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

In the mid-nineteenth century, Charleston, South Carolina was the most powerful city in the South. Men flocked from across the region to join in the city's vibrant economic, political, and cultural life and to participate in the region's most valuable commercial activity: the slave trade. But by 1860, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a divisive decision. They could succumb to the abolitionists and accept their region's impoverished fate?or they could secede from the Union and hope that the rest of the South came with them.

Through the personal letters and public documents of the era, Madness Rules the Hour tells of the chaos that swept Charleston as its leaders demanded secession and its masses followed suit. In doing so, Paul Starobin masterfully recounts the stories of Charleston's propagandists, politicians, and a pro-slavery pastor as they advanced from the covert beginnings of the 1860 Association to the final, unanimous vote for secession and the ensuing celebrations in the streets. The result is both a portrait of a city and culture in crisis and an insightful investigation into the fear, greed, and madness that fractured the Union and started the Civil War.

Paul Starobin is a frequent contributor to the Atlantic and the New Republic and a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week. His writing on history, politics, and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications, and he is the author of After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age. Paul lives with his family in Orleans, Massachusetts.