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

by Erik Larson

On Christmas Eve, South Carolina’s secession convention issued a formal “Declaration” to explain to the larger world why the state had decided to exit the Union, composed by delegate Christopher G. Memminger. Unlike the colonial Declaration of Independence with its stirring and forward-looking deposition that all men were created equal (a concept Edmund Ruffin dismissed as “both false and foolish”), this was a declaration of grievance. It did, however, hark back to that earlier declaration in that it quoted, inexactly, Thomas Jefferson’s famous addition, “that whenever any ‘form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.’ ” The United States, the statement argued, had broken its compact with the slaveholding states, mainly in violating the fourth article of the Constitution, which, without directly mentioning slavery, nonetheless made it clear that slaves were property, and that all escaped slaves had to be returned to their rightful owners. The convention’s declaration also cited the 1778 Articles of Confederation, which asserted that each “State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence,” the base upon which Southern polemicists had built their case for secession—never mind that in asserting such rights the declaration also indirectly provided justification for the personal-liberty laws that Northern states had passed to prevent the seizure of...