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

by Erik Larson

According to the 1850 U.S. Census it had a total population of 6,060, of whom 3,184 were white and 2,680 enslaved Blacks; another 196 were free Blacks, leaving the city almost equally divided between races. To address this discomfiting ratio, the city established various mechanisms for racial control. One civic official was an overseer of carts, streets, and “negroes,” all of whom, whether enslaved or not, had a nighttime curfew just like their peers in Charleston, signaled by a bell that in winter sounded at nine p.m., in summer, nine forty-five. No more than five Blacks were permitted to assemble at a time unless a white person was present to supervise them. The city’s white population was a willing audience for a series of lectures given in 1850 by Louis Agassiz, a Harvard zoologist who claimed that scientific observation proved that Blacks were inferior to whites and thus merited enslavement.