Historians Don’t Think a US Civil War Is Likely—but They’re Still Nervous

“We either had to use shotguns,” Alameda County sheriff Frank Madigan said at the time, “or retreat and surrender the city to the mob.”

The response to what became known as Bloody Thursday got so out of hand that helicopters dropped CS gas—a more intense form of tear gas, the same one used by the FBI against the Branch Davidians at Waco—onto the protesters. Wind pushed it into a hospital.

Fog of War

This is where Matt O’Brien, an Ohio-based historian specializing in 20th century Ireland, sees a…