Larson’s latest nonfiction book takes us from Election Day, November 6, 1860, to the surrender of Union forces from Fort Sumter, taken aboard the Union steamship Baltic, on April 18, 1861. In a short five and a half months, the United States splinters, with South Carolina leading Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas to secede from the Union. After the fall of Fort Sumter into Confederate hands, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee followed, forming the Confederate States of America, led by President Jefferson Davis. Abraham Lincoln, elected in November, 1860, inherited a country already in schism, largely due to the dithering and lack of decisive action on the part of President Buchanan.

Larson describes the slavery system in place in the south, the economics of cotton that depended on slave labor for greater profitability, and the cultural norms of chivalry that arose as a result. Wealthy planters lived a cultured life of leisure, with a complex system based on protecting a man’s honor, including rules for duels, and genteel social displays such as horse races, balls, parades, and teas, where men and women were seen and participated, to establish social standing. Southerners did not consider the humanity of black people, had a sense that blacks enjoyed subservience, and chose not to look upon the slave markets in their cities, the ugly reality of slavery. Southerners lived in fear of a slave uprising, worried that Northern political leaders would abolish slavery, leading to a massacre of southern planters. By this time, most western nations had abolished slavery, making the south one of the last holdouts. The Union may not have yet been prepared (at this point) to declare complete equality for blacks and whites, though most in the north realized that slavery was a moral stain that had to stop. Sometimes the Civil War is characterized as caused by a difference of views on states’ rights, and this is true to a point— the difference being that the southern states reserved the right to maintain legal slavery.

Larson uses diaries, letters, telegrams, and other primary source materials to tell the story day by day, building the dramatic tension leading to the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Mary Chesnut, wife of a South Carolina planter and delegate at the Secession Convention, was a faithful and detailed keeper of a diary, told of the events leading up to the attack, and lived in Charleston through the ordeal. Communications, diaries, and official documents from military participants, political figures, and other significant persons add detail and point of view. From the Union, we include President Lincoln, his Secretary of State William Seward, his top military advisor General Winfield Scott, commanding officer of Ft. Sumter, Major Anderson, and various others. For the Confederacy, we have President Davis, General P.G.T. Beauregard, South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens, and former South Carolina senator James Hammond. Various other voices add context and details such as James and Mary Chesnut, rabid secessionist Edmund Ruffin, British journalist William Russell, and many others who held brief, but significant roles in escalating events to their climax. Lincoln clearly wanted to keep the peace, maintain the Union, and contain slavery, while looking to a negotiated future that would bring the practice to an end. He was under the misapprehension that more citizens in the south wanted the same; while in fact, the institution of slavery and whites’ views of blacks were deeply embedded in the southern psyche. It appeared tragically inevitable that a bloody war between the states was required to finally end the horrible practice. It is hard to believe the level of hatred that had developed on the southern side for northerners, and later by the north for the south. Interesting that very few northerners had ever ventured south, yet still held many assumptions, based mainly on newspaper coverage. Likewise, southerners rarely ventured beyond their mostly rural vista, and were poorly informed regarding the lives and views of northerners. It is the old story of threat to lifestyle, insult to pride, leading to hatred of the other, all of which make the unthinkable, lethal measures, possible. Given the current splinters in social, moral, and economic views in the United States, this is a timely book. It is easy to see how, through plan and mishap, events can spiral beyond our control, leading to tragedies we never imagined could occur. Highly recommended.