He also chronicles popular movements of the day like the Wide Awakes, a Republican paramilitary group that sprang up overnight and became a national craze. He does this by focusing not so much on well-known or politically important individuals like Abraham Lincoln but on lesser-known people like future president James Garfield (whose extensive diaries reveal the evolution of his thoughts) and now-forgotten people like Elmer Ellsworth (the founder of the New York Fire Zouaves regiment that would be blamed for the disaster at Bull Run). Goodheart chronicles how and why Northerners came to reject compromise in favor of quashing secessionism at all costs, including war.

Even though most Northerners reviled slavery and slaveholders, they hated abolitionists even more because they saw them as dangerous radicals who were hell-bent on tearing the nation apart, all for the sake of the slaves. Until the mid-1800s, the North had seen compromise on the issue of slavery as the greatest virtue, with the goal of keeping the South in the Union trumping all other concerns. But beyond mere narrative, 1861’s main focus is on chronicling the psychological shift among Northerners that made the Civil War possible. This is a wonderful book that paints a vivid picture of America during the Secession Crisis and the early days of the Civil War.

Vintage Books/Random House (2011), hardcover, 481 pages

1861 goodheart