The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War (2024) is a nonfiction work of history by Erik Larson. It follows the tumultuous months between Abraham Lincoln’s election as president in late 1860 and the start of the American Civil War in April the following year. As Lincoln moved closer to taking office, a crisis erupted at the federal outpost Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The conflict over that fort, enmeshed deeply with The Challenging Nature of Honor, became more dangerous by the day, while the South’s drive toward secession led to The Problem of Loyalty Amid Civil Conflict. Meanwhile, Larson keeps the focus on the day-to-day successes and mistakes of the people living amid this dramatic backdrop, constantly exploring The Human Stories Behind Historic Events. Larson is well known for similar nonfiction historical accounts, including The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts, and The Splendid and the Vile.

This guide uses the 2024 Kindle e-book edition of The Demon of Unrest for its references and page numbers.

Content Warning: The source text discusses racism, enslavement, and contains brief references to child sex abuse and incest, rape, and death by suicide.

Summary

In November 1860, Americans elected Abraham Lincoln as their next president. Many people in the southern parts of the country were suspicious of Lincoln. Despite Lincoln’s actual views, southerners worried that he would abolish the practice of enslavement, which still existed in the South at that time. Southerners like James Hammond from South Carolina and Edmund Ruffin from Virginia fiercely defended enslavement as a fundamental part of Southern culture. To protect their right to enslave people, Ruffin and others pushed for the southern states to secede—or leave—the United States and form their own country.

Lincoln’s predecessor, President James Buchanan, did little to slow the move toward secession, instead trying to keep the peace long enough for the crisis to become Lincoln’s problem once he was sworn in a few months later. Buchanan’s attempts to appease both Northern abolitionists—who wanted to outlaw enslavement—and the South upset everyone and contributed to more civil unrest. South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, and other states began to follow.

Once South Carolina seceded, a controversy emerged regarding the federal forts in that state’s city of Charleston. US Army troops—led by Major Robert Anderson—garrisoned the forts but were now surrounded by enemy forces that supported the new Confederacy of Southern states. Charged with defending federal property, but not wanting to start a war by fighting with the Confederates, Anderson and his men made a secret move to the defensible Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The Confederates began building massive fortifications around the harbor in case they would eventually have to take Fort Sumter by force.

By February 1861, the fortifications around Fort Sumter were formidable, and multiple plans by the US government to resupply or support the fort failed. A stalemate lasted for months, with neither side wanting to lead the first attack and incur blame for igniting a civil war between North and South.

Despite concern among Lincoln’s supporters that his opponents would try to interfere with the electoral count, he was sworn in as president. However, an atmosphere of unrest and violence plagued the country. After receiving multiple reports about possible assassination attempts against him, Lincoln had to sneak into Washington for his inauguration in the middle of the night while wearing a disguise. Confederate commissioners arrived in Washington to demand that Lincoln surrender Fort Sumter, but Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, cleverly kept them at bay.

Feeling instinctively that protecting Fort Sumter was the right thing to do, Lincoln dispatched a naval mission to support Major Anderson’s men, but a storm and a miscalculation about a crucial warship made that expedition ineffective. Meanwhile, politicians in Washington continued to debate ways to resolve the secession crisis but could find no acceptable middle ground between the pro- and anti-enslavement factions.

Learning that the federal naval expedition was on its way, on April 12 the Confederate forces in Charleston Harbor demanded that Major Anderson surrender Fort Sumter. When he refused, they began firing cannons at the fort from the many fortifications they had built during the intervening months. The fort’s garrison was vastly outnumbered and outgunned but fired back throughout the day. The fighting continued the next day. Though no one was killed on either side, eventually a fire broke out inside Fort Sumter, forcing Major Anderson to surrender. The Confederate forces allowed Anderson and his men to depart peacefully, with both sides showing respect for one another throughout the conflict.

The fighting at Fort Sumter launched the American Civil War, which killed more Americans than any other war in history. In 1865, after the war ended, Major Anderson and some of his men returned to Fort Sumter to commemorate the Union’s victory. Anderson toasted the bravery and leadership of Abraham Lincoln, not knowing that at that very moment Lincoln lay dying, having been assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth.