Madness Rules the Hour: Charleston, 1860, and the Mania for War

Starobin (After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age), a former Moscow bureau chief for Businessweek, reflects on the cultural fissures that led America to civil war in this limited portrait of antebellum Charleston, S.C. Tracking the city’s descent into secessionist fervor, he follows a cast of prominent Charlestonians that includes newspapermen, politicians, and religious leaders. Starobin centers his story on the 1860 Democratic National Convention, which took place in Charleston and intensified regional divisions over slavery. The narrative draws heavily on newspaper accounts and letters, capturing the prevailing fear and uncertainty that enveloped the city’s white slave-owning elite in the wake of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and Lincoln’s election to the presidency. In a disappointing omission, Starobin gives short shrift to the city’s large black population, both free and enslaved, as well as other voices that went unheard during the formal secessionist debates, leaving unanswered questions about the texture of Charleston daily life. Starobin’s episodic recounting of Charleston’s push toward secession uncovers a range of Southern attitudes concerning abolition and national identity, but without a clear organizing argument, the story proceeds in fits and starts. (Apr.)