Amanda Foreman

Towards Zero: the gruesome countdown to the American Civil War

The North and South had been bitterly divided over slavery since the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, but the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 would prove the point of no return

Coloured lithograph of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, 12-13 April 1861. [Lithograph by Currier & Ives, New York, 1861/ Getty Images] 
issue 10 August 2024

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.

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