Lines, especially those demarcating nations, are rarely clean during war. A civil war in the United States in 2024 would be a giant yellow-colored map speckled with spreading blotches of blue and red.

Bernice and John Maxwell on their wedding day in December 1942. Courtesy Ted Maxwell The map came into John’s possession during World War II, when he was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces.

NPR's Andrew Limbong talks to Amy Cooter of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies about how realistic an idea of a second civil war is. In the near future, the U.S. president has given ...