Another presidential election has come and gone. We all survived. This is the 12th time I have exercised my right to walk into the voting booth and pull the lever for President of the United States.
My vote was for the next president in six of the last 11 elections. My first — we always remember the first — was for the Great Communicator, Ronald Regan.
As of two weeks ago, a record $1.1 billion had been spent on the two candidates for president.
According to bloomberg.com, over $14.7 billion was spent by around 11,000 political groups on all candidates for this election cycle.
Our local mailmen/women now have a much-needed break from delivering the constant bombardment of political mailers. Watching network TV will once again become bearable without the continuous attack of political commercials.
Many allow the four-year cycle of presidential campaigns to overwhelm them, no doubt increasing the use of medicine or alcohol to reduce blood pressure.
Not me. I end almost every day the same: 30 minutes of a comedy series such as Seinfeld, Friends, or Cheers, and time with a good book, usually on history. This clears the mind of any demons, leading to a good night’s rest.
With my last several columns devoted to the election, I have yet to have time to share my reading material with you.
I recently discovered another excellent book — “The Demon of Unrest” — from one of my favorite authors, Erick Larson. Larson is the author of six national bestsellers. I have read them all, including his first, and one of my all-time favorites, “The Devil in the White City.”
In his latest book, Larson once again brings to life a part of history that has been forgotten under decades of dust: the start of the war between the states when, on April 12, 1861, the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter, located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
I love learning about our history. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860, just one month after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. It was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy.
For 34 hours, Confederate batteries fired 3,341 shells and balls at the fort, with Fort Sumter returning close to 1,000 of her own. No one was killed or even seriously injured.
Larson wrote of the battle, “To the religiously inclined, it was a miracle and seemed a harbinger of peace ahead. Few among South Carolina’s chivalry expected that a real war would result; and even if war did come, they believed it would be short and unremarkable.”
At noon on April 14, 1865, exactly four years to the day, after Sumter was evacuated, the former commander of the fort, Robert Anderson, now a retired general, returned to raise the American flag that Confederate guns shot down to start the war.
“In the audience were members of Sumter’s original garrison, including Abner Doubleday, now a major general and a Union hero.” Doubleday fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter and may or may not have invented baseball.
Of course, this nonfiction work is more than those two events; it reports on the days and months following Lincoln’s election. Larson also covers the shortcomings of President James Buchanan and reports on each state as they succeed from the Union and, more importantly, their mindset concerning slavery.
It wasn’t long ago when some, for political purposes, tried to rewrite history and claim that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights and not slavery. Larson’s research quickly puts that lie to an end.
A letter to Buchanan from Arthur Peronneau Hayne dated Dec. 22, 1860 spells out how the South felt: “Slavery with us is no abstraction — but a great and vital fact. Without it our every comfort would be taken from us. Our wives, our children, made unhappy — education, the light of knowledge — all lost and our people ruined for ever. Nothing short of separation from the Union can save us.”
The next time you are worried about the direction of America, world affairs or just the problems at work or home, pick up a good history book and put your demons to rest, if only for a little while.
