‘The Daily Show’ Fact Checks Andrew Napolitano’s Civil War Revisionism With A Game Show

Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday took his mockery of Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano to the next level, hosting a mini-game show to debunk the commentator’s revisionist views on the Civil War and American slavery.

After a lively debate with Napolitano on the motives and merits of Lincoln’s war to abolish slavery — which the Fox commentator claims was unnecessarily expensive and bloody — Stewart walked his guest over to a panel of American historians for his quiz show “The Weakest Lincoln.”

Slowly but surely, the scholars debunked Napolitano’s arguments, from the idea that slavery was dying to the claim that the government could have purchased all slaves from the South.

“[The South] shot first,” quipped James Oakes of the City University of New York, “and you don’t mess with Lincoln.”

Finally, it was game over when Napolitano tried to claim Lincoln himself used federal marshals to chase down escaped slaves.

“That’s not true!” all three academics said in unison. And so ended this edition of “The Weakest Lincoln.”