Gary Gallagher: belief

Transcript context

…As somebody who studied the Civil War, do you think our country today is divided to a degree that’s on the verge of something like the Civil War of the 19th century? No, I really don’t, and I’m not… And I don’t mean to play down the degree to which… that we are divided. We are divided. We do resemble the 1850s now in that I think the first impulse on the part of people on either side of the political spectrum is to attribute the worst to the other side and to not acknowledge any good on the other side, to attribute the worst possible characteristics to the other side, and to have inflammatory rhetoric coming from various directions that really seeks to sort of stir up as much unhappiness and controversy as possible. I think we’re like the 1850s in that way. But in terms of whether we’re really at the point where the kind of actions that I’ve dealt with in my study of the Civil War… I don’t think we’re anywhere near that. And I mean, I really don’t. If we get there, that will be heartbreaking, but I just don’t, I just don’t see it. I don’t see physical assaults against members of Congress on the floor of the Congress. I don’t see… It’s… States talk about seceding if things don’t go… Texas talked about seceding when Obama was elected. California talked about seceding when Trump was elected. But you know what? Neither one of them called a secession convention and had delegates go to it. When Lincoln was elected, they called conventions, they voted to secede, and they left the nation. So that’s different to me than talking about it and threatening it and posing different scenarios. Are there genuine structural parallels between that time and now, if you can linger on that?…

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