The military planner who becomes lost in the fog of war rarely notices the onset of the fog. It comes on gradually, the sum total of many small uncertainties...There is a little patch of mist here, another patch over yonder, a slow-thickening of the haze along the horizon, the sky turning gray and sagging lower over the woods, sunlight fading out imperceptibly...and then suddenly, the horizon has vanished altogether, there is fog everywhere, and the noises that come from the invisible landscape are unidentifiable, confusing and full of menace...Catton, Terrible Swift Sword 295-6.

The same could be said, with even greater force it seems to me, of nations in the run-up to and at the onset of, civil war. God, both nations, the leaders and people, were in a fog right before and at the beginning of the Civil War.

It reminds me of today. "Small uncertainties," "a little patch of mist," the appointment of Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, "another over yonder," William Rehnquist's elevation to Chief Justice, "the sky turning gray," "sunlight fading," Clarence Thomas' appointment, "haze thickening," Samuel Alito's appointment, "the horizon vanishing", and with it abortion rights after fifty years; boom! the creation of a new right, private gun possession for unmilitary purposes. Now "fog everywhere" "and the noises unidentifiable, confusing, full of menace."

"And then suddenly": November 6, 1860 the South secedes; again on November 8, 2016, and the lights go out all over the land. 

Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Biden would be Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan in reverse chronology. Biden is also the early Lincoln, promising bipartisanship, the union forever, ignoring the fundamental issue, slavery then, anti-democracy in the other, both trying to win back the South. The nation already split, on November 3, 2020 the people took a step back back and drew its collective breath: we do not want civil war now, we did not want it then. But it was too late in both cases. The South was gone then and now. The first shots were fired hardly before the inauguration of the new president in 1861 and in 2021 the first shots occurred before the new president was even sworn in. I think the first shots in the second American Civil War were fired on January 6, 2021, but it's foggy.