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

by Erik Larson

Always ready to feel affronted and to express outrage, Charleston seemed particularly inflamed. Announcements in two city newspapers called for the interrogation of every male citizen to “learn whether he is for us or against us in the conflict now waged by the North against our property and our rights.” Outsiders and free Blacks in particular merited close interrogation. Scrutiny became aggressive. Despite a lack of evidence as to their true attitudes toward slavery, two South Carolina teachers with Northern roots found themselves expelled from the town in which they lived. One newspaper defended the action with the argument that since the teachers were from the North, they were “necessarily imbued with doctrines hostile to our institutions.” The newspaper provided the emphasis.

“When men come under the influence of fanaticism, there is no telling where their impulses or passions may drive them.”

In the course of the evening’s conversation, Russell heard much about the South’s obsession with honor, including a vehement defense of dueling. “The man who dares tamper with the honor of a white woman knows what he has to expect,” one guest said. “We shoot him down like a dog, and no jury in the South will ever find any man guilty of murder for punishing such a scoundrel.” The commissioners revealed an intractable belief that Northern men were cowards. As evidence, they cited the 1856 caning of Republican senator Charles Sumner, a fervent critic of slavery, in the Senate chamber and his refusal to challenge his attacker to a manly duel. Here their argument abandoned logical constraint: As they saw it the violence of the assault was Sumner’s fault, never mind that his assailant, Rep. Preston Brooks, struck first and from behind while Sumner was seated at his Senate desk, as Russell reminded them. The commissioners brushed this aside; Brooks, they said, struck “a slight blow at first and only inflicted the heavier strokes when irritated by the Senator’s cowardly demeanor.” When the conversation turned to slavery, it seemed to Russell to slip all tethers to reality. “The gentlemen at table asserted that the white men in the slave States are physically superior to the men in the free States; and indulged in curious theories in morals and physics to which I was a stranger.”

Many prayed. “These women have all a satisfying faith,” Mary wrote. “ ‘God is on our side,’ they cry.” But when Mary and Mrs. Wigfall were alone with their tea, they asked each other why God would be on their side. “We are told, ‘Of course He hates the Yankees.’ ”