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

by Erik Larson

Anderson felt no enmity for the South, per se, though he had little patience for the antics of South Carolina. In a letter from Fort Sumter to an old friend in Washington he wrote, “Like yourself my sympathies are in the matter of the sectional controversy all with the South, but I must confess that I have lost all sympathy with the people who govern this state. They are resolved to cement their secession with blood.” Having grown up in Kentucky, Anderson understood the South and its passions and resentments in a way that the new president, Abraham Lincoln, appeared not to. Slavery was central to that life. Anderson, who was still given to describing enslaved Blacks as “darkies,” embraced the proslavery ethos that slavery was in fact a positive good, both for the slaves and for society as a whole. He accepted without challenge the often espoused argument that the Bible expressly permitted slavery.