Description

Number one New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson, known for The Splendid and the Vile, delivers a riveting account of the five crucial months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of the Civil War. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult,” this book brings to life one of the most perilous periods in American history.

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln secured a narrow and unexpected victory in a deeply divided nation. As tensions mounted, Southern extremists pushed closer to secession, with state after state breaking away while Lincoln stood powerless to halt the unraveling of the Union. Though slavery lay at the heart of the crisis, both North and South fixated on one strategic location—Fort Sumter, a remote federal stronghold in Charleston Harbor.

In this gripping narrative, Larson explores the crucial months between Lincoln’s election and the first shots of the Civil War, a time of misjudgments, political infighting, and personal tragedies. Lincoln himself would later confess that the ordeal was so overwhelming that had he foreseen it, he would have doubted his ability to survive it.

Central figures in this drama include Major Robert Anderson, the Union commander at Fort Sumter—a former slave owner torn between his Southern roots and his loyalty to the United States; Edmund Ruffin, a fervent secessionist who fuels rebellion at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a wealthy planter, grappling with doubts about both her marriage and the morality of slavery. Meanwhile, Lincoln finds himself at odds with his own secretary of state, William Seward, as he struggles to prevent a war he knows may be inevitable—one that will ultimately claim 750,000 American lives.

Utilizing diaries, secret correspondence, plantation records, and slave ledgers, Larson crafts a compelling and haunting political history, illustrating the forces that led to America’s most devastating conflict. His vivid storytelling serves as a stark reminder that nations often fail to recognize impending disaster until it is too late.