Just wondering...

I was thinking today about the US civil war.  Or perhaps I should say the war between the states.  I wonder if the people then thought that civil/political violence was an impossibility.  That it would never come to that.  Do we delude ourselves on this point.  Can we go on hating people with different policy preferences and assigning them the most base of motivations and expect that we won't arrive at violence?  Not violence from some schizophrenic stand-in (that we conveniently say embodies all the worst of our political opponents) but violence from our hands, our fists.  I wonder.  I wonder what our ancestors would tell us about playing with fire.