lincoln's platform and the multiple "compromises" that denied enslaved people their rights and humanity. 
 
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 "Notion that Civil War resulted from a lack of compromise is belied by all the compromises made on enslavement from America's founding," Coates wrote. 
 
 Lincoln's own platform was a compromise. Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He proposed to limit slavery's expansion, not end it. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017 
 
 In an interview on Fox News, Kelly said that the Civil War was started because of a “lack of ability to compromise,” and praised Robert E. Lee as an “honorable man.” In discussing the debate on whether to remove Confederate statues, Kelly called it a “mistake” to put today’s standards of morality on historical events and said he thinks that the statues should be left alone. 
 
 “Notion that we are putting today's standards on the past is, in itself, racist — implies only white, slave-holding, opinions matter,” Coates wrote in response. “Praising Bobby Lee as an honorable man is just sad. Like some kid insisting his deadbeat dad is actually a secret agent away on a mission.” 
 
 Black people who are as nutty as Kelly and Trump are generally marginalized. Kelly and Trump ended up in the White House. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017 
 
 Been a lot of hemming and hawing over the term "white supremacist." Fools who won't be satisfied until Trump literally lynches someone. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017 ||||| Washington (CNN) White House chief of staff John Kelly spoke to the "good" and "not so good" parts of US history on Monday, speaking highly of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and attributing the origin of the American Civil War to a "lack of an ability to compromise." 
 
 Kelly described history as "evolving," and said it is "dangerous" to not be cognizant of it, when asked about the removal of historical but controversial statues commemorating Confederate figures during an interview on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle." 
 
 "There will be, 100 or 200 years from now, people that criticize us for what we do, and I guess they'll tear down, you know, statues of people that we revere today," Kelly told Laura Ingraham. "It's dangerous, I think. ... It's just very, very dangerous and it shows you what, how much of a lack of appreciation of history and what history is." 
 
 The White House chief of staff called Lee "an honorable man" who chose duty to his state over loyalty to a federal government. 
 
 "It was always loyalty to state first back in those days," Kelly said. "Now, it's different today." 
 
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– White House chief of staff John Kelly, generally viewed as the man whose mission is to keep controversy at bay, finds himself caught up in another one. Kelly is taking flak for his comments about the Civil War, made Monday night on the debut of Laura Ingraham's show on Fox, reports CNN. "The lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War," said Kelly. "And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand." Critics are pouncing mainly because Kelly made no mention of slavery, and the New York Times reports that the pushback arrived in fast and furious fashion. "Slavery. Slavery was what they wouldn't compromise over," read one typical tweet highlighted in the paper. Critics drew comparisons to President Trump's blame of "both sides" for the racial violence in Charlottesville, reports the Washington Post. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., called Kelly's comments "irresponsible & dangerous, especially when white supremacists feel emboldened, to make fighting to maintain slavery sound courageous." Kelly also praised Gen. Robert E. Lee as an "honorable man" who "gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country." And he touched on the debate over Confederate monuments, saying the idea of tearing them down is "just very, very dangerous, and it shows you what, how much of a lack of appreciation of history and what history is."