Are We Headed To A New Civil War?

North Americans, yes, even us comparatively politically and socially sedate Canadians and Mexicans, are an opinionated lot.  Sure, there are active ideological fronts being fought over in the rest of the world, but here we seem to have built up a culture that thrives on, or perhaps even requires, ideological diversity.  Even in some of Europe's more open societies which rely on total democratic participation to exist as they do, North Americans trump them in terms of respecting the notion of personal determination to the point of it being made into a sort of religion of liberty.  Canada and the United States largely inherited this passion for mother Britain, which in the eighteenth century was every bit as crazy over liberty than the colonies were.  The frontier mentality of rugged individualism, in fact, can largely be traced to the freedom-oriented folkways of the people of the northern borderlands between England and Scotland.  That said, such passions were later transformed by an influx of a wide diversity of immigrants, both free and enslaved, from across Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.  Down in Mexico, a reaction against a distant or otherwise oppressive Spain grew in intensity inspired by what was happening further north.

The history lesson from there on is an important one.  Whereas Britain buckled down in defending a particular concept of freedom, particularly the national identity brand, against intrusions by France and eventually Germany, North America exploded into hundreds of different camps.  In Mexico and Canada, this has always been strongly evidenced by strong provincial/regional traits; the near revolutions in Chiapas and Quebec that have never really faded away are proof enough of this without even looking at the rest of how the countries are at odds with the capitals.  In the United States, however, while the federal government remains strong and appears to be an emblem of power and unity to the rest of the world, well...

Let's just remind ourselves that the thirteen colonies almost did not rebel together, much less stick together once the final shots had been fired at Yorktown.  The backcountry was at odds with the lowcountry, both of which were at odds with the valley inhabitants of the Delaware, Hudson, and so many other watersheds, who were further at odds with the struggling remnants of Puritan power in New England, who were at odds with... you get the picture.  Or maybe not.  You see, especially in the frontier regions, regionalism was the furthest thing from the minds of towns and even just families, clans really, that preferred a lack of contact if not outright war with the neighbors.  The only thing that kept a Virginian mountaineer unarmed in the same room with a Virginian planter, to say nothing of a Bostonian merchant, would be a common threat.  The firstborn, with their ferocity in combat and every bit as strong desire to preserve home security, were the first cause of unity.  Then came their allies the French, either from across the ocean or closer to home among Les Habitants.  Both were largely dealt with in 1763.  In the decades to follow, that new threat would be mother Britain, and finally in 1812, that same mother and her new child and sister to the colonies, Canada, would be the source of final movement into a cohesive national sentiment.  Note though, the term there, for sentiment is not to be confused with identity. 

There were still identities a plenty even within the individual states.  This is how Virginia, a behemoth stretching from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the Ohio valley, eventually became broken into smaller entities, starting most vividly with the memory of the creation of Kentucky in 1797, itself an improbable geographic collage of mountains, savannas, forests, and even cypress swamps.  Yes, such a buffet of both mentality and environment combined into the rugged individualism that continues to define divides with American society.  Most people know that the West is not the Plains is not the South is not the Rustbelt is not the East Coast, but they don't know how fragmented national identity is beyond such simple distinctions.  People with the regions certainly do; no Charlestonian would ever be confused with someone from Memphis.  No "Yooper" would ever be confused with someone from metro Detroit, at least by someone in Michigan.  Buffalo feels like it is at the other end of the world from New York City, if New Yorkers even take the time to recognize that there is also a state called New York (I joke only slightly).

This is now.  How about back, say, during the Civil War?

Artillery at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.  This gun is in Kentucky, pointed toward both Virginia and Tennessee.  The Gap never saw significant military action, but changed hands many times.  I put this photo here as a reminder that that war was very pervasive, with reminders of armed conflict surrounding nearly all of even the backcountry population.

The sides of the war are usually broken simply into North and South, with the North being pictured as a heavily urbanized industrial bastion of truth fighting against slavery and the South being painted as an agrarian civilization vainly struggling to hold on to slavery.  Military historians often focus on the main events in the Tennessee and Mississippi valleys and the front centered around Virginia.  The truth is, decently-sized battles were fought as far west as New Mexico and as far north as Indiana, and in an age when much of the population, especially in rural fronts, had access to a firearm, little skirmishes across towns were a lot more common than historical memory permits recollection for.  Recent works of fiction like Gangs of New York have managed to revive interest in the back door of the war, but common imagination likes to view the early 1860's as a brief interruption in an otherwise strong national expansion and development.  The truth is, we were all at each others throats half the time, over issues like race, class, the economy, religion, the environment, immigration, language, etc.  Sound familiar?

It should.  We never really stopped fighting, because we are all so damn passionate about these issues.  We had a series of crises, from the two world wars and a rather brutal depression, to bolster the strength of federal versus local identity, but the security, prosperity, and romanticizing of historical memory that came afterwards helped us forget about some things.  Indeed, again, we never really stopped fighting even during the outbreak of peace.

Even people who claim to hate politics and loathe taking sides feel strongly about such issues here, and given the chance to get irritated over at least one of them, will try to weigh in on how they really feel, even if they don't exactly pick up a gun and fire into the air over it.  One such issue is language, which after a delay of nearly two years in running this blog, I think I will finally just bite into and discuss next post.

But in the meantime, how about that title question up there?

Things are getting ugly, and the last lingering stabilization provided for by the Second World War might finally be fading from national consciousness.  Some serious questions are once again being asked, people are either arming themselves with guns or democratic participation in increasing numbers, and, surprisingly and ironically, camps are being formed to make the claim about who is the most American of them all!

Yes, gay and confederate.  Talk about a diversity of camps.  This was taken in a town which I will not call by name, for potential fear of some bizarre form of reprisal, in North Carolina. 

This answer is, we probably are heading to something major that is going to bring about large scale changes to our society, and in a country with a history defined so much by war, armed conflict is certainly not out of the question.  In the coming weeks, let's explore why and what this means together, and as always, through the lens of history and geography.