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

by Erik Larson

With crisis came suspicion. In Washington the House established a new “Select Committee” comprised of five members given more or less unlimited power to investigate potential acts of treason within the government. The “Committee of Five,” also called the “Treason Committee,” included two Republicans, two pro-Union Democrats from the North, and one Southerner, a Democrat from North Carolina. The committee soon found itself the recipient of confidential intelligence from an unusual source in the highest echelons of Buchanan’s government: his newly appointed attorney general, Edwin M. Stanton. Once the committee convened, Stanton began providing clandestine information on a daily basis to its two Republican members. He left unsigned messages in secret places, including hollow cavities in trees. The members would retrieve these late at night, read them, then put the messages back where they found them. “There is a Northern traitor in the cabinet,” read one such message. “Arrest him tonight. Pensacola has been given up. Stop him before it is too late.” The “traitor” in question was Buchanan’s secretary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey, whom the Treason Committee called to appear at two closed-door hearings.