AHC: Have The Civil Rights Movement Result In a Second Civil War

As the title says, find a POD in which the American civil rights movement results in a second civil war.
 
I really don't think you can. Nobody would be willing to escalate things that far, specifically because we all remember what happened last time somebody tried secession.
 
I really don't think you can. Nobody would be willing to escalate things that far, specifically because we all remember what happened last time somebody tried secession.
What if a large unit of a southern state National Guard simply refused to be federalized?
 
What if a large unit of a southern state National Guard simply refused to be federalized?

They'd be disciplined, I guess, and maybe some other state's Guard would move in. I can't imagine them being foolish enough to start shooting some other group of Feds.
 
I can't imagine them being foolish enough to start shooting some other group of Feds.
Especially since there really isn't much public support for the matter. YOu really think many in the South want to start a shooting war over this?
 
I would think the closest you could get would be for things to get way out of hand for a few weeks maybe 3 months tops. And it wouldn't resemble a Civil War as much as it would a nationwide riot where national guard units refuse to be federalized and the military comes in to calm everyone down by pointing rifles and sporadically firing them. But it would have to be an intense succession of idiotic decisions followed by even more idiotic and overreacted responses.
 
I would think the closest you could get would be for things to get way out of hand for a few weeks maybe 3 months tops. And it wouldn't resemble a Civil War as much as it would a nationwide riot where national guard units refuse to be federalized and the military comes in to calm everyone down by pointing rifles and sporadically firing them. But it would have to be an intense succession of idiotic decisions followed by even more idiotic and overreacted responses.
Is this POD not feasible, then? I was thinking of doing a TL of this in the near future.
 
Can't happen with a Cold War going on with the Soviet Union.

You need to change the outcome of the Russian Civil War (or else prevent it entirely) without otherwise butterflying away Nazi Germany or WWII as we know it.
 
Is this POD not feasible, then? I was thinking of doing a TL of this in the near future.

The Great Depression is probably the best time period for a second Civil War, although you'd need a POD even earlier than that for it to really stick. Still, that's been done before by timelines like The Falcon Cannot Hear. Doesn't mean you couldn't do another spin on it, maybe, but the 60's, as chaotic as they were, were never too close to being that violent because there was still a powerful middle ground between Democrats and Republicans that would have opposed splitting the nation over anything.
 
As the title says, find a POD in which the American civil rights movement results in a second civil war.

At best, you get a nasty insurrection. Now, that could be pretty bad. Think southern states in open defiance of federal courts, troops and orders with associated violence and unrest. But an outright civil war isn't going to get off the ground; the insurrection will be crushed long before it gets that far. The military power of the Federal Government in the Cold War/Civil rights era was enormous and the population and economic power of the nation was still in the north. Put another way, it's hard to envision a civil war when the national government has massive air power (and they're backed up by nuclear weapons). While I won't deny that there was a lot of resentment of the CR movement in the South, how many people are going to risk war with a federal government armed to the teeth with destructive weapons unimaginable to the Confederacy? Any state that stuck its neck out could be crushed militarily and economically in a couple of days. A sortie of B-52s based in North Dakota can reach Alabama or Mississippi very easily.

If you want something ugly and hard to put down, forget an outright civil war and think a persistent insurgency with terroristic elements. Die-hard white supremacists murder blacks and CR supporters and carry out terror attacks in Northern cities. They wouldn't have a whole lot of support but they could kick up some real ugliness that might take a while to fully put down. In a technological society such as that which existed in the 1960s, that could be pretty bad in and of itself.
 
This probably isn't what you were looking for, but the civil war could go the other way: the reactionary response to the Civil Rights movement is even stronger and for some reason the North either do nothing about it or supports the Southerns, which leads to groups like the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam becoming more influential, which leads to even more racial tension, which leads to a race war.
 
Someone actually did a timeline on this back in 2009 but I can't remember the name.
I also posted a short-lived timeline about this subject on the ASB forum two years ago now; because ASB is the only way someone can describe such an implausible scenario. This wasn't pre-civil war era polarisation where southerns saw their way of life under attack (well, some of them did, but they remember what happened the first time around) to the point in which they were willing to break from the Union. It's just not happening without a string of really specific events, and even that's pushing it.
 

missouribob

Banned
It's unlikely. The best you can do is the complete segregation of Black Americans along with a South with White and Black insurgencies battling openly along with segregation becoming the national policy. Basically every inner city is walled with National Guard troops surrounding it and the South is a series of military districts with checkpoints and labor camps. I should note this is pretty damn hard to get to.
 
The closest thing possible would be to have King assassinated in 1958 by Izola Curry, a mentally ill woman. He was almost killed after she stabbed him in the chest in OTL. His death prevents some successes in the civil rights movement. Then, you have his absence allow the Nation of Islam and other extremist groups to fill the void created. You then have "Nonviolence" replaced with "any means necessary" as the dominant belief. If you have the perfect storm of Kennedy never being shot in Dallas and Civil Rights Legislation being halted, you'd have even more eventually move over to this camp.

This in and of itself isn't likely to set off anything massive though. You'd need a long decade of assassinations and violent events for moods to sway far enough for mass fighting. However, if you get the volatile mix right, you could see riots by 1967-68. For as bad as OTL 1968 was, you'd need it to be even worse ITTL.

No matter how you get it to that point, its close to impossible to have a traditional Civil War come out of the situation. You wouldn't see a CSA V. USA situation arise, but instead a cultural uprising in the sense that one ideology is going to fight against another (maybe even more) openly in the streets throughout the country. There isn't likely to be any cohesion between the "rebels" either. It would probably look more akin to the riots after the slaying of Martin Luther King in OTL cranked up past 11 with a dash of the Watts and LA Riots. You would also see some coming out in the streets to "put down" the troublemakers on their own only to make the situation worse off.

The response to such a situation could also make things better or worse and it is depending on who is President and when exactly such an event would occur. you could see results that succeed like Little Rock or you could see mass Kent State like disasters. To make a situation this volatile to make things happen to begin with would also make the paths unpredictable once you reach that point.

So that I'm not just saying, "ASB" or "Its impossible", I would describe this situation as one where you could easily get mass fighting between some people, but its not one that enough people will openly take up arms to split a house in two over. More likely, they'll burn the furniture and fuck up the wallpaper until the parents show up and calm the situation down over the course of a few months. I wouldn't expect the incumbent President to have a snowball's chance in hell in the next election.

In short, Civil War, No. Anarchy for a few months, yes.
 
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