The Demon of Unrest: Abraham Lincoln & America's Road to Civil War

With the sound of the morning cannon there arose what one reporter called an “out-door tumult” as people began surging toward the city’s only polling place, on the second floor of the Sangamon County Court House at Sixth and Washington. This did not mean the city suddenly began to worry about slave morale; rather, that Blacks had been given too much opportunity to consort among themselves in their own churches, schools, and communal residences and were showing far too much independence. Washington: Dread “where the revolutionary movement” Seward, Seward at Washington, 541. “that the possession of this city” Nicklason, “Secession Winter,” 382. Here, in meticulous chronological order, were hundreds of letters, telegrams, and reports that captured in vivid detail the ticktock of America’s march toward fratricide.