The Civil War Isn’t Over

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (published April, 2024) is a very detailed study of the events that began with the secession of South Carolina from the United States in December, 1860, and culminating in the outbreak of the Civil War with the firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861. Larson includes a fair amount of background material, but the vast majority of chapters detail what was happening at the fort itself during this time, as well as the communication with the government in Washington and all the surrounding politics during the months before Lincoln became President.

Reading this book to me was like reading current newspaper accounts about one of the depressing wars in our world today. When I read the daily newspaper, though, I’m trying to understand both the present and the future — I don’t know what the ultimate results of significance of each day’s events will be. Today’s wars, as it sadly happens, are hideously violent affairs, and there are many casualties almost every day. In contrast, the small garrison that staffed Fort Sumter was mainly troubled by their lack of supplies and by the tedium of waiting for orders from Washington. While the Civil War is known as a brutal and ugly experience of horror, and death, this lead-up was virtually non-violent. There was too much detail for my taste, and I found quite a lot of the book tedious and not very readable. (I did persist, and only skipped a little, really!)

Occasional Social History

My preference generally is to read social history, including the lives of women and insights about food and personal relationships. Larson’s book has an almost unvaried focus on war and politics, so it’s less my kind of reading. He did include a few observations that were more to my taste, especially quotes from the diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, who lived in Charleston which is on the bay where Fort Sumter is located.  

One passage from another source described how Christmas was celebrated that year — emphasizing the point that the southerners really did not expect their withdrawal from the United States to result in a disastrous war, but that they expected the rest of the country to just accept them as a newly formed nation. The following meal also contrasts drastically to the near-starvation rations of the US troops loyally holding Fort Sumter. A Christmas dinner in Charleston:

“A visiting child, Esther Davis, recalled later how enslaved Black waiters in dark-blue broadcloth brought calf’s-head soup, partridge, wild duck, ham, corned beef, and two kinds of turkey—roast and boiled—and deftly positioned it all on a damask tablecloth. ‘The crowning point of the dinner to us children was when, the table being cleared, simultaneously each person raised a glass and the waiters most dexterously removed the cloth, revealing a second of spotless damask, and dessert was brought in.’ Now came plum pudding, mince pie, cranberry pie, custards, syllabub—whipped cream flavored with wine—and plates piled high with fruit, including bananas, an exotic treat. After dessert the waiters removed this cloth as well, exposing the gleaming mahogany table underneath, and then served a closing course of wine and nuts. Even the children got to drink champagne.” (p. 131)

The Deeply Serious Part

The politics before the Civil War are pretty horrifying. The abolitionists’ views were admirable, though it’s very depressing to hear the horrors of slavery as they portrayed it, and to see how the insistence of Southern states that slaves, as property, had to be enslaved wherever they were. 

The pro-slavery advocates were revolting in their glorification of racial injustice and in dehumanizing the slaves and all Black people. Further, they did this in the name of “Chivalry” — a formal code of conduct and “honor” that was maintained among Southern men, a code that degraded women as well as Black people. Larson traces the evils of this code as a motive for Southern politics throughout the events of the book. I find Larson’s observations about this code very interesting:

“The thing that the South most resented was the inalterable fact that the North, like the rest of the modern world, condemned slavery as a fundamental evil. In so doing, abolitionists and their allies impugned the honor of the entire Southern white race, for if slavery was indeed evil, then the South itself was evil, and its echelons of gentlemen, the chivalry, were nothing more than moral felons. Yet the chivalry … had persuaded themselves of a different reality: Slavery was a positive good; it was endorsed by the Bible and by anthropological observation; even two famed Northern anthropologists, Louis Agassiz and Charles Morton, both of Harvard, no less, had proclaimed on the basis of purportedly scientific research that the Black race was not only inferior, but a different species altogether. If slavery was good, then slaveowners were good, and anyone who said otherwise abraded their honor, something no Southerner could forgive.” (p. 196)

The racism and greed of the pro-slavery arguments are especially revolting. For example:

“On Wednesday, January 9, [1861] Mississippi’s secession convention voted 84 to 15 in favor of immediate exit from the Union and became the second state after South Carolina to do so. The delegates were very clear about their motivation.  

“‘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.’” (Larson, p. 191)

Why I kept reading

Unfortunately, there are many parallels to our own society — parallels that Larson clearly wants the reader to be aware of. For example, just this week in current politics a prominent Republican claimed that slavery and segregation were (get this) GOOD for the Black family in American life! As I read the racist views of Southerners from the 1850s, I thought about these words of columnist Jamelle Bouie, words that still need to be said after over 160 years:

“American chattel slavery was practically defined by the fundamental instability of Black families. The institution rested on the expropriation of the reproductive capacities of the enslaved. Men and women were forced to have children who were then sold for profit. Families were torn apart as a matter of course. Natal alienation was the rule. …

“Enslaved people worked hard to preserve family ties and maintain kinship networks. They married, even as the law would not recognize their unions, and tried to keep their households intact as best they could. But they lived ultimately at the mercy of the master, who could and would destroy those families for profit and personal gain.” (“No, Byron Donalds, Jim Crow Didn’t Create Stronger Black Families,” June 6, 2024)

Our country’s regression to the vicious ideas of the past during the last decade is really depressing. The forces of racism, bigotry, tyranny, and inequality have come back to haunt us. I’m trying to find any cause for optimism, but the similarities to the views that almost destroyed our country in 1860 are ghastly.

Review © 2024 mae sander