“The Demon of Unrest,” by Erik Larson. New York: Crown Publishers, 2024. 565 pages, $35.00 (hardback).

Erik Larson is the author of several historical bestsellers, including “In the Garden of Beasts,” one of my personal favorites, which explores the American ambassador’s interactions with the Nazi regime in Berlin. Other smash hits are “The Devil in the White City,” about the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and a serial killer, “Isaac’s Storm,” about a hurricane in Texas in 1900, “Thunderstruck,” about Guglielmo Marconi’s inventions and another murder, “Dead Wake,” about the last voyage of the Lusitania, and “The Splendid and the Vile,” the story of the Churchill family and the Blitz.

In each book, Larson digests a vast array of primary sources and makes the historical events capture the reader as if reading a novel. “The Demon of Unrest” focuses on the months between Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 and the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861.

Because the Civil War starts with this attack, Charleston, South Carolina, plays a central role in the book. This city had been the fifth-largest in the United States in 1800, but had recently lost population and slipped to 22nd by 1860. The city was central to the domestic slave trade, and the 1860 census revealed that South Carolina had 111,000 more enslaved people than it did whites, an imbalance shared with only one other state, Mississippi.

The planter aristocracy viewed themselves as “the chivalry” and “valued honor above all human traits and would happily kill to sustain it, but only in accord with the rules set out in the Code Duello, which specified exactly how a man suffering an abrasion of honor could challenge, and, if he wished, murder another.”

The period of a little over five months prior to the attack on Fort Sumter saw paranoia and hysteria in the South over the fear that Lincoln would abolish slavery and undermine the economic system that supported plantation life.

Rumors spread of slave insurrections breaking out to poison wells and setting plantation houses on fire. Residents held long-term fear of “amalgamation,” where Blacks would merge with whites at all social levels, even replacing them and perhaps even marrying their daughters.

Larson makes extensive use of the detailed diary kept by Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of an activist South Carolina plantation owner. It is interesting that despite her hatred of Northerners, she does not approve of masters fathering children with their enslaved females, and she says that watching a slave auction made her feel sick.

Recently appointed to command U.S. forces in the Charleston area was Major Robert Anderson, who had been born in Kentucky and had formerly owned enslaved laborers. Although he sympathized with the South, he remained loyal to the U.S. Army.

The Buchanan administration failed to act as South Carolina and then several other states seceded from the Union. The longer period that existed in this era then between election and inauguration made this time of rumor and uncertainty even more perilous.

Early in this period, Lincoln stayed in Springfield, Illinois, and avoided making any statement that might set off more fear when he still lacked the power to act.

Anderson’s secretly moving troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter surprised and angered the rebels, who prepared to demand Sumter’s surrender while cutting off supplies and threatening to attack.

Lincoln began his train journey toward Washington and received several warnings that Southern radicals planned to assassinate him when he reached Baltimore. Northerners also feared that Southerners would seize control of Washington and prevent certification of electoral votes or take control of the government and prevent Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4.

Lincoln entered Washington in the middle of the night in disguise, while his family took the regular train from Baltimore. He soon met with representatives to a Peace Convention and learned from a Unionist member from Virginia that if the president used coercion on the seceded states, even he would support secession.

Although this group approved a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution with all seven clauses dealing with slavery, it is interesting to note that although the Senate turned this down, Congress did approve a measure that guaranteed no interference with slavery where it currently existed.

This amendment was forwarded to the states for ratification but was generally ignored because of subsequent acts of war. The tensions continued between Washington and Charleston until the assault on Fort Sumter led to Anderson’s evacuating the fort and leaving the area.

Lincoln’s proclamation calling for volunteers meant that war was inevitable, and no one could have anticipated the loss of life and heavy casualties that both sides would suffer over the next four years.

The author explains his methodology in the Sources and Acknowledgments section: “Whenever I search for a book idea, I look first for a subject that is inherently suspenseful and lends itself to being told as a story with a beginning, middle and end.” He goes on to say that the fun part is finding the revealing details hidden deep within archives, diaries and memoirs. Larson also includes an extensive bibliography, notes and an index.

I fully expect “The Demon of Unrest” to join this author’s long list of smash hits. Although readers will know the outcome of the story before starting to read, they will be grabbed by the tensions within the story and enjoy reading the fascinating details provided along the way of this difficult journey.

– Reviewed by Richard Weigel, History Department, WKU.