A violent mob attacks a US government building, seizes and occupies it, and attempts to incite a larger revolt. Order is only restored after violence resulting in the deaths of several of the attackers. The press, local and national, provides immediate coverage of a national sensation, calling the attack an “insurrection”, “rebellion,” or “treason.” The surviving attackers are put on trial. Some media relentlessly hype the story, assessing the profound implications of the attack, how things have permanently changed, that some people can no longer be trusted in any way, that there is no way to compromise with evil.
January 6th, 2021? Nope. October 16th, 1859. The attack is now known as John Brown’s Raid on the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. The parallels are frightening, but instructive. No one called it a raid at the time: that was a convention which only happened after the Union won the civil war. It was an insurrection or treason, and those who engaged in it were so charged and executed. The raucous press came from the technological wonders of the telegraph, just then becoming the means of instantaneous communication. The obsessive media coverage was in the South, which not only viewed the attack as the last straw, but used it to further inflame popular opinion. John Brown’s intent to incite a nation-wide slave revolt struck deeply at the fears of Southern plantation life, where hundreds of such revolts (large and small) had created an atmosphere of panic which only needed a small nudge to disunion.
As a spark along the lines of John Brown’s raid, January 6th pales in comparison. Yes, it was ugly, a stain on our nation’s record, and totally unnecessary. But the proximate cause of our next civil war? Sorry, no. For a moment, let’s consider the counterfactual case: this was the spark, it does lead to civil war. What would that look like? Let’s start with some data, shall we?
This graphic shows how the US voted, county by county, in the 2020 election.
The traditional analysis of this data is the US is a “sea of red” areas with little population surrounding isolated blue city-states. One could imagine a contiguous Red-state region comprising the south, midwest, and mountain states, with blue territory in the DC-Boston corridor, the Pacific Northwest, and Arizona/New Mexico. But such a configuration is more illusory than real. Illinois is a blue state; the area east of the Cascade mountains is quite red. Urban areas across the South are big and blue. There are areas where one can never run into a person of a different political perspective (think Roberts County, Texas, or San Francisco), and Americans are increasingly moving to places which align with their political views, but that doesn’t (yet) make either side a coherent nation when looking at the state level. Which means a Second American Civil War would not be an organized one with armies marching on Capitals, but a disorganized one, pitting armed groups against one another. Less Gettysburg, more like Bleeding Kansas.
Where food is produced (green for crops, orange for herds):
There is an obvious advantage to the wide-open red spaces in that that is where much (but not all!) of the food is produced. The longer the disunited battles go on, the more important the need for food. Sieges and starvation are huge weapons to be wielded under such circumstances. However, the other side of the coin is transportation:
It goes without saying that all forms of transport (and communication) go through urban hubs. So while red areas may produce the food, they will find it difficult to share it, and even more difficult to communicate. To borrow a military term, blue city states may have “interior lines of communication” which give them a natural advantage against larger red areas.
Speaking of forces here are the US Armed Forces totals, 2020:
But where do these service members come from?
I have seen some pundits smirking that whoever tries to start a civil war will be no match for the US military. That is true of course, but neither were the Mujaheddin. The US military was totally unprepared to pacify a small place like Iraq, let alone red or blue America. Occupation and pacification is manpower intensive, and the US military simply “does not have the dudes” as my boss used to say. On top of that, more of those in uniform come from red areas, and while some would honor their oath to the Constitution, others would interpret it differently (same as it ever was). The US military would be riven by the same divisiveness as the rest of the country.
Speaking of weapons, here is a 2020 breakdown on the twenty states with the largest registered gun totals:
The key word above is registered. Only 6 million of the 390 million firearms in the US are registered (according to the Pew Research Center). Read that again. And the vast majority of these weapons are in red hands, in red areas.
So where does the data lead us? We have to make two assumptions here. Which side is provoking the action, and which side is trying to be “left alone” rather than dictate to the other side. I think it is fair to argue red America would be more likely to provoke, but also is more likely to want to be left alone. These are arguable assumptions, but we need to make them to push the analysis forward.
After the “spark,” one would see declarations by various states and areas denying federal control or jurisdiction. Local militias set up roadblocks or engage in raids to seize key infrastructure or to terrorize adjacent population centers. Some rural, red areas would sit out the conflict, either siding with their blue state government (Illinois? New York?) or just passively watching and waiting. Likewise, some major urban areas in the south would choose to go with the red flow. Some deep red areas would barely notice a change: a farmer in Iowa might wonder what all the fuss was about?
Blue citizens in the cities would feel a pinch first. Things like water supplies, power generation, even airports are far enough from urban centers to be at risk of occupation. Of course everyone would notice the stoppage of the free flow of goods and people: something far more drastic and uncertain than anything during the pandemic or even 9-11. One real wild card is information flow in this information age. Blue America would hold an advantage here, with an early monopoly on broadcast and social media. But, it is hard to deny broad area access to the internet for extended periods of time. More likely, information access would be a bargaining chip played against other essentials (water or power, for example).
All this happens as a million scores are settled across the land. Red Americans living in the cities will uproot and flee just as rural or suburban blue Americans do the same when violence, or just the threat of violence, beckons. America is a country with a high tolerance for violence, and a second civil war would challenge the upper limit. The absence of pitched battles does not mean the absence of large numbers of casualties.
Both sides would be exhausted within months. Assuming red America just wants to be left alone, there is no need for storming the Hudson river bridges and occupying Wall Street (literally). Blue America would fairly quickly realize there is no way to force red America to capitulate, and where is Idaho, anyway? Negotiations begin, and some of the more moderate people on both sides would question whether the fighting was really worth it. There is no simple geographical resolution, no two-state solution, as the fighting would have made clear. Who gets the nukes? Who gets the federal debt? The infrastructure was unified and can’t be apportioned. How does the place formerly known as America begin to function again?
I bet the daunting nature of the challenges, the horror at the damages inflicted, and the dim prospects for the future would serve to further a tacit re-integration of the United States of America. The peace process would probably include a constitutional convention to address the root causes and prevent a relapse. Some state boundaries would be re-aligned, and states would acquire more authority over theirs laws and resources, to the cost of the federal government. Red states would use this new authority to cement certain cherished conservative positions (e.g., guns, abortion, voter fraud) and blue states would do the obverse. Blue states would seek to limit resources transfers (via the federal government) to red states. If federal authority is lessened, the US might end up with a weakened President and Executive Branch, a single (unicameral) legislature with a mixed representation by state and perhaps other groups, and a more limited Supreme Court. Deep scars would remain, and the re-United States would need a legal remedy to address the war crimes, expropriations, and other calamities.
In this analysis, red and blue America waste countless lives and treasure to end up back where they started, only greatly reduced and with an enforced national commitment to be civil again. Hardly the stuff of patriot dreams. This is only one hypothetical analysis, but the data provided earlier has real and strong implications. It doesn’t require the gift of foresight to know widespread violence rarely leads to a better life. The common folk, red and blue, know this. Southern newspapers inflamed their readers after Harper’s Ferry, so much so that the South began secession before Lincoln even took office! When you hear talk of another civil war today, ask yourself, “are they trying to prevent it, or foment it?”