Some 160 years after the end of the Civil War, the divide between Northerners and Southerners remains, according to researchers.
Alauna Safarpour, a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University and a participant in the COVID States Project, found that people from former Confederate states are more likely to believe that political violence can be justified than residents of states in the Union.
The survey also found that residents of Confederate states are also more likely to believe that it is justified to engage in violent protest right now than their counterparts in the Union or border states.
“A shocking share of Americans seem to believe that political violence could be justified and can be justified right now,” says Safarpour.
Safarpour and his colleagues at the COVID States Project, a multi-university effort that polls people in all 50 states, surveyed more than 20,000 Americans between Dec. 22 and Jan. 17 about their support for violent protests against the US government. Inspectors asked whether violent protests are ever justified and whether violent protests are justified now.
Responses were then grouped by their state's allegiance to the Civil War—Union, Confederate, or border state. Border states are slave states that did not secede from the Union. Americans in states that did not exist during the Civil War were excluded from the analysis.
The survey found that residents of the Commonwealth of Nations are about 2 percentage points more likely than residents of the State of the Union to say that it is “definitely” or “probably” justified to ever engage in violent protest against the government – with 20% of of Confederate state residents to answer the first question in the affirmative, compared to 18% of Union state residents. According to the survey, residents of border states (21%) are about 3 points more likely than residents of the Union to say the violence is justified.
Asked if it is justified to engage in violent protest against the government right now, 12% of residents of the Confederate States of America say yes, according to the survey. This is 2 percentage points higher than the proportion saying yes in border states (10%) and 3 points higher than that of states in the Union (9%).
The authors used a multiple regression analysis to determine that the results did not reflect underlying social and demographic differences, such as partisanship, race, gender, education, age, income, ideology, and attitudes toward black people.
Safarpour says that although the overall number of residents who said violent protest against the government might be justified was relatively low—just about one in five respondents—that shouldn't diminish the findings.
“What January 6th reminded the country at large is that even a small percentage of Americans who engage in violence against the government can do harm,” says Safarpour. “We've seen it with other political violence, like the attack on US Rep. Steve Scalise and Nancy Pelosi's husband.”
The research hits home for Safarpour.
She is an incoming assistant professor of political science at Gettysburg College, which was attacked by Confederate soldiers and served as a makeshift hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg. He also lives in the town of Gettysburg and has seen tourists visit the battle site wearing Confederate flag clothing.
“It's hard to live here and not think about what the impact of American history might be on American politics today, so I wanted to look at that in this research,” says Safarpour.
He added that the investigation is ongoing.
“I think the attitude toward political violence is going to be an ongoing issue, because I think it has quite an impact on the health of our democracy,” says Safarpour.
Cyrus Moulton is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email him at c.moulton@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @MoultonCyrus.
