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

by Erik Larson

On November 22, 1860, James Clement Furman, a prominent Baptist minister and first president of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, published an open letter that encapsulated the South’s great abiding fear of what would happen if slavery were abolished. “Then every negro in South Carolina and every other Southern State will be his own master; nay, more than that, will be the equal of every one of you.” Another Southern orator, quoted in the New York Herald, issued an even more vivid warning. “What will you do with these people? Will you allow them to sit at your own table, marry your daughters, govern your States, sit in your halls of Congress and perhaps be president of the United States?”

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

To fire, he knew, was to ignite the war everyone feared. The state’s forces—planters, planters’ sons; the chivalry—held themselves to an almost cult-like sense of honor that would leave them no choice but to fire back with every gun at their disposal. They seemed, in fact, to be hoping for just such a pretext.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” they wrote in their official declaration. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

whatever I might think of the merit of the various propositions before Congress, I should regard any concession in the face of menace the destruction of the government itself.”

“To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington.” Only with God’s guidance and support, the same that “directed and protected” George Washington, would he succeed, he said. “Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To him I commend you all—permit me to ask that with equal security and faith you all will invoke His wisdom and guidance for me.” By this point, witnesses agree, as rain fell and Lincoln visibly struggled with powerful emotions, a veil of eye-glistening sorrow descended over the crowd. “With these few words,” he said, “I must leave you—for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.”

“I am leaving you on an errand of national importance, attended, as you are aware, with considerable difficulties,” Lincoln said. “Let us believe, as some poet has expressed it:— “ ‘Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.’ ”

What he did not recognize yet was that there was steel in this Illinois lawyer and that it glinted most keenly when adversaries challenged his resolve.

Maj. George W. Cullum, a stern-eyed Army engineer who had supervised the construction of many U.S. fortifications, among them Fort Sumter, and whose engineering feats included a berm of deftly repositioned hair that closely covered his bald scalp.

As Doubleday saw it, he was fighting for the survival of the United States. “The only alternative was to submit to a powerful oligarchy who were determined to make freedom forever subordinate to slavery.”

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.’ ”

The “expiation” Lee had feared, what Mary Lincoln called “this hideous nightmare,” had come to pass, killing 750,000 Americans. South Carolina alone lost 21,000 men, more than a third of the 60,000 state citizens who fought. Its planters grieved a more venal loss: The end of slavery cost them three hundred million dollars in human capital overnight.