“The Demon of Unrest”

“The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War” (2024) is Erik Larson’s recounting of the secession of South Carolina from the Union just as Abraham Lincoln is about to assume the Presidency. Secession is driven by deep, deep hatred for Yankees, abolitionists especially, and the absolute conviction that the plantation economy, “Cotton is King,” and privileged life for slaveholders are fully supported by even the God these folks worship.

There is bitter resentment of the perceived intrusiveness by northerners in Southern life, without care about the even more extreme intrusiveness in the lives of slaves, aside for fear always of uprisings from within. 

The book strikes this writer as a complement to Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park,” (1814) about which this column spoke a few weeks ago. Both books, Austen’s English novel and Larson’s American history, deal closely with individuals of privilege, who are very certain of their own special place in life, even at the expense of others. They carry a certain obliviousness about this in all that they do. They live in fine society, all taken for granted, with little regard for others born of different circumstances or of skin color. They profit from institutionalized slavery as their due.

Many excellent books have been written about the Civil War. Larson’s still finds a way to be unique. It is about the runup to the war in 1861 and not particularly about the full-blown war itself. It is about the fall of Fort Sumter at the outset and characters of the time who happen in many cases to have been diarists. For others archival documents survive.

Larson draws heavily on those diaries and records to recreate the intensity of feeling on the southern side of the issue. The blind righteousness of purpose, thereby, comes out straight from the written words. So too the foolishness and inability to imagine that uncompromising actions may ignite a years-long war that eventually will lead to about 750,000 deaths. But many are already driven to kill to protect the southern way and its “chivalry.”

There is power struggle within northern leadership, and deception, liberties taken, while the new President is a bit preoccupied with forming his own government. There are questions about his resolve, how strong or weak he may be, after having lived under the presidency of James Buchanon. Buchanon’s outgoing months were dedicated only to avoiding any kind of tumult or responsibility. He simply wished to retire, and coast into that without crisis. Such a crisis was secession, already underway. He could not avoid it, but personally he did.

There is heroism, that of the federal garrison at Fort Sumter under the command of Major Robert Anderson, conflicted as both a southern sympathizer and a man of the Union at once. He makes all the right decisions while lacking ammunition and food and, worst of all, specific orders from Washington.

Larson really does capture the “hubris, heartbreak, and heroism” promised in the subtitle of “The Demon of Unrest.” He speaks to the visceral emotions of people and ambitions, those of a certain class and standing in society in particular. It is they who drove the country to the unimagined mess.

This might be the most powerful of Larson’s books, and he is not already without literary successes along the way, and recognition.