What Would a New Civil War Look Like?

Not Like the One You Learned In School

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From Chris Weber in The Weber Report:

A new movie opened this past weekend in the U.S. called "Civil War", it tries to show what would happen if a new civil war broke out in the U.S. This is not at all a far-fetched idea: at least 40% of Americans believe there will be one within the next decade. Clearly the groundwork has been laid for it over these past several years.

In America these days you hear a lot about people who once were friends but now hate each other. Or were families that now don't speak except to yell. It's like walking through a minefield, except for one thing: neither side knows very much. At least not much about facts concerning past civil wars.  To start with, they think we've only had one civil war before, and on this they couldn't be more wrong.

Those many people who are so sure we're going to have another civil war, they rarely have hard facts at their hand.  Ask them people what they actually know about the "Civil War”, and they'll tell you some facts —mostly untrue— about the only civil war they know about.  

I wonder how many of them realize that if we did have a civil war, it would be the third one in America since 1776. I never argue with anyone, so they all believe that I agree with them.

So they send me lots of things about how horrible those people are —about half the population— who don't agree with them. Again, they don't agree, but they all have one thing in common: they know almost nothing about any past civil wars, or, in fact, about America's history.

Since it may be that we could be entering a new civil war, I thought it would be interesting to try to describe what such a war would look like. My view is that it wouldn't look very much like the one from 1861-65. Instead, it would look more like the one we had almost 100 years before that. What's that you say? We had another civil war? We never learned that in school.

Well, yes, we had one, and it was horrible. This would be the third civil war. Just because you didn't learn about it doesn’t mean it didn't happen.  But the more you know about your country's past, the better prepared you are for the future.

It was a terrible civil war that was so depressing to read letters from George Washington and can't believe how hopeless he sounds.  

We had two civil wars in the relatively short history of the U.S. since 1775. The first one was in some ways more tragic than the more famous one, the one from 1861 to 1865. That one killed more people: the technology was more advanced.

There are different ways to tally up the corpses. First are the ones that obviously died during the battles. The bloodiest single day in U.S. history remains September 17, 1862, in Sharpsburg or Antietam, Maryland. On that day, around 25,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing.

But how do you count up the amount of people who died as a result of their wounds; whose lives were cut short from days to years that they could have lived longer? Over the war entirely, about two percent of Americans were officially killed directly. That doesn't count the numbers hooked on morphine (legal until 1915) for the rest of their shortened lives. And how many were amputees, or were never quite right in the head?

Maybe a more realistic percentage would be four or five. That would equate to 15.75 million Americans (at 4.5%) dead or horribly wounded today. That's quite a bit.

But in one way —I know it is terrible to say this— it wasn't so horrible. By this I mean that in vast sections of the U.S., life went on as it normally did. Yale and Harvard and nearly all colleges in the North had full classes as they had before and after the war. If you were relatively rich, you could avoid the war entirely.  

In many ways, you could make a lot of money out of it, at least in the North. It wasn't always a good way of making money —J. P. Morgan was just 23 when the war started, and he was well on his way to making his fortune before he was 30 when the war ended.  He started making his money by buying defective rifles and selling them to Union soldiers his own age. No one knows how many of them blew up in their faces. It's not a pretty history, and it's not often told, but it is history.

But in America's first civil war —better known as the American Revolution— the war was fought all over the place. In every state, and in almost every part of every state, neighborhoods and families were torn apart. Very often, you couldn't trust your neighbor. And too often, you ended up with your neighbor's home and property while he and his family often were sent penniless outside of the U.S., remaining loyal to a king who was very rarely loyal to them.  

To this day you can find families in the Bahamas who got their start in 1783 by beginning water ferry services that still exist. And those were the lucky ones. Less lucky were the ones who went to Canada and started with nothing.  

Perhaps the worst off were the ones who returned to England. To the English they were reminders of the lands that were lost. To those American Loyalists they were only rarely accepted as "one of them". There are a lot of sad stories about families whose only crime was to remain loyal to King George.

There were horrible terrorist groups on both sides who did unspeakable things to each other, all over the former colonies.

From the Loyalist headquarters in New York City, Tory terrorists murdered Patriots, and were murdered in turn, throughout what we now call the "Tri-State" area: Connecticut and New Jersey as well as New York.

There are very few histories of these crimes because very few people want to read about them. Probably the best accounts are from the pens of the best historical novelists, just as people today realize that Tolstoy's "War and Peace" got it more 'right' than most every academic historian.  

These best historical novelists delved deeply into primary sources: the letters of those people writing at the time. Stories come alive in ways that academic histories simply don't.

Over the past twenty-some years I've lauded a writer named Kenneth Roberts. He wrote about various aspects of American life from the 1750s (the "French and Indian Wars") to the War of 1812 and its aftermath. These were extraordinary times, made more so by the people who lived and wrote about them.

But the most heart-breaking stories are about those people who were caught up in what we call 'the Revolution'. We are taught in school about the winners, and they did not even agree very much. For every winner there were losers, and their stories are sometimes very sad. You can go to every community from Georgia to Maine and if you trace it back far enough, you can hear horrific stories. Things that, if they happened today, you wouldn't believe it.

I think that if there were a civil war today, this is what it would look like... far more than what we call 'the Civil War'. That war was horrible indeed, but it was sectional: only those parts of the country that left the Union were the worst affected. By that we mean the Confederacy and the border states. Places like Winchester, Virginia which changed hands 72 times during those four years. Can you imagine that?

There were four border states that remained slave states but stayed in the Union so slavery there remained legal. And yet they were still very much torn apart. Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg. Twenty-two fought for the Union; the other 17 for the Confederacy. Many came from the same neighborhoods. Can you imagine that? Not just during the fight, but in the years after it.

President Lincoln did all he could to keep these border states on the Union side. He is famous for saying "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky". My other favorite words from him came when he was younger: a 46-year-old ex-one-term U.S. Congressman believing that any further political career he could hope for was over. He was writing to his best friend, Joshua Speed (who disagreed with him about slavery, and favored it). But they could do something that too few people are able to do today: they could disagree without becoming angry with each other. How many people do you know today who can do that? I think I only know one.

It was an era where immigrants were pouring into the U.S.; they were people who were very different in religion and background to the Americans who had been there for generations. In other words, an era like today.

There was a new political party that was based on either putting up the walls or throwing out the new immigrants. It was called the Know-Nothing Party, since when they committed acts of violence claimed to "know nothing" about it.  

Lincoln writes to his best friend in the world, who, remember, disagrees with him on this and every other subject that in 1855, when this was written, was slowly tearing the nation apart. He writes, “As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the KnowNothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty —to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” 

For those of you who don't know what 'alloy' means, it means to mix a cheaper metal with a more precious one, the way that the pre-1964 U.S. silver coins were alloyed with copper or nickel. There are precious metals, like gold and silver and base metals—base is the word Lincoln uses—like copper, nickel or zinc.

Frankly, America was a joke overseas when Europeans heard Americans talk about their 'land of the free' when millions were being held in slavery, with families broken up and 'sold down the river' to never be united again. Or thousands violently killed who were for or against slavery each year.  And after the war it didn't stop: 17 years later, in 1882, Congress passed a law prohibiting any Chinese from immigrating into the U.S. for ten years.  

Anti-immigration is a cycle in U.S. history. The more you know about U.S. history, the more you realize that very little is new, including, sadly, civil wars.

So, we've had these deep disagreements before, about the same sorts of things we disagree about now. But never did it get as rough and bloody as in the years from 1775 to 1783. If I could write a book, it would be about the year 1780. But it would be much too depressing of a book. It would be the story of a nation tearing itself apart in a most bloody way. As far as I know, there is no such book.

We skip over that year in school today and go immediately to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. We say it ended the war. But what were people saying in 1780?

First, this, from George Washington:

"I see nothing before us but accumulating distress. We have been half our time without provision & are like to continue so. We have no Magazines [CW: chambers for holding gun cartridges], nor money to form them. And in a little time, we shall have no men, if we had Money to pay them. We have lived upon expedients till we can live no longer—In a word the history of the War is a history of false hopes and temporary devices, instead of system & economy."

This was a letter from Washington to General John Cadwalader on October 5, 1780. An entire book could be written about Cadwalader and his descendants, one of whom is the 18^th (and current) Earl of Buchan in Britain. This just shows how intertwined the families of former enemies became. Thomas Paine wrote this man's astounding epitaph:

He was a merchant, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and one of the many extraordinary men you run across as you research the Founders. (Even the second or third tier of men are astounding.)

Washington had reason to be depressed on that October day: Just days before, in late September, Benedict Arnold, considered the best combat commander on either side of the war, defected to the British. A few weeks before that, Congress declared that the "old" U.S. dollar had collapsed and lopped off a few zeros for a new one. (That's why he wrote Money with a capital M, to make it different from the worthless paper dollar. Only silver or gold were really wanted.)

The same year, Colonel (Ebenezer Huntington) in the Continental Army writes to his brother back home:

"I despise my Countrymen. I wish I could say I was not born in America. I once gloried in it but am now ashamed of it. The Rascally Stupidity which prevails, the Insults and Neglects which the army have met with, Beggars (surpasses) all description. It must go no farther. They can endure it no longer. I am in Rags, have lain in the Rain on the Ground for 40 hours past & only a Junk (old piece) of Beef & without Salt to dine on this day, (received) no pay since last December, & all this for my Cowardly Countrymen who flinch at the very time when their exertions are wanted & hold their Purse Strings as tho they would  Damn the World, rather than part with a Dollar to their Army."

And this is a high officer, who is treated like garbage by the civilians of the country that he is fighting to free and give independence to. He was far from alone that year.

Finally, here is major general Arthur St Clair (the fourth-highest Senior Officer in the U.S. Army), writing to the then-President of Pennsylvania Joseph Reed.

"We are starving, and unless something very efficacious for the supply of the army is done very speedily, we must disband or turn freebooters (pirates)--an evil of almost as much magnitude as the first. You have much influence with members of Congress. I entreat you to make them sensible of the risk to which they are exposing their country, and of the double risk to which they expose themselves; for it begins to be a prevailing sentiment, both in the army and the country, that a party among them has been bribed to drive things into confusion."

This was in 1780, where a terrible defeat at Charleston, SC, destroyed an American army and gave that city to the British, and then another worse defeat at Camden gave the British a 10 to 1 victory, though the Americans outnumbered the British by 2 to 1. With the traitorous Benedict Arnold, hope had almost vanished from America. Loyalists were terrorizing Patriots and looking forward to seeing these "rebels" hanging.

We read in school that Yorktown in October of 1781 ended the war and gave America independence, but that is not true. The British didn't leave New York City until November 25, 1783.

But that first "civil war" wasn't yet over.  The Loyalists still in and around New York City were forced to leave with just the shirts on their backs or whatever gold or silver they still held and abandoned their property to whoever among the Patriots decided to take it over.  

Think of the Japanese-Americans who were evicted from their homes in early 1942, with their homes taken over by whomever got there first.

That first civil war began in 1775, when all over the 13 American colonies, from what is now Maine to the southern Georgia border, divided into neighborhoods that were either for or against the King. Some towns and areas were much more one than the other. But many were divided. 

As the war began, many people on both sides believed that the war would be over in a few months. But as the years went by, people wearied. By 1780, exhaustion and pessimism reigned.

There really isn't a good book about this. The best thing that I know of are historical novels by Kenneth Roberts. These are scrupulous as to history but give it life by creating characters on both sides. (There is a more recent book called "The First Civil War", but truth to tell, it just isn't very good.)

Years ago, in this letter I recommended a book by Roberts called "Oliver Wiswell" which told about the Revolution from the Loyalist point of view. Many readers wrote with thanks.  

There is another book called "Rabble in Arms" which begins with two brothers from Maine (a town then called Arundel —now Kennebunkport— a fancy summer resort you've heard of). They'd been living in London and came home in early 1776 to find a country that had changed quite a bit.

By early '76 in that neighborhood of "rebels" or Patriots (depending on your views), just living in London made the rebels suspicious. This was a country where, according to John Adams, one third were for independence, one third were against it, and the others were on the fence, waiting to see what would happen.

In early 1776, when the war was new, patriotism ran high. By 1780, the atmosphere had changed dramatically: people of all types had become sick of the war, as you see by those letters.

But in Arundel, when those brothers came back, they learned from their family that those for the King had suddenly disappeared. No one talked about them. The brothers found out that the letters they had written had been opened before they arrived at the family.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: The Currency

The "Sons of Liberty", a rebel group, was in charge of the area.  If you weren't with them openly, you were regarded as suspicious. In the shops they owned they charged you 50% more. Moreover, they only took the newly printed paper money which was already losing value. But to use it was to proclaim your position. And to talk against that currency was even worse than having sons in England.

Shopkeepers didn't like to sell to people considered suspicious: if they did, they might be suspected themselves. Some of them did sell secretly to those under suspicion, but they only accepted the new paper money at par with gold and silver, or only made change in it at par. And if you weren't Sons of Liberty, they charged you 50% more than the stated price.

It all came down to money, to the currency. It was paper, newly printed, and in fact worthless: it was backed by nothing. But to embrace it as valuable as gold and silver was to proclaim your loyalties for independence.

Taking it as change for what you bought at par with gold or silver had to be done. If you complained, as one letter put it, "it would mean that we were spreading reports about the currency, and instead of being ruined gradually, we'd be ruined quick."

Worse, there'd been a drought the year before: the crops were terrible. And on account of so many men being away in the new Continental Army, there was a food shortage. The women had to do those farming chores that the men had always done. In early '76, in those early days of the war, men were eager to join up.  

The target in New England was Boston. That's where the British army was and the new Continental Army with George Washinton at its head was outside of Boston thinking of ways to throw the Brits out.

Some people made money. Those who speculated in, say, corn, the year before and bought, in effect, 'futures' were by early 76 charging the "Sons of Liberty" two dollars a bushel: paper money, of course. 

But for those with sons just back from London, and thus under suspicion, they had to pay three dollars. And that only in secret, and only if they paid in real money, hard money. In other words, gold, silver, or copper. They knew the score. In fact, everyone did.

The local big-wig in Arundel who had speculated successfully and had corn when everyone wanted it was named Theodore Lyman. He was careful to do favors for the Sons of Liberty and was public about it.  So it didn't do to complain to him or about him.

But if you had sons in London, or spoke in favor of the King, or expressed any pro-Loyalist sentiments, people turned against you in those early years.

And it went farther than just buying corn. You had no rights any longer, said the parents of those brothers just returned from London whose letters home had been opened. You could be assaulted or blackmailed, or slandered, and you had no standing in the law courts. You could not make a will or even a deed of gift.

You could neither buy nor sell land if you were under suspicion. The Loyalists simply left their homes and escaped to Canada. Or no one knew where they went or what happened to them: in fact, it didn't do to even ask questions about them. There were some things that you just didn't want to know, or it would make things harder for you.

And if you think about it, it makes sense. After all, this was a revolution in the minds of people unlike any other they had known or read about. To change from one form of government to another was not going to be easy. Kings had been rulers of nations for thousands of years. The idea of governing yourself, of meeting together and voting on things: that was a revolutionary idea.

The only surprising thing was that it wasn't bloodier than it turned out to be, and it turned out to be bloody enough, from one end of the country to the other. If you think that every American got together in 1776 and suddenly decided to throw out allegiance to the King, with all his soldiers and navies standing by... if you take even a minute to think about it, you'd realize how foolish an idea that was.

Instead, it was very messy. And most often, where the "rubber met the road" was in the currency. What was to be used as the real currency? How was it to be valued? How could you make a change in it? What did it buy?

In everyday life people weren't in what we now come to call "lockdown". They still visited each other. These were small towns. People didn't have radios or TVs or the internet. They were sociable.

But only up to a point. When people visited you, or you visited others, you all start out by being careful. Social actions were lubricated, then as now, with alcohol.

And when that flowed, then as now inhibitions fell, and true feelings could easily come out. And as one put it, "half of them don't care who wins or loses, as long as they can go on making a dollar. That's all they think about! Money!".

But really, have times truly changed that much? Especially during times of great uncertainty and even revolution? Isn't it natural for people to think about how they're going to be able to put food on their family's table? When it all comes down to it, isn't that what people still care about more than what your political views are? 

In the novel, one of the newly arrived sons is disgusted by what he finds when he returns. "Theo Lyman’s been charging my father $3 specie (gold or silver) for a bushel of corn. Why suspect father of being a public enemy when there's bastards like Lyman running around?"

"But Lyman's a Patriot. He planted a row of elms to celebrate the Battle of Bunker Hill (that past June 1775)."

Another says, "You've got to meet a few Tories (those loyal to the King) before you know how people think about them. Why over in Albany [New York], there's so many of 'em that they go prowling thru the woods, skinning Patriots and making saddlebags of the skins that they sell in New York. That's why we have to avoid Albany if we want to go to New York, on account of those damned Loyalists or Tories or whatever you want to call them."

Says brother Peter (in whose eyes we see all the book’s action) "But my father's no Loyalist!: Why he's no more of a Loyalist than I am. I've been aching to get home and fight the British ever since I heard Burgoyne was going to use Hessians [German mercenaries} and Indians against us."

His brother agreed. "That's why we figured we had to get back fast. The British figure on landing in Quebec and marching down the Hudson to join Howe in New York. The idea is to split the colonies in two, cut off New England from the rest of the country and then smash the rebellion by smashing New England.''

There's so much in this book; history that you've never heard before. In this case, from first being angry at the Sons of Liberty, they join them. That's what happens in all periods of uncertainty: people's views shift and shift again. And if they have weapons to back up those views, they'll use them.

"Rabble In Arms" describes a country where Americans fight and kill each other over different political views. If you were lucky enough to live in a neighborhood or town or city where most people agreed with you, you made out. But there were others who didn't.

If we ever have a civil war again, it will be like that one, not the one from 1861 to 65. In that "Civil War' taught in schools, it was state against state. But in the 1770s and early 80s it could be neighborhood vs neighborhood, and that's probably what it could be like in many parts of the U.S. Much worse than the 1860s. The weaponry has become far more deadly. 

If you are among those 40% or more who think the U.S. will have a civil war within the next decade, you should read about what it was like 250 years ago.

I haven't yet seen the new "Civil War" movie, but I'm very interested to see how they handle the currency. Almost no moviemakers spend time thinking about this subject: how are people paying for things? They can't just steal everything all the time.

I'm willing to bet there won't be much treatment of how people pay for things. Money, the currency, that's always where the rubber meets the road in all civil wars. Which money does each side use? Just paper money that is churned out and designed to lose its value? Or actual hard money: gold, silver, or copper?

It would be a huge surprise to me if this new movie even mentioned that aspect of the civil war. It has always struck me as strange: money is so important in this world. Especially in the world of Hollywood: they go on strike for more of it.  

And yet in a movie about a new civil war in America, let's see how they treat it, or whether they simply ignore it.

How To Buy "Rabble in Arms"

This is such an excellent book that I think everyone should take a look at it. Unlike a nonfiction academic tome, "Rabble in Arms" tells the story of real people, having to face terrible choices. Maybe the same type of choices Americans will have to face in the not too-distant future.

It is much better than the more academic "Our First Civil War", but that book does have good things about it.

Rabble in Arms is available in several ways on Amazon. From a lovely leather-bound hardback to a $9.49 Kindle version, or an even cheaper mass market paperback.

The Amazon review is excellent:

"The second of Robert's epic novels of the American Revolution, Rabble in Arms was hailed by one critic as the greatest historical novel written about America upon its publication in 1933. Love, treachery, and idealism motivate an unforgettable cast of characters in a magnificent novel renowned not only for the beauty and horror of its story but also for its historical accuracy."

This is the second of his epic novels. I've skipped over the first only because this is the one which best describes the horror of America's first civil war. You watch as citizens sort through the type of government they most want to build for themselves.

It is said that fewer people like to read. That's a shame: this is a book that truly stays with you. You can find it here.

A New Book About "Our First Civil War"  

There is indeed a book about "Our First Civil War". It is even called by this title. Moreover, I own it. It is by an author whose works I've read and enjoyed in the past: H. W. Brands. I bought it the day it came out in November of 2021.   

I've just read it. It's not bad and tells the story almost no one knows. But it shows how well a great historical novelist like Roberts can get inside the minds of characters and, using the actual words of that time, weave a spell-binding story and make characters come to life.  

This new book is at its best when he quotes people like George Washington in words you've never heard before… when he re-captures Boston and the Loyalists scramble to escape with the British, not all of them have room. Some stay and commit suicide rather than be captured by the rebels under Washington, who joins in the general hatred of them. Writing to his brother John, Washington expresses his private feelings: " One or two have done what a great number ought to have done long ago, committed suicide."  

And if a man as somber as Washington expressed such hatred, you can imagine what Americans of more emotional persuasion thought and did. After the war, it became the way of Americans to cast the late struggle as a war between British and Americans. The Loyalists were forgotten about, conveniently so, as they didn't fit comfortably into the narrative we have come to know ever since. The real story was just too ugly and bloody to tell in whole.  

Brands tells the story of Ben Franklin's break with his Loyalist son William, a story well known to anyone who knows Franklin's story. But at least that didn't come to violence: Ben never repaired that broken bridge again, however.  

He also tells the story that black slaves had to face, whether to go over to the British and their promises of freedom or stay as slaves to the 'patriots' fighting for their own freedom, but not for their that of their slaves. That was a brutal choice to make, and those who went with the British and got recaptured could expect to be put to death or sold to the West Indies.  

Free blacks in Rhode Island did not have to make this choice and joined Washington's  

Continental Army. It was the first, and only time the U.S. Army would be integrated until 1947. Washington was so impressed with these soldiers that it changed his mind about what blacks could do: at one point the "Rhode Island Line" was over half ''free men of color''.  

Brands tells the story of the pitched battles between Patriots and Loyalist, where the winner slaughtered all the prisoners of the losing side. Yes, it was ugly. But what he can't do is to go into every neighborhood and capture the suspicion, silences, and quiet actions, including escapes into Canada, and outright violence of the hatred between Americans on both sides against the other.

That's what a great novelist like Roberts can do, in examining just one neighborhood. But there were many like that one in Maine, and the ones down south were often much more violent.  

Brands' “Our First Civil War”, tells some interesting stories. But the point of that war was that it was so scattered, not pitched battles like the 1861-65 war, but thousands of small, ugly engagements that tore apart friends, families, and neighborhoods. And that is the type of civil war we'll see in America if we have a third civil war.

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