Exciting history
One of the finest books I read this summer is by Erik Larson, whose previous work I have managed to miss, though daughter Erica has praised him highly.
This book is The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War.
It focuses on the tense situation leading up to the first shots of the war being fired at Fort Sumter. This lonely outpost on a tiny artificial island was built to guard the entrance to the harbor at Charleston, S.C. It was still unfinished in the spring of 1861, when secessionists demanded that federal troops abandon it and turn it over to Confederate authorities.
On April 12, South Carolina militiamen opened fire from several shore batteries. Heavy bombardment continued for 34 hours, and the brick fort was heavily damaged. Miraculously, only two men were killed, one on each side. The Union garrison surrendered with honor and was ferried to New York by one of the ships that had been unable to reinforce it.
Both sides claimed symbolic victory. The war that followed lasted four years and claimed more than 650,000 lives.
Demon of Unrest tells the story far more vividly than I have related in the last three paragraphs. Erik Larson writes narrative history – history that is structured and narrated like a good story. And he sure knows how to tell a good story!
As far as I can tell, he doesn’t fudge facts in doing it. I have long been interested in the story of Fort Sumter and its defenders, and I’ve read maybe a dozen contemporary and modern accounts. First Blood by W.A. Swanberg offers a more detailed focus on the fort itself, while Larson’s expanded view includes more about what was going on in Washington and elsewhere leading up to the battle.
Colorful characters include the fort’s stalwart commandant, Major Robert Anderson; Captain Abner Doubleday, who fired the first shot in the fort’s defense (and was later said to have invented the game of baseball, though he likely didn’t); and Edmund Ruffin, a fiery secessionist who fired the first shot against the fort.
Larson’s account reads like the best of James Patterson and other pop novelists. He manages to slip in a lot of historical background even as he keeps you turning pages to see what happens next (even if you already know exactly what happens next).
Readers who subscribe to the South’s “lost cause” fantasy will not be happy with Larson. He is not shy about denouncing the Southern ideal of divinely-granted aristocracy as bunk. But his portrayal of the Confederate figures in the story is fair and even-handed (except for, perhaps, his portrayal of Ruffin, who was a polarizing figure even among those sympathetic to his cause).
If you want to delve more deeply into the fascinating story of the attempted assassination of Abraham Lincoln on his way to being inaugurated as president, may I suggest The Lincoln Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer. He’s a novelist and non-fiction writer who would probably have a lot to talk about with Erik Larson.
I don’t mean to cast stones here, but I have recently tried (and failed) to read A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise and the Coming of the Civil War. It’s by David S. Brown, who is a history professor. Though his book has a great title, it reads – alas – like it was written by a history professor. Too bad. In our age of short attention spans and poor educational backgrounds, we need more history written by the likes of Erik Larson.