Jill Hutchinson's Reviews > The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

There are so many excellent review of this book that I don't feel I can add much to what already has been written. I have read all of Larson's works and have been fascinated by all of them, with the exception of In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin which didn't particularly appeal to me.

In this beautifully written history of the time leading up to the shelling of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the author provides some little known information (or at least to me) of the political machinations and rumors that were boiling beneath the surface. We follow Abraham Lincoln as he takes office as the President and must face the disintegration of the United States. As states began to secede from the Union to form the Confederacy, he struggled to, at least, keep the upper South in the Union by stating that those states who already had slavery could continue to do so as could those who had seceded. As we know, that was not acceptable and more states seceded.

Fort Sumter, located in the Charleston,SC harbor, became the center of attention as it was a federal facility and SC wanted to turned over to the Confederacy. This is the major thrust of this history as we meet both Federal and Confederate leaders,"fire breathers" and back stabbers involved openly or secretly in the negotiations which were doomed to fail.

I can't begin to touch on all the information contained in this revealing history which ends with the shelling of Fort Sumter and a war that killed 750,000. Larson has written a classic book and I highly recommend it.