No, We Are Not Headed Toward Civil War

Haymarket Riot

You can’t open up a major newspaper without reading a steady stream of op-eds lamenting the end of democracy in the United States or come across a poll predicting a civil war in the next few years. There is a balm for such doom and gloom predictions: It’s called history.

Max Boot’s most recent op-ed is emblematic of this picture of the United States. “I used to be an optimist about America’s future” he writes in The Washington Post. “Not anymore. There’s a good reason that so many people I know are acquiring foreign passports and talking about moving somewhere else: The prognosis is grim.”

There is certainly much to be worried about, beginning with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The horror stories of girls being forced to travel long distances to seek an abortion after being raped are already coming to pass. Then there is the ever present threat of former president Donald Trump, white nationalism, not to mention inflation, global warming, and our continued failure to regulate automatic weapons.

And the list goes on.

The point isn’t to suggest that these are not serious problems or that we shouldn’t be addressing them. We most certainly should, but we also need to do a better job of placing them in historical context. Somehow, in this mode of thought we lose all sight of history.

I suspect that most people who are predicting a civil war have an image in their mind of our own Civil War, but there appears to be little understanding of the conditions that led to the death of 750,000 Americans between 1861 and 1865 or its consequences.

History often takes a back seat in these moments when everything appears to be in decline.

Earlier this year I read Jon Grinspan’s wonderful book about the second half of the nineteenth century, titled, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915. Grinspan tells this story through the lives of radical congressman William “Pig Iron” Kelley and his daughter, Florence Kelly. Early in the book, he writes the following:

Americans claim that we are more divided than we have been since the Civil War, but forget that the lifetime after the civil War saw the loudest, roughest political campaigns in our history. From the 1860s through the early 1900s, presidential elections drew the highest turnouts ever reached, were decided by the closest margins, and witnessed the the most political violence. Racist terrorism during Reconstruction, political machines that often operated as organized crime syndicates, and the brutal suppression of labor movements made this the deadliest era in American political history. The nation experienced one impeachment, two presidential elections “won” by the loser of the popular vote, and three presidential assassinations. Control of Congress rocketed back and forth, but neither party seemed capable of tackling the systemic issues disrupting Americans’ lives. Driving it all, a tribal partisanship captivated the public, folding racial, ethnic, and religious identities into two warring hosts. (p. x)

According to Grinspan, we are not living through unprecedented times. “It’s not that our problems are the same as those of the late nineteenth century—often they are strikingly different—but that the era in between was so unusual.” (p. xii)

It’s an interesting observation because it offers a vantage point from which we can look more closely at how a period that witnessed a certain amount of progress on various fronts came about. More importantly, it is a reminder that nothing is inevitable.

I can’t help but think of Frederick Douglass as someone who, at the end of his long life, had every reason to be pessimistic for the nation’s future. Step back and consider the dramatic changes he had witnessed. Born into slavery, Douglass eventually freed himself and became one of the leading abolitionists in the North. Douglass pointed to the nation’s hypocrisy in its celebration as a freedom loving nation. He lived long enough to see his two sons fight to end the institution of slavery. In the years that followed, Douglass campaigned for civil rights for women and African Americans, and stood up against a growing nativism in response to an influx of immigrants.

He also lived long enough to see the gradual erosion of Black civil rights in the last years of his life.

Douglass’s defiance was on full display in his last major speech delivered in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1894.

Though it may strike down the weak to-day, it will strike down the strong to-morrow. Not a breeze comes to us now from the late rebellious States that is not tainted and freighted with negro blood. In its thirst for blood and its rage for vengeance, the mob has blindly, boldly and defiantly supplanted sheriffs, constables and police. It has assumed all the functions of civil authority. It laughs at legal processes, courts and juries, and its redhanded murderers range abroad unchecked and unchallenged by law or by public opinion. Prison walls and iron bars are no protection to the innocent or guilty, if the mob is in pursuit of negroes accused of crime. Jail doors are battered down in the presence of unresisting jailors, and the accused, awaiting trial in the courts of law are dragged out and hanged, shot, stabbed or burned to death as the blind and irresponsible mob may elect. We claim to be a Christian country and a highly civilized nation, yet, I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing in the history of savages to surpass the blood chilling horrors and fiendish excesses perpetrated against the colored people by the so-called enlightened' and Christian people of the South. It is commonly thought that only the lowest and most disgusting birds and beasts, such as buzzards, vultures and hyenas, will gloat over and prey upon dead bodies, but the Southern mob in its rage feeds its vengeance by shooting, stabbing and burning when their victims are dead.

It must have been a difficult speech to write and deliver as Douglass was forced to respond to many of the very same arguments that racist Americans had posed to the idea of Black civil rights throughout the entire nineteenth century.

And yet Douglass somehow managed to end his speech by reminding his audience of the power of the nation’s founding ideals.

But, my friends, I must stop. Time and strength are not equal to the task before me. But could I be heard by this great nation, I would call to mind the sublime and glorious truths with which, at its birth, it saluted a listening world. Its voice then, was as the trump of an archangel, summoning hoary forms of oppression and time honored tyranny, to judgement. Crowned heads heard it and shrieked. Toiling millions heard it and clapped their hands for joy. It announced the advent of a nation, based upon human brotherhood and the self-evident truths of liberty and equality. Its mission was the redemption of the world from the bondage of ages. Apply these sublime and glorious truths to the situation now before you. Put away your race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another.

Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizen are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest, and your problem will be solved; and, whatever may be in store for it in the future, whether prosperity, or adversity; whether it shall have foes without, or foes within, whether there shall be peace, or war; based upon the eternal principles of truth, justice and humanity, and with no class having any cause of complaint or grievance, your Republic will stand and flourish forever.

His faith in the nation’s future wasn’t completely extinguished, even as he watched as the door on Black civil rights was quickly closing. We know how long it took for it to begin to open again.

I am certainly not here to tell anyone how they should feel about the United States or how to assess its future. What I would suggest is that sometimes it’s helpful to remember that we didn’t just magically arrive at this moment, that our history is full of highs and lows, sharp turns, and long retreats.

We are not alone and there is much to learn from those who came before us.