Readings from September (along with a personal memory from 1968)

Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War 

(New York: Crown, 2024), 565 pages with bibliography, notes, and index.

Larson is a gifted storyteller historian and has once again brought a story of a pivotal time to life. His latest book looks at the months between Lincoln’s election as President in 1860 and the attack on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. 

As Larson has done so well in other books, he tells the story from several viewpoints. We have Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Fort Sumter garrison. He’s own slaves and has southern sympathies but is also loyal to the Union. There are those in Washington trying to avoid a war and refusing Anderson’s call for more supplies and troops in the fear such actions will incite a war and encourage other Southern states to leave the Union. 

Larson follows radical southern secessionists, such as Edmund Ruffin, who worked hard to encourage states to leave the Union. He even got to fire the first cannon at the fort. There’s Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a planter who was a part of South Carolina’s succession convention. Her diary provides a first-hand view of much of what happened from behind the scenes. And then there’s Sir William Howard Russell, a special correspondent from the Times of London. A famed war correspondent (having reported on the Crimean War), he had access to key politicians in Washington DC, including William Stewart and Abraham Lincoln. But he was late to arrive in Charleston.

During the waiting, the South built more batteries so the fort could be attacked from three sides. Lincoln finally authorized a fleet to sail with additional supplies and the ability to support the fort, but confusion still reigned. The main ship with the necessary firepower had been mistakenly sent to a fort in Florida, leaving the smaller flotilla unable to intervene. It arrived off Charleston the evening before the attack.  Confederate guns and sandbars at the harbor entry kept the ships from supporting the fort. 

The attack on Fort Sumter, led by Confederate General Beauregard, began in the predawn hours of Saturday, April 14^th. Throughout the dark hours, the fort’s guns remained silent. During the bombardment, the men in the fort even gathered for breakfast. Anderson wouldn’t return fire until after daylight, when they’d have better views of the Confederate positions. During this waiting time, Edmund Ruffin worried that the fort wouldn’t fight back, making the Confederates look bad. But he received his wish as light appeared and the fort’s guns began to strike back. 

Despite all the shells and gunpowder expended on both sides, no one died. The fort, which had been built to protect the harbor from enemy shipping, had a difficult time to train its guns on land targets. Furthermore, the best guns for such an attack were on the top parapet, which made them more open to Confederate shelling. Anderson kept his men safely inside the fort itself. The fort, which was almost out of food, had plenty of powder, but as fire burned, a larger concern came from explosions. Quick thinking by Anderson kept this from happening. 

The Confederate forces spent much of the morning attempting to take down the American flag. When the pole was finally broken and the flag fell, Captain Doubleday (from whom legend has it created baseball), ordered guns to aim for a holiday hotel, The Moultrie, where many of the Confederate officers stayed. The guns blew holes in the hotel and sent men running for safety, but again, no one died. A makeshift flag was eventually raised during the battle. 

Upon surrender, Anderson was allowed to give a 100-gun salute as he struck the colors and marched this troops out of the fort where they were to be transported to Union ships offshore. The salute was cut to 50 when one of the cannoneers was seriously wounded when gunpower in the cannon prematurely explode.  He would die later in a Charleston hospital. 

This is a good read and help me understand more about how the terrible war began. Larson begins each section with a quotation from The Code Duello. The 1858 manual laid out rules to be followed in duels. These rules provided a civility to such disputes, trying to maintain gentlemanlike behavior in conflict. Such behavior appears to have been honored by both sides at Sumter. Later in the war, things became uglier.

While I don’t think the book is as good as several other Larson’s books I’ve read (especially The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of the Beast, and Thunderstuck), it’s better than most books I read. This is the sixth book by Larson I’ve read. In addition to this book and the three above, I have also read Dead Wake, and Issac’s Storm. 

Kevin DeYoung, The Nicene Creed: What You Need to Know about the Most Important Creed Ever Written 

(Weaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2025), 93 pages including a general and scriptural index.

This year marks the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, from which came the beginnings of the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed would be finalized, adding a longer section about the Holy Spirit at Constantinople in 381 AD. For the Western Church, the creed was finalized in 589 with the addition of the filioque statement which says the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This last edition has not been accepted by the Eastern Orthodox Churches. But with this small difference, the Nicene Creed is the most accepted creed in Christendom, and used by Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Coptic Churches. 

In this short book, DeYoung introduces the readers to the various heresies facing the church (mainly Arianism and Apollinarianism) which led to the writing of the creed. Arianism held to the idea that the Son was created by the Father, not co-eternal. Apollinarism attempted to discredit Arianism, by going too far in the other direction and essentially denying the humanity of Christ.  The creed holds the concept of the Trinity together by maintaining a mystery.

DeYoung also fairly lays out both sides of the “filioque” debate. While he accepts the Western version of the Creed, he rightly sees the issue not as important as how the creed sought to maintain Christ’s unity and co-existence with the father. The filioque clause wasn’t added till the 6^th Century with the Council of Toledo.   

This is an easy book to read for anyone wanting to understand the importance of the Nicene Creed.  

Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 1039 pages with bibliography, notes, and index, plus 18 plates of b&w photos. Audible, narrated by Leo Nixon and Janina Edwards, (2023) 34 hours and 37 minutes.

I have now finished all three volumes of Branch’s “America During the King Years.” The last volume had more meaning for me, as I remember much of what happened. I would have been between the 3^rd and 5^th grade in elementary school during this time.  I was in the 5^th grade when Martin Luther King was assassinated and share below a memoir of that time. Like the second volume of the work, this one read more like snippets from the news media for each day.  I mostly listened to the book on Audible but also read some of the interesting sections. Here are links to my reviews of the first two volumes:

Parting the Waters (1954-63)

Pillar of Fire (1963-65)

At Canaan’s Edge shows the tension felt by Martin Luther King. Strains existed between King and President Johnson. Other strains were between King and those within the movement chanting Black Power and calling for violence. Ironically, this call to violence even came from the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which had left behind many of its founders such as John Lewis. And even those who were committed to his non-violent movement resisted King’s visions of expanding the movement to include all poor people and to work against America’s war in Vietnam.  Branch helps the reader understand King’s troubles during the last three years of his life. 

The book ends abruptly, with an assassin’s bullet striking King on the balcony of Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. King had just asked that “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” be played that evening as they dressed and prepared for the event. Then he fatefully stepped out on the balcony. 

By providing a “play-by-play” history of what happens up until the shot was fired, Branch provides the reader with the complexity of the world. The beatings of civil rights workers on the Pettus Bridge in Alabama came at the same time as American’s first big engagement in Vietnam in the Ia Drang Valley.  The miracle” of Israel’s 6-day war in 1967 occurred during the rising opposition to Americans in Vietnam and the Supreme Court’s decision to end laws against interracial marriage. And finally, King’s desire for a “Poor People’s March” on Washington plays out against the backdrop of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.  And as King’s life came to an end, President Johnson had just decided not to run again for the Presidency.

There was also much tension within the Civil Rights movement as some wanted to advocated violence (especially within the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) who leaned into the Black Power movement. The tension also increased as King began to take his movement north, spending significant amount of time in Chicago, a move which caused his movement funds as donors, who supported the work in the south, began to withdraw their support.  

Also, in the background of all that happened was the FBI, who hounded King. Even in the last month of his life, they sent anonymous letters to King supporters in the north saying that he had plenty of money. At the same time, they sent other letters to Black churches in the south saying that he was broke. This discouraged those interested in the poor people’s march to Washington (which was being planned), suggesting they’d find themselves stranded. 

In these three volumes, Taylor Branch provides a wonderfully in-depth history of the Civil Rights movements. Some of this history is hard to recall, but it must not be forgotten.  

Memories of ’68

(this is part 2 of a 4 part series I wrote 20 years ago and edited for this post)

I turned eleven barely two weeks into 1968. It was a big deal. I was finally eligible to join the Boy Scouts and go camping with someone other than my family. I wasted no time. Thursday, two days after my birthday, I attended the troop meeting. It’s amazing I stayed with scouting. I experienced more hazing in those first two meetings than the rest of my life. Brian and I were both new to Troop 206 and they put us in the Rattlesnake Patrol. The patrol consisted of a bunch of older guys (probably all of 13 or 14 years old). When the adult leaders weren’t nearby, they arrange things like beltlines for us to run. But it didn’t last. I’m not sure what went on behind the scenes, but by the third week, the Scoutmaster placed us in a new patrol. Gerald, an older scout, but new to the troop, became our patrol leader. We named ourselves the Cobra Patrol, consciously picking a snake more deadly than a rattlesnake. Gerald put an end to the hazing. In a way, he became a mentor. When I became a patrol leader, I always pondered what Gerald would do in a situation before I acted. 

A week or two after being placed in Cobra Patrol, I made my first campout as a Boy Scout. We headed up to Holly Shelter Swamp and camped along the bank of the Northeast Cape Fear River. Gerald had us put our tents in a line. Brian and I ended in a slight depression. I argued that we should move our tent, having done enough camping prior to scouting to know we were in the best location. But Gerald was all for neatness. We stayed in a neat line and when the rains came that night, out tent flooded. I now had a second reason to quit scouting. Thinking back on my experiences, I can’t recall a camping trip that I’ve gotten soaked at night except for when I was a scout. However, Gerald made everything better, offering us his semi-dry tent. We assumed Gerald was going to sleep in our pool but found him in the morning asleep in the back of the equipment trailer, the only totally dry place around. The storm cleared and we dried out our bags and had a grand time in the woods, even though we kept having run-ins with our nemeses in the Rattlesnake Patrol.

We’ve come a long way since 1968. There were no I-pods, laptops, game-boys or other forms of amusements in our packs. All I had for fun was a nine-volt transistor radio and we listened to it that first night, as we tried to ignore or forget the moisture seeping into our sleeping bags. I could get the powerful 50-kilowatt station out of Cincinnati and a few local stations. And that night, laying in a sleeping bag on a bluff overlooking the slow waters of the Northeast Cape Fear River, between the music of the Beatles, Stones and Supremes, we heard news reports about the Chinese New Year and the Tet Offensive. For the first time Vietnam seemed real.

Our second night included a game of capture the flag, played pitting the Cobras against the Rattlesnakes. We didn’t win, but we went down honorably, and it would only be a matter of time before we did win. After the game, we had a big campfire, which concluded when our scoutmaster, Johnny R. told us the story of “the Hand.” He made it come alive. I’d hear this story a dozen times over the next couple of years, as he added new twist so that you were never sure when you’d nearly jump into the fire. That night we didn’t listen to the radio; we wanted things to be quiet so that we’d hear “the Hand,” in case it was about doing its dastardly deeds.

Our second camping trip with the scouts was at a camporee on the grounds around Sunny Point, on the Brunswick County side of the Cape Fear River. This gathering involved troops from all over the council and the theme was getting along with one another, with a special emphasis on racial harmony. All the scouts who participated in the event received a badge showing a handshake. One hand was light colored and the other darker, symbolizing getting along between the races. It was a lesson we’d all need to hear for soon all hell broke loose. But that weekend, we didn’t know that. Instead, we worked hard, and Cobra Patrol earned a red ribbon (next to the highest) while the Rattlesnake Patrol only received a yellow (participation) ribbon. I became a hero during the camporee in the signaling event. Few of the patrols had anyone who could read semaphore, and I shocked everyone with my newly acquired skill.

My self-instruction in semaphore came because of what was happening in Mr. Briggs classroom. My mother told me a few years ago about how she heard me talking about these things we were doing in his class and assumed I had a wild imagination until one night, Mr. Briggs called. And did my mother reward me for my honesty? NO! Instead, I was doubly grounded. Not only could I not leave our yard, but I was also stuck in my room except to go to the bathroom or to eat dinner. This sentence was to last a few years, but she relented after I brought my citizenship grade up a notch. In such tight confinement (and there were no TVs in my room back then, it really was a solitary confinement cell), I was stuck with reading. And my choices were meager. I could read schoolbooks, but I had a natural allergy to them. I could read the Bible but figured that if Mom saw me reading the good book, she might keep me grounded for my own edification. The only book of interest was the Boy Scout handbook, and I quickly set down to the task of learning semaphore (which I long since forgotten) and the constellations (which I still remember).

My third Scout camping trip was back to Holly Shelter Swamp. It was early April. We left home Friday afternoon, knowing of Martin Luther King assassination the night before in Memphis. Things went along well during the camping trip, but my nine-volt transistor radio brought in the news that violence was erupting across our nation. Somehow (along before cell phones), our Scoutmaster Johnny Rogina, a detective with the Sheriff’s Dept., got word to report for duty. But there were enough other men along that we camped two nights. Sunday morning, we packed up and headed back into town. Since our troop met in a church, we’d always come back from camping trips in the early afternoon, so as not to disturb the worshippers. But this Sunday, things were eerie. There were no cars on the road. All you saw were police and a few military jeeps. Rioting erupted in Wilmington, as it had in many cities, and the city was under a 24-hour curfew.

Since we lived out of town, far from where the rioting occurred, we weren’t really affected. Instead, we enjoyed a vacation from school, playing sandlot baseball and roaming the woods. With everyone being forced to stay at home, my parents cooked out that Sunday afternoon and invited our next-door neighbors. This was a rarity as I knew my parents didn’t like the man (I later learned that he was very abusive, but as an 11-year-old, I just thought he was a jerk). His wife was nice, and they had a younger daughter. She was several years younger than my sister but occasionally would be in the house early in the morning having slept in my sister’s room. I was an adult when my mother shared that these sleepovers was to protect the girl, as her father had gone on a drunken rampage. But even before learning this, when I first heard of sleeveless t-shirts called “wife beaters,” I envisioned that man in his backyard with wearing such a shirt. 

This Sunday evening, after the Holly Shelter’s campout, I remember l sitting in a lounge chair in the yard as the neighbor told my dad (along with my brother and I) about the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898. “The Cape Fear River ran red with n—– blood” he said, suggesting a similar situation out of the problem Wilmington was currently facing. My parents, who didn’t allow us to use the “N” word, weren’t too happy with this conversation and this was the only cookout we ever had with them. Shortly afterwards, they moved. Interestingly, this was the first and only time as a kid that I heard about the 1898 riots. Later I’d learn the event was a massacre. The whites had a Gatlin gun just back from the Spanish American War, while the African American community attempted to defended themselves with hunting guns. I’d also learn later that the guy whose park we played little league ball in, Hugh McCrae, was the one who acquired the Gatlin gun. He, along with several other well-known names in town, were responsible for the “riot.” 

I am not sure just how they restored calm to the city in 1968, as we lived far outside its boundaries. After a week holiday, we returned to Bradley Creek Elementary School where everything appeared normal.

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