Unless you’ve been living in a cave, or in a coma, or otherwise cut off from daily life, you know America is deeply divided, probably the most divided since the dark days of Vietnam and Watergate. Some argue it’s as bad at that mother of all divisions, the Civil War, though I’m not willing to go that far.

Throughout much of our history, Americans were divided. Take the Revolutionary War. We like to think of it as a gang of ragtag rebels banding together to pull off the impossible. It’s a beautiful image. Unfortunately, it’s far from the fact. The War of Independence was as much a civil war as it was a revolution. Roughly one-third of the colonists were Patriots, another third were Loyalists who thought King George III of the United Kingdom was A-OK, and the final third didn’t commit to either side and tried to keep their heads low until the storm blew over.