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

From Lincoln's election to secession from the Union, this compelling history explains how South Carolina was swept into a cultural crisis at the heart of the Civil War.

The tea has been thrown overboard -- the revolution of 1860 has been initiated. -- Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1860

In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: they could submit to abolition -- or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow.

In Madness Rules the Hour, Paul Starobin tells the story of how Charleston succumbed to a fever for war and charts the contagion's relentless progress and bizarre turns. In doing so, he examines the wily propagandists, the ambitious politicians, the gentlemen merchants and their wives and daughters, the compliant pastors, and the white workingmen who waged a violent and exuberant revolution in the name of slavery and Southern independence. They devoured the Mercury, the incendiary newspaper run by a fanatical father and son; made holy the deceased John C. Calhoun; and adopted Le Marseillaise as a rebellious anthem. Madness Rules the Hour is a portrait of a culture in crisis and an insightful investigation into the folly that fractured the Union and started the Civil War.

Author: Paul Starobin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 04/11/2017
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 1.00d
ISBN13: 9781610396226
ISBN10: 1610396227
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | Civil War Period (1850-1877)
- History | United States | State & Local | South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,
- Social Science | Slavery

About the Author
Paul Starobin is the author of Madness Rules the Hour: Charleston, 1860 and the Mania for War, praised by the New York Times as a fast-paced, engagingly written account of the hysteria that descended on Charleston, South Carolina, on the eve of the Civil War. He has been a frequent contributor to the Atlantic and is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week. He has written for other publications including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, City Journal, Politico, and National Geographic. He lives with his family in Orleans, Massachusetts.