Question: How early could the Civil War erupt

A civil war in AMERICA. you could have a governor rebel against Spain and therefore done. Can be done quite early.

But if you mean the USA then after the American Revolution a civil war could erupt because of issues in the Constitution.
 
One man certainly thought it possible in 1819:

"Sir, if dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten must come, I can only say, let it come! My hold on life is probably as frail as that of any man who now hears me; but while the hold lasts, it shall be devoted to the service of my country-to the freedom of man. If blood is necessary to extinguish any fire which I have assisted to kindle, I can assure gentlemen, while I regret the necessity, I shall not forbear to continue my mite. Sir, the violence to which gentlemen have resorted on this subject will not move my purpose, nor drive me from my stand here as the representative of freemen, who possess intelligence to know their rights, who have the spirit to maintain them. Whatever might be my own private sentiments on this subject, standing here as the representative of others, no choice is left me. I know the will of my constituents, and regardless of consequences, I will avow it; as their representative, I will proclaim their hatred to slavery in every shape; as their representative, here I will hold my stand, until this floor, with the Constitution of my country which supports it, shall sink beneath me. If I am doomed to fall, I shall at least have the painful consolation to believe that I fall, as a fragment, in the ruins of my country." http://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_sources/tallmadge_speech_congress.htm
 
The problem is that to have grievances articulable as as States' Rights, you have to have lost your ability to trample on other rights of other states.(1) The South before the Civil War had the ability to demand the passages of Fugitive Slave Acts that were really the NSA spying or Patriot Acts, of their time. They were able to run the table and have a protection of slavery enshrined in the original Constitution, and have that document written so that they got a heck of a lot of extra votes for the people they'd enslaved. And they could get away with this for several decades.

When you consider that the South could demand an especially harsh Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, you see that its hard to have the South feeling insecure enough about its power much earlier than 1860. It's hard to be fearful for your state's rights when you can still trample on another state's rights.

(1) Because when you've lost that ability, then you have to worry about the other states taking offense to the foundation of your entire economic and cultural system, chattel slavery.
 
My instinctive reaction was something along the lines of "if the Short Parliament had put up more resistance to the King......."
 
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