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

by Erik Larson

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

“Compromises based on the idea that the preservation of the Union is more important than the Liberty of nearly 4,000,000 human beings cannot be right—The alteration of the Constitution to perpetuate slavery—the enforcement of a Law to recapture a poor, suffering fugitive—giving half of the Frontier of a free Country to the curse of Slavery—these compromises cannot be approved by God or supported by good men.”

As famed historian Samuel Eliot Morison observed, “I wish that some of our evasive historians, our mufflers of great passionate issues, who are trying to persuade the American public that Negro slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, would read the debates in this Peace Convention.”

“The only alternative was to submit to a powerful oligarchy who were determined to make freedom forever subordinate to slavery.”