Small decisions, big consequences

Author Erik Larson used to say he would never write about the Civil War. But then COVID-19 shut down his book tour for The Splendid and the Vile. As Larson read social media posts comparing pandemic-era unrest to the start of the Civil War, he wanted to understand how that war started. “Everybody assumes that they know the story,” Larson told me. “Fort Sumter is shelled, the war starts—boom.” But as he researched the origins of the Civil War, he said, he was “rewarded endlessly with all these twists and turns.”

Even after a few months of research, he still didn’t commit to writing about it until he watched CNN footage on Jan. 6, 2021. “We thought all these things were gone in the past, and the Civil War, horrible as it was, was at least in the past, right? Suddenly it didn’t look that certain that this was all in the past,” Larson said.

The hefty volume The Demon of Unrest (Crown, 592 pp.) doesn’t feel like it’s talking about the distant past either. The narrative leans on built-in suspense to pull the reader into a saga that’s distinctly personal.

The book shows how antebellum trends, such as Southern chivalry, affected the beginning of the conflict. Or more precisely, how they affected the people of that time, for Larson’s work is overwhelmingly about people.

During 3½ years of research, Larson gleaned material from reams of sources, including letters, telegrams, and journals, to unearth the private conversations and internal musings of generals and politicians but also of a Southern upper-class wife and a British war correspondent.

Larson’s account shows how these individuals’ personal griefs and vices drove some of their choices. We see a grieving widower and father take on the cause of Southern independence. We feel President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s frustration as he watches relations deteriorate during his predecessor’s inaction in the weeks before Inauguration Day.

As tensions grow heavier, the decision of whether the nation will plunge into war often hinges on little, seemingly coincidental details—like a ship mistakenly assigned to two missions at the same time—showing glimpses of God’s mysterious work among the affairs of men. The book does not acknowledge this, though at least one character’s deep trust in God is briefly and positively recorded.

The Demon of Unrest includes some short accounts of cruel treatment of slaves and some individuals’ extramarital flirtations. The book also discusses one character’s sexual exploits, including toward underage youth. But as this material is part of the historical record, Larson could not well have left it out. The subjects are not discussed ad nauseam, and, in one individual’s case, we witness the lunacy of his unwillingness to see his own sin and how his immoral decisions lead to his slowly fading from the political scene.

During the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the North and South died—roughly one-fourth of all Americans who left home to fight. Families and towns from Mississippi to Illinois to New York were deeply and irrevocably affected by the four-year war. America needed to deal with her horrible stain of slavery. But The Demon of Unrest details how the steps that led to the battlefield rested on the decisions of men—who often made those choices because of their foolishness, pride, stubbornness, or even a simple failure to account for details.

That so many lives and futures depended on such seeming happenstance feels pointless. Yet how comforting for the Christian reader to remember that the God of tiny details rules over man’s decisions—now as during the 1860s.

HONORABLE MENTION

Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
by Allen C. Guelzo (Knopf, 272 pp.)

Next in this 2024 Books of the Year special issue: “Busting today’s anti-marriage myths.”