The Demon of Unrest is the story of events leading up to the Civil War, including Abraham Lincoln’s election. Erik Larson compares pre-Civil War South Carolina (SC) to Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, as she retired from the world, stopped her clocks, and wore her wedding dress forever. It was a state filled with pretentious, self-aggrandizing slavers fed lies by local media about Northerners, the free states, and Lincoln’s campaign. Southerners saw themselves as morally superior and more masculine than the Yankees. As SC seceded from the Union, the Illinois lawyer demonstrated restraint and wisdom as he tried to hold the Union together until the moment SC fired the first shots at Fort Sumter.
In this time (2025) of unrest, our nation’s leaders are turning against allies and neighbors who have been at peace with us for generations. My friends who support this turnaround argue that we should not concern ourselves with what other countries think about America, and the suggestion that such opinions matter is seen as evidence of disloyalty. Larson finds an outside voice that should have been listened to by both sides of the conflict: British Journalist William Howard Russell, who lived in America in the 1860s and reported for The Times in London. His wise observations about America during the build-up to our Civil War add substance and insight to Larson’s work.