We Are Not Living Through the 1850s or Headed Toward Another Civil War

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported a surge in references to “Civil War” on social media following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The piece fit into what has become a predictable response to just about every act of political violence over the past two decades.

(Source: The New York Times)

I sometimes think the American Civil War looms too large in our popular imagination. It seems to be everywhere in our current discourse about a “divided America.” Hundreds of op-eds and other commentaries reference the four-year bloody conflict in an attempt to connect our current crisis with a period in history that any sane person would wish to avoid.

It’s a reflection of the place of the Civil War in our collective memory or perhaps an indication that Americans know so little of the rest of their history.

The Civil War supposedly offers lessons for our own time of how to avoid another fratricidal conflict. The vast majority of these commentaries offer little more than speculation and downright bad history.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been contacted by the media over the past decade to comment on the parallels between the present and the 1850s or whether we are headed toward another civil war. I almost always decline to comment.

In the aftermath of the shooting, The Los Angeles Times asked historians Kevin Waite and Matthew Pinsker to comment. Both are very competent historians of the Civil War era. You can judge for yourself the strength of their comparisons.

Nothing jumps out as especially illuminating to me, though I was surprised by Waite’s suggestion that the “Wide Awakes can be compared to an antebellum antifa, while the paramilitaries of the South were more like modern Proud Boys.”

One of the problems with using the 1850s as a bellwether for our own times is that we are simply not divided along sectional or regional lines. This fact shaped everything that occurred in the 1850s and helps us to explain why a civil war began in 1861 and not at some other point in time.

We know how the events of the 1850s played out, which makes it an attractive decade to reflect on in regards to the many unknown questions we must live with about our own collective future. But we should remember that there was nothing inevitable about our Civil War. Any number of things could have taken place to help steer the nation in a direction that avoided war.

In that case, the 1850s would have fallen alongside any number of other periods of time in American history that witnessed an uptick in violence.

I wrote about this not too long ago.

Are we any more divided than we were during the 1960s, which witnessed intense racial violence and the assassination of major public figures, including two Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X? Many contemporaries described the country as being “at war with itself,” “in chaos,” or “coming apart.” Why don’t we compare today’s violence with this period?

Police dogs, held by officers, jump at a man with torn trousers during a non-violent demonstration, Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963. (Source: Getty Images)

I’ve never seriously considered the Great Depressin and the 1930s as a parallel to today’s political environment, but perhaps we should. The economic collapse plunged millions of Americans into poverty, unemployment, and despair. In this climate of desperation and uncertainty, political tensions flared, and violence became a means of expression for both citizens and the state. The era witnessed a surge in political unrest, radical activism, and often violent confrontations, as Americans struggled not just for survival but for representation, justice, and reform.

One of the most striking examples of political violence during the Great Depression was the Bonus Army March of 1932. Tens of thousands of World War I veterans, many of whom were unemployed and destitute, descended on Washington, D.C., demanding early payment of a promised bonus scheduled for 1945. They set up massive encampments and peacefully lobbied Congress. But when the government refused their demands and ordered them to disperse, President Herbert Hoover called in the U.S. Army. The clash ended with the burning of the camp and injuries to both veterans and civilians. This brutal crackdown shocked the nation and symbolized the government's increasing reliance on force to suppress dissent.

Bonus Army encampment on fire in Washington, DC (Source: The Washington Post)

The early 1930s saw a rise in union activism, as workers fought for better wages, hours, and conditions. In response, employers and local governments frequently used private security forces, police, and even the National Guard to quash strikes. A particularly violent incident occurred during the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, culminating in “Bloody Thursday,” when police opened fire on picketers in San Francisco, killing two. That same year, the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike led to days of street fighting between strikers and police, resulting in multiple deaths.

The fear of radical ideologies also fueled political violence. Communist and socialist movements gained traction during the Depression, offering alternatives to capitalism. In response, many state and federal authorities cracked down on leftist groups. The Red Scare atmosphere, though more commonly associated with the post-World War I and Cold War periods, had a clear presence in the 1930s as well, particularly as unemployment and suffering made revolutionary ideas more appealing to the masses.

I don’t know if the 1930s is a more helpful decade to consider than the 1850s, but I do know that few people have thought about it in light of our current crisis.

It goes without saying that our nation today is a product of what took place during the Civil War era, but it is also a product of everything that has taken place up til now. We have an incredibly rich and complicated history.

History can be helpful in giving us a sense of direction during times of civil strife, surges in political violence and division.

In such moments we would do well to cast as wide a net as possible when attempting to learn from our past.