82 pages • 2 hours read
Erik LarsonThe Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The American Civil War
The Demon of Unrest is set during the critical months leading up to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865. That war—between the Union (often called “the North”) and the Confederacy (“the South”)—killed the most Americans of any war in American history, leaving hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead and forever changing the trajectory of the United States. As Erik Larson’s text describes, the war began with the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and ended symbolically with Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth just days after Lee’s surrender.
The internal nature of the American Civil War made it particularly destructive to the country in both the North and South. Instead of fighting a foreign power, this war pitted Americans against Americans, with many states, families, and individuals having to decide which side to support. Major Robert Anderson and Lee are both examples of the inner conflict permeating this time in American history. Anderson, born in Kentucky and a former enslaver, kept his loyalty to the United States. In doing so, he was forced to fight fellow Southerners. Lee personally owned many enslaved persons and felt he could not fight against his home state of Virginia, so he decided to join the Confederacy despite the betrayal of the country’s unity.
Though the text breaks off just as the Civil War gets underway, the fact that massive bloodshed is on the horizon lends additional gravity to the political strategies and personal tragedies that unfold during the months before the war. For example, James Buchanan and William Seward’s view that reconciliation with the South was still possible seems naïve, given the failure of their attempts to prevent war. Likewise, Mary Chesnut and other Southerners’ jubilation during their secession and confidence in the South’s success takes on an element of dramatic irony, given their future disastrous defeat to Union forces.
Ideological Context: Enslavement, Abolition, and States’ Rights
As The Demon of Unrest reaffirms, enslavement was the central issue at the heart of secession and the American Civil War. By the 1850s, the United States was largely divided into a North and South, with enslavement illegal in the Northern states but legal in the Southern ones. As the country continued to expand westward, new states joined the country, and there was controversy over whether those new states should allow or disallow enslavement. Pro-enslavement advocates feared that—if the new territories became free states—the anti-enslavement factions in the US Government would then grow powerful enough to abolish enslavement outright.
By 1860, a large proportion of the South was made up of enslaved people. South Carolina, for example, had more enslaved people living inside it than non-enslaved people. This concentration of enslaved people made Southern planters and enslavers nervous that any moves toward abolition would cause a violent uprising that would put their lives and property at risk. In 1859, John Brown’s failed rebellion of enslaved workers in the South exacerbated these concerns. Lincoln’s election in 1860 made many in the South fearful that abolition would soon follow, prompting some states to secede from the Union.
To protect the practice of enslavement, some Southern politicians argued that the federal government had no right to regulate laws within their borders. As the conflict over enslavement continued to build, they further argued that their states had a right to secede—leave the United States—just as they had the right to join it. These “states’ rights” arguments were fundamentally tied to the issue of enslavement and contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
Historical Context: The Capitol Assault of January 6, 2021
In a note to his readers at the outset of The Demons of Unrest, Larson draws a parallel between the events of 1860/1861 and the attack on the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. On that day, supporters of outgoing president Donald Trump assaulted the Capitol Building to keep Trump in power by stopping Congress from counting the Electoral College votes that would certify Joe Biden as the next president. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the attack led to several deaths and hundreds of injuries.
The Electoral College vote count was also a potential flashpoint for Lincoln in 1861. Some of Lincoln’s supporters worried that the man responsible for overseeing the count would refuse to do so, since he was the outgoing Vice President, a Southern sympathizer, and Lincoln’s leading opponent in the Presidential Election. While in both 1861 and 2021 the Electoral Count was eventually completed as planned, both events highlight the tenuous nature of the American political system in times of serious political divide.
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