Republics are forever unsteady and at risk, as our founders well understood. Americans love to believe their history is blessed and exceptional, the story of a people with beliefs born of the Enlightenment that will govern the worst of human nature and inspire our “better angels” to hold us together. Sometimes they do. But this most diverse nation in the world is still an experiment, and we are once again in a political situation that has made us ask if we are on the verge of some kind of new civil conflict. In one of his earliest speeches, in 1838, Abraham Lincoln worried about politicians’ unbridled ambition, about mob violence, and about the “perpetuation of our political institutions”. Lincoln said he felt a deep sense of responsibility inherited from the “fathers” of the revolution. How to preserve and renew “the edifice of liberty and equal rights”. He went on to say, “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?” “By what means shall we fortify against it?” “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step across the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined … could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.” Lincoln did not fear foreign enemies. If “danger” would “ever reach us”, he said, “it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Those words have a frightful clarity even today. Where are we now? Are Americans on the verge of some kind of social disintegration, political breakup, or collective nervous breakdown, as the writer Paul Starobin has recently asked? Starobin has written a new book, Madness Rules the Hour: Charleston, 1860, and the Mania for War, in which he revisits the old thesis that the secession moment represented a “crisis of fear” that led tragically to disunion and war. Psychologically and verbally, social media on the internet, and in talk show television, we are a society already engaged in a war of words. And it has been that way for a long time. We are now in conflict about real and divergent ideas. Are we on the path to suicide as a democracy as Lincoln warned? Commentators and ordinary citizens have been asking how or where in the past we can find parallels for our current condition. The 1850s, leading to the civil war, have many parallels to what we are seeing today. 1. Definitions of American nationalism, just who was a true American, were in constant debate. 2. After the Potato Famine in Ireland the US experienced a huge increase in immigration between 1845 and the mid-1850s, leading to a rapid and powerful rise of nativism, a policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants . Irish and German Catholics were unwelcome and discriminated against. 3. The Mexican-American war of 1846-48, stimulated an explosive political struggle over the expansion of slavery and state’s rights. The south wanted slavery in the new western territories, the North was totally opposed to this. Southerners argued that this was a state’s rights issue and that newly formed states should decide if they would be free or slave, not the Federal government. The two major political parties, the Whigs and Democrats, either disintegrated or broke into sectional parts, north and south, over the issue. Third parties suddenly emerged with success like no other time in our history. First the Know-Nothings, or American party, whose xenophobia (fear of foreigners) and anti-Catholicism got them elected in droves in New England in the early 1850s. And the most successful third party in our history, the Republicans, were born by their opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, supported by Democrats, that would allow Kansas to decide if it would be a free or slave state. In 1857, the Supreme Court (the Federal government) weighed in by declaring in Dred Scott v Sandford that blacks were not and could never be citizens of the US. This most notorious court decision legally opened up all of the west, and for that matter, all of the north to the presence of slavery. So discredited was the Supreme Court among many northerners in the wake of the decision, that the Republicans made resistance to the judiciary a rallying cry of their party. That led to the election of Lincoln in 1860, which became the primary reason cited by the south to secede from the union. They believed they could not co-exist in a nation now led by a political organization devoted to destroying state’s rights. Now let’s not focus solely on the Civil War. American history is riddled with conflicts between the federal government and the states. Each and every conflict was driven by social and political issues. Since ratification of the Constitution, which established a union of states under a federal system of governance, two questions have generated considerable debate: What is the nature of the union? What powers, privileges, duties, and responsibilities does the Constitution grant to the national government and reserve to the states and the people? During the 229-year history of the Constitution, these issues have been debated time and again and have shaped and been shaped by the nation’s political, social, and economic history. The period from 1789 to 1901 has been termed the era of Dual Federalism. It has been characterized as an era during which there was little collaboration between the national and state governments. 1901 to 1960 was marked by greater cooperation and collaboration between the various levels of government. It was during this era that the national income tax and the welfare system were authorized in response to social and economic problems confronting the nation. Between 1960 and 1968, President Johnson’s Great Society program was, a major departure from the past. It shifted the power relationship between state and federal governments toward the national government through the expansion of the welfare system and the increasing use of regulations. This set the stage for the period from 1970 to the present, that saw the tremendous growth of unfunded federal mandates, a huge expansion of federal regulations, and continuing disputes over the nature of the federal power over the citizens of the US. Adding fuel to this fire over a federal government run amuck, we now see the influence of political correctness being inserted into our daily lives by a federal juggernaut. Schools and universities must comply with federal mandates concerning everything from LGBT issues, revisionist history, immigration, prayers in school, and even public expression of patriotism such as the pledge of allegiance. Businesses have now succumbed to the pressure. The federal government will now tell you that you must bake a cake for certain customers. Dolly Parton’s Dixieland Stampede in Branson has now removed the word Dixie for fear of offending someone. Football teams remain in the locker room during the playing of the National Anthem to avoid controversy or lawsuits by players. Statues of founding fathers and heroes of our past are now removed from sight for fear of initiating controversy in our cities. Just last week, a bill was submitted in the Missouri legislature to change the name of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (The Arch) in St. Louis because Jefferson owned slaves. Will the name of our capital city soon be changed as well? How much more can our country take? Have the powers that be driven a wedge into our country from which we may never recover? Was Lincoln right? Is the US about to die by suicide?