Will America Have a New Civil War? A Civil War Historian's Verdict After 50 Years of Research

Why "New Civil War" Has Become a High-Frequency Topic in American Society

In today's American political discourse, "New Civil War" has evolved from a fringe topic into a high-frequency term on social media. As political polarization intensifies and partisan conflict grows ever more acute, an increasing number of people are asking: Is this country heading toward a catastrophe like the one that tore North and South apart in the 19th century?

This anxiety has a basis in data. The Pew Research Center has been tracking American political polarization since 1994, and the data shows that the median gap between Democrats and Republicans on core policy issues has widened from 15 percentage points in 1994 to over 36 percentage points in the 2020s. This polarization manifests not only in policy preferences but also at an emotional level—so-called "affective polarization," meaning a sharp rise in feelings of disgust and distrust toward members of the opposing party. Social media recommendation algorithms are believed to have accelerated this process, reinforcing in-group identity and hostility toward out-groups through "filter bubble" effects.

Senior Civil War scholar Gary Gallagher directly confronted this question in an in-depth conversation. As an authoritative scholar who has studied the American Civil War for over 50 years, his judgment deserves serious attention. His answer was clear and definitive: "No, I really don't think so." But he didn't shy away from acknowledging the current reality of division—this attitude of recognizing problems while maintaining historical depth is precisely what makes this conversation so valuable.

Today's America Resembles the 1850s, but Is Absolutely Not 1860

Gallagher acknowledged that today's America does resemble the 1850s—the decade before the Civil War—in certain ways. "People at both ends of the political spectrum, their first reaction is to attribute the worst motives to the other side, refuse to acknowledge any merits in the opposition, and use inflammatory rhetoric to stir up as much resentment and conflict as possible." This psychological mechanism of "demonizing" opponents was indeed a typical feature of pre-Civil War American society.

But similarity is not equivalence. Gallagher drew critical boundaries using concrete historical facts. He pointed out that in the real Civil War he studies, there were extreme scenes of "a congressman physically attacking a colleague on the floor of Congress." This refers to the Brooks-Sumner affair of 1856, which shocked the entire nation: South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks used a metal cane to viciously beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber, leaving Sumner bedridden for three years. The incident was triggered by Sumner's fiery anti-slavery speech, "The Crime Against Kansas." Meanwhile, pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the Kansas Territory engaged in years of armed conflict ("Bleeding Kansas"). These violent events marked the escalation of political disagreement from the rhetorical level to actual physical confrontation—and nothing like this is happening today.

Even more persuasive is the comparison regarding secession. Today, Texas talked about seceding when Obama was elected, and California talked about seceding when Trump was elected. But Gallagher cut to the heart of it: "You know what? Neither state actually held a secession convention or sent delegates."

Here it's important to understand the special weight of "secession" in American constitutional and historical context. The U.S. Constitution contains no explicit clause allowing or prohibiting secession. Between 1860 and 1861, starting with South Carolina, a total of 11 Southern states formally voted to secede from the Union through individually convened state conventions, forming the Confederate States of America. These conventions were not idle talk—they were sovereign acts with legal force, electing delegates, drafting ordinances of secession, and establishing a new government. By contrast, modern American "secession" discussions (such as the Texas "Texit" movement or California's "Calexit" movement) have remained at the level of social media topics and proposals from a few fringe political groups, never entering any state's formal legislative process, let alone convening a constitutionally significant state convention.

When Lincoln was elected, the Southern states "held conventions, voted for secession, and actually left the country." In Gallagher's view, there is a fundamental chasm between threatening, talking, imagining various scenarios, and actually taking action. Structurally, states do still retain the right to convene conventions to discuss any issue, but he emphasized: "I don't see any serious movement in that direction."

The Deep Cohesion and Institutional Resilience of the Union

A word that recurred throughout the conversation was "resilience." Gallagher believes that despite public discourse being filled with quarrels and mutual insults, the Union itself possesses a deep cohesive force.

The political science concept of "institutional resilience" refers to a political system's ability to maintain core functions and adapt to change when facing crises, shocks, and pressure. American institutional resilience is considered to stem from multiple factors: the dispersion of power under federalism avoids "winner-take-all" zero-sum games; an independent judiciary provides dispute resolution mechanisms; the tradition of civilian control of the military eliminates the possibility of a military coup; and the deeply embedded political cultural notion of "loyal opposition"—that is, acknowledging the legitimacy of political opponents. Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argued in How Democracies Die that democratic survival depends on two unwritten norms: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.

The host used a vivid metaphor: it's like a family at Thanksgiving dinner, "full of passionate shouting and arguments, but with an underlying assumption—we're still arguing, not breaking apart." This unspoken understanding that "we're still in this together," though rarely explicitly stated, is the invisible bond that holds the nation together.

This is precisely the core distinction between civil war and today's political division. Civil war means both sides of an argument have abandoned the premise that "we belong to the same community." In today's America, no matter how fierce the arguments, that premise still exists.

"What Is America?" — The Fundamental Question the Civil War Posed

Gallagher pointed out that the Civil War was essentially asking a fundamental question: "What is America?" Facing this question, he offered his answer after 50 years of research.

"In a lot of ways, it's much of what it was in the beginning." He compared America to a "magnet" that attracts people from all over the world. Today's America is more diverse than it was during the Civil War era—"people really come here from anywhere."

This metaphor echoes a core proposition of American exceptionalism. From the 1820s to the present, America has experienced multiple waves of mass immigration: Irish and German immigrants in the mid-19th century, Southern and Eastern European immigrants from the late 19th to early 20th century, and Asian and Latin American immigrants following the 1965 immigration reform. Each wave of newcomers went through a cycle of exclusion, discrimination, and eventual integration—the Irish were once considered "unassimilable" aliens, Italians were suspected of loyalty to the Pope rather than the Constitution, and today these groups have long been part of mainstream American society.

Gallagher painted a dynamic "mosaic" picture: new immigrants work to fit into this puzzle, becoming part of it, and then when the next group of different people arrives, the previous immigrants become the "old pieces," helping newcomers integrate. This continuous process of integration and re-integration is precisely what distinguishes America from most countries in the world—American national identity is not built on blood or ethnicity, but on shared commitment to common ideals. Of course, he also frankly acknowledged: "This path isn't easy for anyone, and America has plenty of problems."

Lincoln and Obama: A Historical Imagination Spanning Eras

The most moving passage in the conversation came when the host imagined how Lincoln would react if he could attend one of Obama's speeches and witness an African American becoming president.

Gallagher believed that given Lincoln's "deep humanity" and his genuine appreciation for "those who started out at a disadvantage and fought against adversity," Lincoln would have "handled it actually pretty well, better than most people of his time."

He didn't shy away from historical complexity: "By our standards today, was he prejudiced in some ways? Of course he was." But more important was Lincoln's "ability to grow." Lincoln's racial views did undergo a significant evolution. The early Lincoln, while opposing the expansion of slavery, did not advocate social and political racial equality, and even briefly supported colonizing free Blacks overseas. However, during the course of the war—particularly after witnessing the courageous service of nearly 200,000 African Americans who enlisted—Lincoln's position underwent a fundamental transformation. By shortly before his assassination in April 1865, he had publicly supported voting rights for Black veterans and educated Black men, an extremely radical position at the time. Historian Eric Foner traced this transformation in detail in The Fiery Trial, arguing that Lincoln was a rare American president capable of making an intellectual leap during his time in office.

This approach—neither deifying historical figures nor wholesale condemning them by contemporary standards—reflects a mature historical sensibility: understanding a figure requires placing them back in their era while also recognizing qualities that transcended it.

Cautious Optimism: A Historian's Faith in the Republic's Resilience

When discussing the outlook for America's 250th anniversary (2026), Gallagher—who described himself as "bad-tempered and not optimistic about many things"—expressed genuine optimism. The year 2026 will mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the federal government has established the "America250" commission to prepare commemorative activities. This milestone forces American society to answer the questions "How far have we come?" and "Where are we heading?" The bicentennial celebration in 1976 coincided with a crisis of trust following Watergate and the trauma of Vietnam, but ultimately became an opportunity for national reflection and rebuilding confidence.

"My optimism comes from the resilience of this republic." He emphasized this wasn't naivety: "I know a lot of people will think that's naive, but it's precisely because I've seen what it's been through—it survived, it moved forward." Citing observations by Obama and many others, he noted that despite many shortcomings, "the overall trajectory is in the right direction."

The host expressed a similar position: confronting online rhetoric about "the decline of the American empire," he more aligned with the judgment that "America is thriving"—it remains "a beacon of freedom and hope in the world," and while militarism, hypocrisy, and failures to live up to ideals deserve criticism, it is "at least making the effort in that direction."

Conclusion: Distinguishing Divisive Rhetoric from Divisive Action

The core insight from this conversation is that distinguishing between "divisive rhetoric" and "divisive action" is crucial. Today's America is indeed in a state of severe political polarization, with inflammatory language and mutual demonization resembling the eve of the Civil War. But the actions that truly define a civil war—actual calls for secession, violence within legislatures, the complete collapse of the shared premise of community—have not materialized.

As the host put it: "All that stuff that seems chaotic, ultimately I think it leads to progress." The clear-eyed judgment of a historian who has studied the Civil War for half a century may offer a rare dose of historical perspective to calm an anxious present.