I'm behind enemy lines, in MA, and there is a good conservative minority here. Thus, any breakup would lead to clashes within both seceeders and seceedees.
Things are so distorted here that in a recent state senator race, the 'R candidate got 35% of the vote with NO money, no name recognition, no bumper stickers/lawn signs/phone calls or standouts; no campaign whatsoever. It's just that a frustrated conservative minority will vote against the single communist party here, no matter who or what is on the ballot, in pure disgust.
Quite correct. Which is why any civil war today would be a much nastier affair than the Late Unpleasantness of the 1860s.
Our Civil War was more a war between sections than a war between neighbors, except of course in the border states, where the war was a great deal nastier than elsewhere, for exactly that reason. In an ideological civil war the enemy is not just the enemy, he’s also a traitor.
Of all great civil wars down through history, ours was fought with fewer atrocities than any other, by a huge margin. Doesn’t mean really bad things didn’t happen here, but look into the English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, etc. civil wars and you’ll see what I mean.