The Demon of Unrest Quotes

“South Carolina is too small for a Republic, and too big for an insane asylum.

[James L. Petigru (1789-1863), following the state's vote to secede from the Union in 1860]”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

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

[Alexander H. Stephens, Letter to Abraham Lincoln, December 30, 1860]”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Is any thing worth it? This fearful sacrifice—this awful penalty we pay for war? —Mary Boykin Chesnut, journal, July 26, 1864”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“the crux of the crisis was in fact slavery. This was obvious to all at the time, if not to members of a certain school of twentieth-century historiography who sought to cast the conflict in the bloodless terms of states’ rights.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“I was well into my research on the saga of Fort Sumter and the advent of the American Civil War when the events of January 6, 2021, took place. As I watched the Capitol assault unfold on camera, I had the eerie feeling that present and past had merged. It is unsettling that in 1861 two of the greatest moments of national dread centered on the certification of the Electoral College vote and the presidential inauguration.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.’ ”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“And even more bewildering, what malignant magic brought Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line to the point where they could actually imagine the wholesale killing of one another?”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Lincoln said that elections in America were like “ ‘big boils’—they caused a great deal of pain before they came to a head, but after the trouble was over the body was in better health than before.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“In aiming the first gun fired against the rebellion I had no feeling of self-reproach,” he wrote, “for I fully believed that the contest was inevitable, and was not of our seeking.” 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.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Lincoln would later incorporate in his address: “Americans, all, we are not enemies, but friends—We have sacred ties of affection which, though strained by passions, let us hope can never be broken.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“What the North truly failed to grasp, however, was the degree to which the proslavery writers like James Hammond had succeeded in persuading themselves and their peers that slavery had indeed produced this best of all societies, and that anyone who condemned the institution of slavery slandered the South and the chivalry in particular”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“negotiation is impossible.” With a surprising display of backbone, the president declared: “This I cannot do; this I will not do.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Lincoln said. "Let us believe, as some poet has expressed it:- "'Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.'" p233”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“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?”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“But when commerce, manufacturers, the mechanic arts disturbed this condition of things, and amassed wealth that could pretend to more lavish luxury than planting, then came in, I fear, this demon of unrest which has been the utmost sole disturber of the land for years past.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“In 1860, the South as a whole had 3.95 million slaves.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“when the country lurched toward catastrophe, propelled by hubris, duplicity, false honor, and an unsatisfiable craving on the part of certain key actors for personal attention and affirmation. Many voices at”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Lincoln said that elections in America were like “ ‘big boils’—they caused a great deal of pain before they came to a head, but after the trouble was over the body was in better health than before”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“When men come under the influence of fanaticism,”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“The Democratic Party must be permanently dislodged from the government. The reason is, that the Democratic Party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slaveholders.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“charge: “Invariably some sleeping dead head long forgotten or passed over. Young and active spirits ignored. Places for worn out politicians seemed the rule—when our only hope is—to use all the talents God has given us.” She described Governor Pickens as “a great old horse fly buzzing and fuming and fretting.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“implacable.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“I fear nothing, care for nothing, but another disgraceful back-down of the Free States,” he told Lincoln. “That is the only real danger. Let the Union slide—it may be reconstructed; let Presidents be assassinated—we can elect more; let the Republicans be defeated and crushed—we shall rise again; but another nasty compromise, whereby everything is conceded and nothing secured will so thoroughly disgrace and humiliate us that we can never again raise our heads, and this nation becomes a second edition of the Barbary States as they were sixty years ago.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Party malice’ and not ‘public good”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“malice”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“I now write this, as a purely private and social letter, to say I shall be much gratified to see you here at your earliest convenience, when and where I can personally testify my appreciation of your services and fidelity; and, perhaps, explain some things on my part, which you may not have understood.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“a like position, can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried.” Lincoln would turn fifty-two the next day. The death he referred to was that of his second son, Edward, who had died in 1850 just shy of his fourth birthday, the cause thought to have been tuberculosis. “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.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“At length Lincoln climbed onto the end platform of a train composed just for this first leg of his journey, a small but cheery “Special” with a locomotive and wood-filled tender, baggage car, and a single bright-yellow passenger car. The locomotive was a tried-and-true 4-4-0—four unpowered small wheels on a guide “bogie” up front, four giant fifty-four-inch-diameter drive wheels under the cab and body—built by the Hinkley Locomotive Works of Boston, and, per custom, given a name: “L. M.Wiley.” Whether Lincoln knew it at the time or not, the engine’s namesake, Leroy M. Wiley, sixty-six, a wealthy director of the Great Western Railroad, was a slaveholder from Alabama with plantations in Eufaula and Macon County. He would soon be declared an “alien enemy.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“the Democratic Party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slaveholders.”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“It is getting to be a great many years since I have ceased to do what I would, and been forced to do what I could, That is the lot of all flesh, I suppose---But oh it would be lovely sometimes to cut duty, and go on a -bust-.

[Varina Davis, Letter to her father William Burr Howell]”
― Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War