The Demon of UnrestThe Demon of Unrest

"On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress: Fort Sumter. Erik Larson offers a[n] ... account of the chaotic months between Lincoln's election and the Confederacy's shelling of Sumter--a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. At the heart of this narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter's commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries to avert a war that he fears is inevitable. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink"--Container.