Prequel of the Civil War: The Demon of Unrest

If you haven’t read Erik Larson’s latest book on the Civil War, you will probably think I’m hallucinating when I say the book is intimate, delightful and enlightening. I have read my share of books on the Civil War, which usually focus on Abraham Lincoln and the incredibly difficult decisions he had to make; on Ulysses S. Grant who was beleaguered early on with military losses, but ultimately was victorious; the strategies with which the war was fought; and the tragic loss of lives on both sides.

But Larson’s book takes us into a new realm of understanding about the conflict.

The Demon of Unrest invites us into the period before the Civil War began. Larson’s extensive research tells us about the personalities who were key to the confusion around attacking or evacuating Fort Sumter. The people of Charleston became “spectators” as they watched the skirmishes unfold. He doesn’t ignore Lincoln’s role, but shares Lincoln’s bewilderment about the controversy over slavery and secession that existed:

To Lincoln all this rancor was a mystery. He could not fathom South Carolina’s reaction. An election had taken place; he had won; America’s greatest democratic tradition had been upheld. At no time had he threatened to abolish slavery or emancipate the millions of enslaved men and women who populated the plantations of the South. But fire-eaters and secessionist editors had portrayed him as seeking exactly that.

James Buchanan, the president in office before Lincoln, was depicted as ineffectual; he appeared to want to wash his hands of the whole secession problem and dump it in Lincoln’s lap. Which is precisely what he did.

Once Lincoln was in office, his Secretary of State, William Seward, believed he was more qualified than Lincoln to determine how to respond to current events. He repeatedly took action without consulting Lincoln. He was convinced that the secession of states would lose its power on the Southern population and would blow over in due time. Lincoln believed the same thing for a period of time, until he sent representatives to Charleston to assess the situation. He discovered that secession sentiments were overwhelming and gaining steam. When Seward told Lincoln that he (Seward) was the best person to take charge of events, Lincoln finally realized how Seward was trying to sabotage him and declared it was his own job as president to take charge.

Other characters were featured in Larson’s rendition of the story: Edmund Ruffin, who felt it was his job to rally the states to declare secession. He loved the attention that people gave him as he appeared at state conventions to support this charge. People were fond of this older statesman, and they occasionally indulged his ego:

Out of sympathy or pity, Ruffin was invited by various gun crews to fire their cannon, and so the old secessionist, musket in hand, made his way from gun to gun, drawing cheers as cannon boomed and smoke billowed and projectiles of all configurations flew toward Sumter at seventeen hundred feet per second. He was a popular cannoneer; in all he fired guns twenty-seven times.

Then there was Major Robert Anderson in charge of the garrison at Fort Sumter, a virtuous and principled man, who was stymied repeatedly by the lack of communication from Lincoln. Was Lincoln going to resupply Fort Sumter, where they were nearly out of food? Was he going to evacuate the fort? Communications were also delayed and confused because there were few secure ways to communicate: people in charge didn’t trust the telegraph; letters could take days to be received, to and from the fort; the weather could cause delays in the delivery of messages; and the darkness of night carried its own benefits and limitations for both sides. When Anderson finally learned that he was going to be re-supplied, it was essentially too late: the Confederate Army was already attacking the fort with armaments that had been set up all around the Bay.

And then there is Mary Chesnut, who kept a diary allowing us to follow events from her personal point of view. Her “flirtation” with one of the Charleston men was apparently a somewhat acceptable distraction, although her husband didn’t approve. But a flirtation was a better alternative than a sexual dalliance.

Many other cultural norms were shared in the book: the perception of slavery in the South and in the North; the courtesies extended during warfare; the acknowledgments and honoring of both sides during the early fighting.

Still, Erik Larson doesn’t suggest that the Civil War wasn’t a tragedy:

The ‘expiation’ Lee had feared, what Mary Lincoln called ‘this hideous nightmare,’ had come to pass, killing 750,000 Americans. South Carolina alone lost 21,000 men, more than a third of the 60,000 state citizens who fought. Its planters grieved a more venal loss: The end of slavery cost them three hundred million dollars in human capital overnight.

Ultimately, the country was reunited. The slaves were emancipated. But at a terrible cost to its citizens and to the nation.