Towards Zero: the gruesome countdown to the American Civil War

Some 100,000 books have been written about the American Civil War since it ended in 1865. That’s hardly surprising, given the four-year conflict’s impact on society, and not just because of the immense death toll, which new estimates put as high as 750,000 – more than the losses from all other wars combined. The effusion of blood created a new nation and a new mythology, anchored on the principles of freedom, equality and democracy.

There is not much room in this crowded field for Civil War neophytes. Erik Larson knows what he is about, however, in The Demon of Unrest – but do his critics? The mixed reception this book has received suggests not. As with his previous best-sellers, the author has taken a single event, the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, in this case, and used it as a highly effective framing device for the immersive story he wishes to tell. 

The actual event was a straightforward one. After holding out against Confederate forces for 108 days, the starving Union garrison relinquished its control of the fort on 13 April 1861. The battle was the point of no return, and although there hadn’t been any fatalities during the 34-hour bombardment leading up to it, a gruesome accident during the 50-gun salute did result in the first death of the war. Neither the Confederate besiegers nor the northern defenders of the fort had any inkling of the hell they were about to unleash on their fellow Americans.

This is not to say they were blindsided by the war. The country had been tearing itself apart over the issue of free vs slave labour ever since the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s. Once slave-grown cotton could be efficiently cleaned and processed by machine, the South went from being an agricultural backwater to an economic powerhouse exporting four million cotton bales a year.