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

by Erik Larson

Something had begun, though exactly what was not yet clear. Was this the start of a war, or the beginning of a new relationship between the Confederacy and the Union? As far as Governor Pickens, General Beauregard, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis were concerned, it was the moment when at last the Union took the South seriously. The Confederacy had reduced and seized one of the most powerful forts in the land, the symbol of Northern tyranny, as three of the Union’s warships stood by. That no one had been killed in the bombardment itself was remarkable given that the Confederate batteries had fired 3,341 shells and balls, and Fort Sumter about a thousand. To the religiously inclined, it was a miracle and seemed a harbinger of peace ahead. Few among South Carolina’s chivalry expected that a real war would result; and even if war did come, they believed it would be short and unremarkable. A common expression often attributed to Col. James Chesnut forecast that the total amount of blood likely to be shed in a war over secession would fill “a lady’s thimble.” Chesnut also made the vivid pledge to drink whatever blood actually did get shed. Here lay the greatest of ironies: In thirty-four hours of some of the fiercest bombardment the world had ever seen, no one was killed or even seriously injured, yet this bloodless attack would trigger a war that killed more Americans than any other conflict in the country’s history.