The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

by Erik Larson

Worse than blackened snow was the prevalence on streets, tavern floors, and hotel carpets of expectorated chewing tobacco. American men seemed determined to mark every standing object with tobacco juice, despite the presence of innumerable spittoons left out for its collection. British visitors invariably found the habit appalling. Before Charles Dickens set out on his 1842 tour of America, he’d heard stories from other travelers about the country’s obsession with chewing tobacco but assumed their accounts were overblown. He found otherwise: “The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone,” he wrote in American Notes, his chronicle of the journey. He found tobacco spoor everywhere. “In all the public places of America this filthy custom is recognized. In the courts of law the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly.” The custom of chewing and spitting tobacco was “inseparably mixed up with every meal and morning call, and with all the transactions of social life.” Target spitting appeared to be a particular preoccupation, though one at which few men were adept, judging by the splatters of brown spit that marked the terrain in front of and around spittoons, fireplace hearths, and lamp posts. “I was surprised to observe,” Dickens wrote, “that even steady old chewers of great experience a...