The question has arisen in recent years in a manner unseen since at least the 1960s. Given the political conditions of extreme polarization, a dearth of public civility, hard-line partisanship as well as a dramatic decline of trust in major institutions, is the United States on the brink of a constitutional, social, and political breakup? In what ways has it already happened? How can we measure such a question? The best way to examine this question is to look deeply at our history, at those times when the American republic did break apart, in the 1850s and then again in the 1930s and 1960s. In this lecture, David Blight examines this history, especially the decade that led to the Civil War, as a possible means of understanding where we are today. It also draws on the past to grasp, as best we can, the current crisis of American democracy in this age of a growing popular authoritarianism and the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Finally, the lecture also suggests ways that this crisis of meaning and institutional survival in America is a severe test of how Americans are using history to inform our times and to fight for its control.

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