Erik Larson talks Buchanan, Lincoln and Civil War book ‘The Demon of Unrest’ before Harrisburg appearance (2024)

When bestselling author Erik Larson appears in Harrisburg next month, he’ll discuss his latest historical nonfiction book “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War.”

He’ll also be about a 40-minute drive southeast on Route 283 from Wheatland, the former home of President James Buchanan — one of the book’s major subjects.

Larson, author of six New York Times bestsellers including “The Devil in the White City” and “The Splendid and the Vile,” will discuss “The Demon of Unrest” with Steve Inskeep, host of National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” news program at 2 p.m. May 4 at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, 2701 N. Third St., Harrisburg. (Tickets for the event were still available as of press time.)

READ:Bestselling author Erik Larson to discuss Civil War-era book in region in May; here's how to get tickets

In Larson’s characteristically detailed and well-paced fashion, “The Demon of Unrest,” tracks Abraham Lincoln, Buchanan and other key people’s movements, thoughts and speeches — documented in diaries, newspaper articles, letters, memos and other sources — during the days and hours leading up to the beginning of the Civil War.

The subject, the historical nonfiction author says, was a surprisingly unlikely one for him. “I am on record as saying I would never ever write about the Civil War or Lincoln,” says Larson during a recent phone interview.

Larson adds he was never a fan of Civil War or Abraham Lincoln books but found himself warming up to the nation’s 16th president while researching and writing “The Demon of Unrest.”

“In the course of my research, much to my delight, I sort of found myself falling for Lincoln,” Larson says. “It was his sense of humor and his warmth.”

Lincoln’s predecessor in the Oval Office, however, was another matter. In “The Demon of Unrest,” Buchanan cements his reputation as one of the country’s least effective leaders. Buchanan appears as a buffoon-like comic foil to Lincoln and an ostrich-like figure with his head buried in the sand as state after state secedes and the country marches down a doomed path to civil war.

Here, Larson discusses his latest book, the lackluster leadership of Lancaster’s only president and why he decided to finally write about the Civil War.

What were your thoughts and feelings about James Buchanan as you researched and wrote “The Demon of Unrest”?

I found Buchanan to be a fascinating, if pathetic, character. The guy was hapless and did nothing as the nation was just tumbling toward civil war. Just absolutely the wrong person at the helm. at the wrong time.

Poor Buchanan, all he wanted was to not have this civil war break out on his time. Which, when you think about it, was really sort of a foolish approach. Because if it occurs on the next guy’s time, he’s still going to be blamed and condemned. He knew that because — I don’t get into this in the book — but right away he began writing his own revisionist history of his administration. So he knew he had completely screwed up.

One of the things I was fascinated by, one occasion is in the book, he essentially gave up. He just said, “It’s up to Congress. I can’t do anything.”

There are moments in the book when Buchanan is almost a comic foil. Like when he meets with Lincoln in the White House and it seems like he’s going to impart some wisdom to the incoming president, but he really just wants to tell him which well to get water from.

That’s the kind of thing that I love. Those details. I mean, there’s the central narrative and that’s important and compelling, but the things that I love are the little details.

Can you talk about the contrast between Buchanan to Lincoln?

In contrast to Buchanan, (Lincoln) was the right man for the wrong time. The right man for that era. One important thing about Lincoln, he was unshakable. You know, he had a really profound sense of what was just and what was not.

Do you home in on transitional periods in history when you’re looking for a good story?

Periods of transition are when you get the stories. You know, things are changing. And when you have change, you have stories.

Anyone can think of the Civil War era as really being all about that monumental transition for the South from a slaveholding culture to one that was not. The thing (Southern states) feared most was that Lincoln was an abolitionist, and that slavery would be done away with. They knew that if that happened, their culture, their lives would be destroyed. Make no mistake, I mean, as I came across time and time again in my research it was all about slaves. It wasn’t about states' rights. That was an artifice of Southern historians at the turn of the 20th century. When you read back, especially some of the declarations of secession and you read speeches of the era, it’s all about slaves.

When I read historical nonfiction, it’s so hard not to get caught up in the “what if’s.”

The “what ifs” are always fascinating. And the biggest “what if” is what if Buchanan hadn’t been president? If you didn’t have this hapless, Southern-leaning, namby-pamby president? What if Lincoln had been president during that descent toward the Civil War? But you can’t even think in those terms, a lot of forces coalesced at just the right time to make this happen.

You wrote in a note in the beginning of the book about the events in “The Demon of Unrest” and the connection to the insurrection that took place Jan. 6, 2021.

I was never a fan of Civil War books. But what drove me to (write “The Demon of Unrest”) was I had time on my hands because of the pandemic and people were muttering about civil war and secession. And I thought, well, wait a minute, what really happened back in 1860-61? Then came Jan. 6, 2021, and I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m doing this book.” Because, as I mentioned in my author’s note, in 1861, the two moments of greatest national concern were the certification of the electoral vote and the inauguration. And then here we are in 2021, and on Jan. 6, it’s the same thing.

I actually debated whether I should actually make a concrete allusion, but I had to be as candid as I could about why this book came to be. Jan. 6 had a lot to do with it, in terms of setting the hook, if you will.

The atmosphere in the early 1860s and early 2020s is strikingly similar, there are lots of conspiracy theories floating around, people spreading misinformation, distrust in mainstream media.

You can go back to that era and there were tons of newspapers but the newspapers were notoriously inaccurate. While the telegram was such a funny thing. It’s very much like the internet. It has this path of credibility because it was a new technology. It was all wires and electricity. Of course, it’s gonna all be true. But it actually added this false sense of credibility because of the technology, which is sort of like the internet, when you think about it, right? Came out of a computer, it’s gotta be right.

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Would you ever write a contemporary nonfiction book?

I’m not being glib, but I prefer working with dead people. Unless I felt absolutely moved by something or infuriated or whatever, I can’t see myself doing a contemporary work. I thought about something from the 1960s — no, not the (President John F.) Kennedy assassination, I can guarantee that. But, anyway, the more recent the work, the more problematic the view. There might still be debates about how accurate things are. The National Archives still has things from the ’60s that are classified. There’s also copyright issues with diaries and what if you can’t use some key diary. The diaries in (“The Demon of Unrest”) were all public domain.

You said you did lots of your research during the lockdown phase of the pandemic. What was it like for you to finally get a chance to visit Charlestown (South Carolina) where much of the book’s action takes place?

You can think about slavery all you want. But when you’re sitting there looking through a file that contains fliers from slave auctions with the names of the slaves listed in there, their health status and so forth, when you see that firsthand, it just really, really reorients your thinking about slavery. You can say, “Oh, it’s horrible,” but once you see those fliers and see just how institutionalized this thing was, and how every day hundreds of slaves were sold, it’s beyond appalling.

This story has been edited to correct Lancaster's direction in relation to Harrisburg.