Will America Have a Second Fort Sumter?

With each passing day, it is starting to look more like a question of “when” and not “if”…

Six days after South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, Major Robert Anderson of the U.S. Army relocated his troops from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie to the better fortified Fort Sumter. However, the Confederates organized a naval blockade that prevented Anderson and his men from being resupplied by a ship sent by President James Buchanan.

The stalemate continued until Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president on March 4th, after which he informed the governor of South Carolina, Francis Wilkinson Pickens, that he planned to send more supply ships to Fort Sumter. The Confederate government responded by issuing an ultimatum to Maj. Anderson demanding his immediate withdrawal, which he promptly ignored.

At 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861, Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard gave the order to open fire on the Union forces stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. The tinder box had been lit, and America’s Civil War began in earnest.

Those first cannon volleys initiated four years of bloodshed and death that ripped America in two and claimed the lives of an estimated 620,000 soldiers on both sides, while another 876,000 men were wounded, captured, or listed as missing in action. Roughly 50,000 civilians and 60,000 slaves also died as a direct result of the war.

Fast forward 160 years from the end of the Civil War to what increasingly appears to be the foundation of a second one. Think I’m kidding or being melodramatic? Consider the following…

Podcaster Joe Rogan recently said on air that America is at “Step 7 of 9” on the road to inevitable Civil War… and radio host Glenn Beck agrees.

Step 1 is the Loss of Civic Trust. Both Gallup and Pew polls show that faith in Congress, the media, the judicial system, the FBI, and the federal government are at all-time lows. I don’t know about you, but these days I trust Uncle Sam about as far as I can throw him… which isn’t very far.

Step 2 is Polarization Hardens into Identity. In other words, people no longer consider those with different political views and ideologies as being wrong; they now see them as both evil and dangerous. Goodbye, civil discourse; hello, referring to your political opponents as existential threats to democracy along the likes of Nazis, Hitler, and Mussolini.

Step 3 is the Breakdown of Gatekeepers. Remember when journalists like Walter Cronkite, a closet liberal, used to report the news without bias? Well, those days are long gone… and so is the time when societal institutions like churches, civic groups, the public school system, and statesmen in both parties worked together to maintain law and order, let alone uphold and promulgate a universal standard of morality.

Step 4 is Parallel Information Realities. That means people on both ends of the political spectrum increasingly receive their news and information from diametrically opposed sources. Here is how Glenn Beck put it on The Blaze…

“Conservatism and progressivism are undoubtedly rooted in antithetical worldviews. One sees gender as immutable; the other sees it as a social construct. One believes experimenting on children is evil; the other calls it ‘care.’ One says crime rates are surging in blue cities; the other blames spikes in violence on poverty, guns, and systemic inequities. One sees secure borders as a critical protection for citizens; the other calls it inhumane and xenophobic.”

There is no longer any middle ground… and with each passing day, the two sides become more polarized and more entrenched in their positions. Sounds like Charleston harbor, circa April 1861, doesn’t it?

Step 5 is the Loss of the Natural Rule of Law. Glenn Beck calls this the “pivot point”… and he may be right. According to a YouGov poll, 67% of Americans believe that the judicial system is used for political purposes. That may be why some of the January 6th defendants were given lengthy prison sentences while the BLM and Antifa rioters during the “Summer of Love” in 2020 went Scot-free, despite causing an estimated $2 billion in damages to cities across America.

A two-tiered justice system – one for the rich and powerful and one for the poor and downtrodden – is not sustainable. Neither is a system that is used to shelter those who are politically well-connected while simultaneously punishing those who oppose the party in power.

Step 6 is the Normalization of Political Violence. The latest PBS News/NPR Marist poll shows that nearly a third of Americans now believe political violence may be necessary to get the country back on track. That's up from 19% just a year-and-a-half ago, and follows a series of high-profile attacks, including the June killing of a Democratic state legislator and her husband in Minnesota, and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah in September.

Meanwhile, a recent YouGov survey found that 72% of Americans said political violence is never justified, while 11% said it can sometimes be justified. Another 12% said they’re not sure, and 6% preferred not to say, so you can read into that what you will. The September 10th poll also showed that the more liberal respondents were, the more likely they were to say violence can sometimes be justified.

A quarter of respondents who identified as “very liberal” said violence can sometimes be justified to achieve political goals, along with 17% of those who identified as “liberal,” 9% of moderates, 6% of those who said they’re “conservative” and 3% of those who identified as “very conservative.” That means that 42% of Americans who describe themselves as liberal or very liberal think that political violence is sometimes O.K. versus just 9% of those who call themselves conservative or very conservative.

Hmmm… sounds to me like – despite the media portrayals to the contrary – political violence is becoming more and more a left-wing option.

Even more troubling is the fact that the younger the respondent, the more likely he or she was to think that political violence is justifiable. Twenty-six percent of liberals under 45 years old found nothing wrong with political violence whereas only 12% of liberals 45 and older agreed.

When asked whether it’s acceptable for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, liberals were again more likely to say it’s usually or always acceptable with 16% holding this position, including 24% of “very liberal” respondents and 10% who said they identify as liberal but not very liberal. Conversely, only 4% of conservatives and 7% of moderates held this view, so you tell me which party is responsible for ramping up the violent rhetoric?

Wait… it gets worse. Much, much, worse.

According to a snap poll conducted just five days after the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, PA in July 2024, the Manhattan Institute reported that one-third of all Democrats agreed with the following statement: “I wish Trump's assassin hadn't missed.” And a NCRI poll showed that 55.2% of left of center respondents thought that assassinating President Trump would be at least somewhat justifiable.

I simply cannot wrap my head around that type of evil and irrational thinking.

Step 7 is the Rise of Militias and Parallel Forces, something that we are beginning to see with organized groups funded by George Soros and others targeting ICE officers and other immigration officers who are simply doing their jobs… and who knows what is really going on behind the scenes?

Step 8 is the Trigger Event. Leading up to Fort Sumter, it was only a matter of time before something sparked a military confrontation between the industrial north and the agricultural south, which was heavily dependent on slave labor.

In similar fashion, it took the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor for the United States to declare war on Spain in 1898, and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to initiate World War I. The sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915 helped draw America into that European war two years later and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, led to a declaration of war the following day.

What (or who) will it take to walk America back from the brink of a second Civil War? Will we realize that, as Americans, there is more that unites us – including our shared history and our common values – than divides us? And will God raise up a Lincoln-like statesman who will call us to “the better angels of our nature”?

Or, heaven help us, have we already splintered so far apart that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put us back together again?

Time will tell… but time is also ticking.