Never Say Never: A Guest Post by Erik Larson

History comes to life in Erik Larson’s latest, where the events that led up to the Civil War are poked, prodded and studied — and resemble an all-too familiar political landscape. Read Larson’s exclusive essay down below and uncover the history that reverberates through our country today.

I am on record as having vowed on numerous occasions never to write about the Civil War, let alone about Abraham Lincoln. But, as I’ve lately become fond of saying, never say never.  

I blame it in part on the pandemic. 

Back in March 2020, on my wife’s birthday in fact, the book tour for my Churchill saga, The Splendid and the Vile, came to an abrupt halt as the world shut down. With little to occupy my time, I decided to begin hunting for my next project, and started reading aimlessly into a variety of far-flung subjects. Then, as now, there was a good deal of political unrest in the country, amplified by the pandemic, which prompted otherwise sane citizens to threaten secession and even civil war. This got me thinking about the Civil War and the forces that led Americans in 1860-61 to contemplate the wholesale killing of one another. 

Ordinarily I would have parachuted into an archive somewhere and started spelunking, but the pandemic had temporarily closed the archives and libraries I most needed. Travel, moreover, had become deeply problematic. So, I began nosing around in various relevant online repositories and soon stumbled across a digitized collection of documents called The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. I managed to acquire a bound copy of the volume I most needed, Vol. I, which arrived at my pandemic redoubt a few days later. After duly disinfecting the shipping package, I started to read, and was immediately enthralled. Here were hundreds of letters, telegrams, and reports that minutely captured the tick-tock (as in time, not social media) of America’s march toward war, starting in November 1860 just before Lincoln’s first election as president. Arranged in precise chronological order, these captured the suspense and inexorable momentum of the secession crisis and its denouement in the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the event that started the Civil War. I found it all gripping and began thinking that I might be able to tell the story in a fresh way. 

That meant finding the real-life historical characters through whom the saga might best come alive. I began reading secondary works and delving into online troves of Lincoln’s personal and official papers, wondering whether there could possibly be anything new that I could say about the man and the era. I came to him as an ingenue and was quickly won over by his humor and warmth. I also became intrigued by several less-known characters, who seemed to me to deserve a more prominent place in the story than they hitherto had been granted. But I still was not ready to commit.  

What I needed now were vivid details to help illuminate the landscape of the past. The little things. The omnipresence of chewing tobacco and its residues. Wolves roaming the antebellum forest, along with a host of poisonous snakes. Vultures cleaning the streets of Charleston, South Carolina. Clouds of dust choking the byways of Washington. The roar of insects on a Lowcountry night. Lincoln’s jokes.  

And then came the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Suddenly the story of Fort Sumter and the dawn of the Civil War took on a disturbing new resonance. This was not merely a story of the past; it was one that seemed also to shed light on the political unrest of our own time. I found it chilling that the two events in early 1861 that caused the greatest national anxiety were the certification of the electoral vote and Lincoln’s inauguration.  

I was soundly hooked. So much for saying never.