John Nickle from Facebook

This is what the prelude to a civil war looks like:

With its southern-dominated Democratic majority, the Senate approved the admission of Kansas as a slave state on March 23, 1858. In the House, the administration could count on at least half of the northern Democrats, as in 1854. But this time, that was not enough to win the battle.

“Battle” was not too strong a word for events in the House. On one occasion during an all-night session, Republican Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania walked over to the Democratic side to confer with a few northern Democrats. Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina shouted at him: “Go back to your side of the House, you Black Republican puppy!”

Replying with a sneering remark about slave drivers, Grow grappled with Keitt and knocked him down. Congressmen from both sides rushed into the melee. “There were some fifty middle-aged and elderly gentlemen pitching into each other like so many Tipperary savages,” wrote a reporter describing this 2:00 a.m. free-for-all, “most of them incapable, from want of wind and muscle, of doing each other any serious harm.”

But Alexander Stephens believed that “if any weapons had been on hand, it would probably have been a bloody one. All things here are tending my mind to the conclusion that the Union cannot and will not last long.”

My point of view:

This is history. It is politics at its worst. It is how division of thinking can be allowed to become outright violence, even among what are considered normally civilized people. These are the reasons the South seceded from the Union. Don’t say that this will not happen today.

This is exactly the type of split that has been happening in Congress over the argument about closing and then reopening the Federal Government. Are you smart enough to see that the separation into political parties just adds fuel to this type of blaze? When we take sides without weighing the pros and cons of an argument, we fail to have the opportunity for compromise.

Compromise is what businesses and governments are built on. Agreeing to disagree and get on with what needs to be done is what made companies grow and America great. America will not be great if our representatives cannot solve their own differences.

We are only as great as our weakest link, and at this moment, it seems to be our elected officials. When we vote next August and November, we need to ensure that the candidates we support can set aside petty partisan differences and get their jobs done. I believe the only way to do this is to elect non-partisan candidates.

©Copyright 2025 by Charles Kensinger