Charleston, South Carolina has a rich past stretching back all the way to the 1600s and America’s early colonial era. No chapters in its long and storied saga, however, are more associated with the community’s history than its role in the secession of the Southern states and it serving as the backdrop to the opening shots of the Civil War. Indelible turning points in the nation’s past, they still resonate today as some of the most impactful events on the course of our nation’s development to occur in any American city. In Madness Rules the Hour, journalist Paul Starobin presents a month-by-month account of the pivotal year of 1860 which culminated with South Carolina’s decision of December 20, 1860 to leave the union in a gathering at Charleston’s Institute Hall. I recently had an opportunity to listen to an audiobook version of the title, originally released in 2017.
Starobin’s steady, well-paced narrative explores why the South Carolina coastal city became a home for disunion sentiment and how the movement towards secession slowly gained momentum there. Particularly reliant on the institution of slavery for the production of the cotton exports which funded city government and provided income for the region’s elite, white Charlestonians were especially concerned with any developments that might curtail the labor system. The city was home to one of the largest concentrations of wealth in the South, and those who made their fortunes in cotton saw in any threat to slavery an implicit danger to their financial future. So, too, did middle and lower class white residents, who viewed any restrictions on slavery as restrictions on their own opportunity for economic advancement. With the possibility that a Republican might win the presidency, the tone and tenor of arguments for Southern independence—which had been bandied about for a decade previous with varying degrees of seriousness—increased in volume and urgency in Charleston.
Charleston and the state of South Carolina had a bit more experience with defiance of the federal government than many Southern regions by 1860. The state had single-handedly dared the president to enforce a hated tariff in the early 1830s, only backing down at the last moment when cooler heads prevailed. Yet the spark of disunion had been kindled, and it would burst into flames on occasion over the next quarter century at different points when attempts to control the spread of slavery gained traction in the nation’s capital.
In truth only a vocal minority actually believed that leaving the union would solve the region’s perceived problems, but it would have been hard to discern that in 1860. Powerful community leaders and vocal politicians steadily whipped listeners and readers into a frenzy over the course of the year, using such partisan newspapers at the Mercury as a mouthpiece and dominating discourse on the topic. Those who had reservations about the wisdom of secession learned to keep quiet in the emotional environment, and common sense seemed to be temporarily suspended. A potent mix of fearmongering, overconfidence, and persuasion combined to make disunion, with or without the full support of other slave-holding Southern states, seem a viable remedy for longstanding grievances.
The drama the book presents is punctuated by the Democratic Party convention held in the city in the spring of 1860, the event around which the entire story pivots. Hosting the nominating convention there was originally viewed as a way to mollify right-wing party members in the South who felt they no longer had a voice in the party platform. But in the end southern fire-eaters, with South Carolina politicians in the vanguard, determined to go their own way and break off from the party. The decision virtually guaranteed a victory in the presidential election by a sectional candidate. But the possibility seemed to only bolster the commitment to the dream of an independent South, as advocates of secession viewed such a result to be the final proof of designs to subjugate and ruin the region. Hence the election of Abraham Lincoln was less a shock than the expected end to an extended crisis.
Starobin guides readers through the story of how the idea of secession grew in popularity after the convention in an escalating drama which reaches a crescendo with the secession convention of December 1860. Numerous forgotten individuals, many largely unknown, are brought to light by the author, and the reverence many of them had for the eminent statesman from a previous generation, John C. Calhoun, is revealed. Along the way, readers get a better understanding of life in the town during the era for both its white and black residents. The book helps provide greater context and depth to South Carolina’s decision to leave the union than any account I have previously read, providing the complete backstory to a landmark event. It does not, thankfully, ever become bogged down in too much detail on any individual person or event. If there is any one thing I took away from Starobin’s account of the events leading to South Carolina’s secession, it is probably that it is a historical study in group dynamics, revealing how an action widely considered rash and ill-advised came to be viewed as the only rational response to political setbacks in a remarkably short period of time. Considering the tumult and dysfunction in our government today, that history lesson seems especially timely. If you have an interest in learning why and how secession occurred as it did, you will enjoy this book.
JMB
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