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

by Erik Larson

This was hard for the commissioners. They were accustomed to mastery and command and proficient in the art of taking offense; they needed the unalloyed respect of all around them. Alexis de Tocqueville had observed this aspect of the planter class two decades earlier in his Democracy in America and attributed it to slavery. “The citizen of the Southern states becomes a sort of domestic dictator from infancy,” he wrote. “The first notion he acquires in life is, that he was born to command, and the first habit he contracts is that of ruling without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a haughty and hasty man,—irascible, violent, ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his first attempt.”