Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War

by Maury Klein

Examines events leading up to the Civil War, from Lincoln's 1860 election, through Southern threats to secede, to the fall of Fort Sumter

Genres: Civil War, History, Nonfiction, American Civil War, Military History, Military Fiction, War

496 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Maury Klein is renowned as one of the finest historians of American business and economy. He is the author of many books, including The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America; and Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929. He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Rhode Island. He lives in Saunderstown, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

It doesn’t seem quite accurate to describe this as a cultural history, because it’s much more focused and doesn’t wander off into trivia and sidebars about music, art, literature and the like. But it kind of reads like one, in that it’s not a dry, straightforward recounting of events, but gives you a real sense of the mood of the country in the leadup to the Civil War.

The real strength of the book is that it avoids examining its topic solely from a political perspective. It’s not Lincoln-centric. It’s not Northern-centric. It doesn’t delve into legalistic debates about slavery. Instead, it’s an absorbing look at how the Northern and Southern cultures developed, diverged and ultimately came to clash.

Klein uses a compelling framing device, bookending his story with the tale of Irish journalist William Howard Russell. The prominent war correspondent arrived in New York City a month before Fort Sumter was attacked, and later traveled to Washington and the South. His observations about the fracturing country provide the necessary exposition to set up the story in the prologue, and help to conclude the story in the final few chapters and epilogue.

In between, Klein weaves together the political, military and social histories of the time. He describes the scramble in Washington to reach some sort of compromise as the country begins to come apart, the mood in South Carolina as it became the first to secede, the ensuing effort to create a Confederate government, the increasingly confused and desperate situation inside Fort Sumter, and public opinion on both sides of the North-South divide.

Klein doesn’t take the easy way out in turning James Buchanan into a do-nothing cartoon character, treating Abraham Lincoln as the savior-in-waiting, or portraying William Seward in the early days of the Lincoln administration as a malevolent Machiavellian schemer. All tried, and some failed more than others, to do the right thing. They all come across as human, as Klein fairly apportions credit and blame where either is due.

Klein’s writing is very good, and his observations are often on point, such as when he writes of Buchanan that "there was nothing fast or slick about Old Buck… He was a plodder, the tortoise that got to its goals slowly but surely, utterly lacking the hare's speed or brilliance or quickness of quip or step." And despite those characteristics and his missteps, Klein blames Congress almost as much as Buchanan for failing to do more to prevent secession - which, once it occurred, made any hope of compromise virtually impossible.

Only a few times does Klein’s engaging writing style ring false, when some of his descriptions seem blithe or oversimplified, betraying either a lack of insight or a desire to breeze past details not pertinent to the larger story. In a paragraph about First Ladies of the era, for instance, he rattles off a single descriptor for each - the astute Sarah Polk is dismissed as being overly stern, the charming Harriet Lane is described as “icily correct,” and the dour Jane Pierce is somehow characterized as being “convivial.” Those glib observations, together with Jefferson Davis being described as “a kind and generous master” to his slaves, might have been better left out altogether.

But those disappointingly abbreviated and misleading descriptors make up just a small part of the book, which is otherwise strong in just about every other respect. The book isn’t about Fort Sumter, per se, but it’s always in the background, and those representing the opposing sides there aren’t dismissed as mere passive players to what was happening in Washington. Klein contrasts the indecision in the Buchanan-era capital with the decisive actions taken in Charleston, as Union Major Robert Anderson made the decision to hunker down in Sumter, and South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens responded by seizing the remaining Union forts. "After nearly two months of apprehension and fear, talk and posturing, stall and stalemate, someone had acted,” he writes. “Two quick, bold moves had pushed the crisis past the politicians."

Once Lincoln becomes president, Klein ably goes through his decision-making process on what to do about the Sumter standoff, and considers it from Jefferson Davis’s perspective as well, concluding that each did what he felt he had to do. Lincoln, he argues, wasn't so naive as to think that his ultimate decision to resupply the fort wouldn't lead to war, but didn't purposely provoke it. For Davis, he writes, the credibility of his new nation was at stake and firm action was required in response. In the end, instead of choosing between capitulation and war, Klein argues, Lincoln forced the South to be the one to decide. And it did.

After building to the attack on Sumter, the book’s climax is a detailed and dramatic telling of the battle. And even though his story ends there, Klein still manages to bring the book to a satisfying conclusion - just as a much larger story is about to begin.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about the fall of Fort Sumter and therefore about the beginning of the American Civil War. Klein does a very good job of weaving together the various strands: the men in the fort who can't get a straight answer out of Washington, the white people of Charleston who are frankly drunk with rebellion, Abraham Lincoln trying to put his Cabinet together. It is not quite as sensitive as I would like to the viewpoint of the enslaved people of Charleston---we see them only through the eyes of the white Charlestonians and, while that may be a simple matter of what the historical record has left us, Klein makes little to no effort to read against the text. He is unnecessarily catty about Harriet Beecher Stowe, and it's very hard to tell from here whether Mary Todd Lincoln was as awful as he makes her out to be, or if there are wheels within wheels. So I guess perhaps there's a little less nuance than would be ideal.

It's also a little uncomfortable reading a book written in 1997 that assumes that, no, of course America could never possibly do anything of the sort again, and I think about four years of Trump and the January 6th insurrection, and it's not as far away as Klein thinks it is.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good starting point for anyone looking to learn more about the origins of the Civil War, this book delivers the goods. We get to meet a wide and varied cast of characters that lived through the events described in the narrative. The author does an awesome job of balancing the story between vivid descriptions and direct quotes from the people involved. Overall, a worthy effort and well worth the time spent reading it.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just one of the best books you'll ever read about the complicated period leading up to the Civil War, but one of the best history books you'll ever read... period.

[William Guerrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very fine and well-written narrative history of the secession crisis. Fact can be stranger than fiction.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at the NPS bookstore on a visit to Fort Sumter. Although I marked this a 4, it's more of a 4.5. It's relatively readable but I did get lost a couple of times in the vast number of people who appear, reappear later or just disappear.

The book covers the time between the election of Lincoln through the surrender of Fort Sumter and does a good job of explaining how it reached the powder keg point and got lit. Truthfully, the die was cast before the book starts but for "why there, why then", this is a well researched history. Klein clearly uses a lot of primary sources and weaves a well rounded story.

The weird part for me is that I couldn't escape the eerie feeling that we are back at the same powder keg point again in modern times. There is so much of this that feels like deja vu. And that's not a good thing.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was interested in this book because of my recent visit to Charleston and Fort Sumter. The book covers events in the U.S. just prior to, and including, April, 1861 when the Confederacy decided to bombard the Federal fort in Charleston Harbor. It is a detailed look at the events, politics, factionalism and the people who influenced those events. Slavery was, of course, the major issue; but it was overshadowed purposely by the issue of secession (along with the the attendant roles of the Federal government and states' rights). It was interesting to get the perspective of the London Times reporter, William Russell, as he was able to give a somewhat unbiased review of events as they unfolded. The Southern oligarchy hated northerners (New Englanders, and abolitionists, in particular) and, likewise, northerners hated the southern oligarchs. Southerners had ruled Congress for years but were losing their grip. They knew their days were numbered, and big changes detrimental to their way of life were forthcoming by the time Lincoln and the Republicans won the 1860 election. Russell believed that the North would win the war because they had the manufacturing infrastructure. He thought southerners were delusional in thinking that they would gain Britain as an ally because of King Cotton, win the war and establish Montgomery, Alabama as their new country's commercial center, similar to New York City. As it turns out, he was correct. Bravado, machismo, and silly pride played huge roles. Southern culture was based on the superior (compared to blacks) southern gentleman's divine right to own slaves; not a good basis! The book also provided insight into the precarious situation that U.S. Major Robert Anderson, the commander of U.S. forces at Ft. Sumter, navigated with courage. Anderson was a southerner and was pro-slavery, but duty to country came first. At the time the Confederacy decided to start the war, Anderson and his soldiers were down to only about three days of food and would have had to abandon the fort anyway. With one very clever message sent to South Carolina's governor just days before the bombardment, President Lincoln put the onus of starting the war on the Confederacy. Lincoln also sent ships to bring relief to the fort; the Confederacy started shelling the fort from all sides just as U.S. ships were gathering to "cross the bar" into the harbor. The book could get tedious at times, as there is a lot of detail, but I found it to be insightful.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Style of this very well researched book (with lots of details in the correspondence). Amazed at the intricate timelining that Klein used, keeping track of all the events and communications in this 4 month period. Reviews of this book as novel-like were accurate, as you did seem to get a sense of the historic characters and what made them tick. Interesting that the book seemed to be so harsh on Mary Chesnut, as though to intentionally debunk the image of her in Ken Burns documentary? Anyway, the detailed account of the months between 1860 election and Fort Sumter, and all the potential doors that were closed between sides, was very fascinating.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent back-and-forth view of Southern and Northern personalities that led to the firing on Sumter. It covers the period between Lincoln's election and that event. I left once more persuaded that, although the immediate cause of the war was about a state's right to leave the union, the underlying cause was always slavery.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I became obsessed with the Civil War in junior high after watching the miniseries "North and South," and have since then read more books than I can remember on the topic. But this volume deals with a weak spot in my knowledge that I didn't even realize was so incomplete. I've always thought of the outbreak of war in terms of 1)Lincoln's election, 2)South Carolina's succession, 3)the fall of Fort Sumper. That's correct, but oh-so-simplified. Days of Defiance spends 400 plus pages fleshing out that outline. While a lot of it was interesting, I would have been happy with 200 pages! The middle section of the book goes into great detail about all the different negotiations taking place in the Senate and House as they tried to reach some sort of compromise that would keep the country together. Of greater interest to me was learning about the infighting in Lincoln's cabinet, the perceptions of the London Times' reporter William Howard Russell, and the details about all the communication faux pas that complicated the months leading up to war.

I actually chose to read this book in preparation for my upcoming trip to Charleston, so I was most interested in the parts of Days of Defiance that narrated events within South Carolina. I'll be visiting Fort Sumter, so I loved learning all about the siege.

3.5 stars.

[Glenn Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

How often have we learned that once Lincoln was elected, the South seceded? This book delves into the period right before the election, the 4 candidates and how the vote went, the inability of President Buchanan to keep the country unified, the attempts to negotiate and finally the Ft. Sumter battle that got the war going.

Well written and a great deal of info new. Many of the states, such as Virginia, had a hard time leaving the Union. Virginia had many leaders who were strong Unionists and the convention to secede took 17 rounds of voting before the vote to secede was official.

There were options put forth, as well. The South was demanding new slave states and the North agreed to let New Mexico in as a slave state for the very reason that leading experts said that even if slavery were legal, there would not be any as cotton could not grow. Another option was to have 2 presidents! This clearly did not go far. Secretary Seward suggested with utmost seriousness the importance of declaring war on England, France or Spain as a way to keep the Southern states loyal! Everyone viewed his thoughts on this as wacky.

Interesting time. Out with one of the most corrupt presidents, in with one of the most beloved.

[Stephen Journeay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative on events and people leading up to the Civil War. The intractable issues of slavery and secession, the politics of sectionalism, the lame-duck administration of Buchanan and its reluctance to make decisions, the sweeping out of the Democrats and creation of a new Republican administration, the personalities of officials (both strong unionist and southern sympathizers), and the poor communications. A failure of our democratic institutions. It is no wonder that war resulted. This is not a view that I have ever been exposed to before. There are probably other books that provide these stories, but this is a good first book to learn about the beginning of the Civil War.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish it

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A readable, fast-moving history of the secession crisis and the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter. Klein describes all of the various political maneuvering and strategic debates in the North and the South in a well-paced, readable fashion.

Klein is primarily concerned with the forts crisis in Charleston, and describes events here in an engaging, lively way. Despite compromise proposal after compromise proposal (both short- and long-term), the northern Republicans would not budge regarding the extension of slavery, and likewise the South saw the loss of its hold on the presidency as a threat to its own institutions (namely slavery). These die-hard positions made things exceedingly difficult for those inclined to compromise. For many, secession was a direct threat to the very concept of republican government. Needless to say, the whole tone of the narrative has a grim, almost fatalistic tone. Secession, Klein writes, was not an arcane concept that southerners only rarely considered, but a deliberate threat that they took pretty damn seriously (“a house wine always on hand,” in Klein’s words).

Klein brings a lot of characters into this story, but he often only refers to them later; he’ll introduce so-and-so briefly in this section, and then mention their actual actions in more detail much later, which can get a little confusing at times. The descriptions of some of these characters seem excessive; an entire chapter is dedicated to the personal lives of some minor South Carolina figures. Klein also calls the North's theories of a "Great Slave Conspiracy in which wily southern interests supported the [Kansas-Nebraska Act] to gain a foothold for slavery in free territory" "absurd," although there is some truth to this; Buchanan, for example, attempted to influence Supreme Court justice Grier to go along with the southern majority on the Dred Scott case.

A well-researched, compelling, and dramatic history.

[Woody Curran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Days of Defiance tells the story of the lead up to the Civil War, primarily in Washington D.C. and Charleston, South Carolina. The story is told from the perspective of many of the main participants of the political battles and last minute negotiations to prevent a war from starting at that point.

Klein's writing alternated from being fluid and readable to confusing and overblown with period vocabulary. The sheer volume of detailed names and anecdotes ended up overwhelming me with facts, and the transitions from politicians to Mary Chestnut's journal entries were frequently jarring. This is a great secondary source for students of the times, but I did not see it as an easy read for the non-history buff.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a surprisingly readable detail of the events leading up to Fort Sumter. From beatings in the halls of Congress to the riotous streets of Charleston, SC this book begins the journey which would ultimately lead to what I consider to be the one of the defining moments in our nation's history. I love the Civil War and I don't believe you can comprehend the American experience without an understanding of the Civil War.

"Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will ultimately terminate in the death and misery of many souls;"

-Doctrine and Covenants 87:1

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reviews the period between Lincoln's election to the attack on Fort Sumter in riveting detail, discussing the issues, the actions, the mistakes, the delusions, and the people involved in those events.

The story reads as smoothly as a novel and really makes you want to turn the page.

It provides the best explanation of why the Confederacy attacked at Sumter - and thereby started the Civil War - that I have ever read

[R.B. Nease · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really thought I would like this book but I was left very disappointed. There is way too much explination and names thrown around that I was terribly bored with this book, and learned vertually nothing, as I tried to push myself through the chapters. There is a lot of period vocabulary that bores the reader with confusion. I would not recommend this book to anyone. There are clearly better books out there with the same material that are better written.

[Alec Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great account of the outbreak of the civil war. The five months between Lincoln's election and the firing on Fort Sumter are often overshadowed by the war thAt followed, but the politics of secession are fascinating, and how both sides sought to deal with radical and treasonous actions by the southern states resonates today- how might we deal with a state seceeding today?

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

So for a historical novel i guess it was ok. i refuse to call this a history. Too much not needed info for me. It could be that i am read out on this period of our history, i think i have read dozens and dozens of books on this period of time and just do not want to read anymore. So just because i did not enjoy it does not mean it was not good. it just was not good for me.

[Chris Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great detail. Didn't know that Buchanan looked at the advent of the telegraph much the same way we see social media today. Buchanan saw the telegraph spreading fake news stories to the west at such an incredible speed that he couldn't control the flow of information.

[Jerry Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great detail about Charleston, SC and the beginning of the Civil War. After reading I was able to understand the Southern view.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book about the lead up to the civil war. One of the best written and most informative I've read in a while!

[Grindy Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty dry reading. There is one chapter with thumbnail bios of two South Carolina senators that is lively and salacious, other than that you have read all this somewhere before.