Scott here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became president against all odds.

This is right when southerners were moving closer to break apart the Union, with one

stay after another seceding, and Lincoln completely unable to stop them.

Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter.

In the chaotic months between Lincoln's election and the Confederacy's Schelling of Sumter, Lincoln himself

wrote that the trials of these five months were so great that could I have anticipated

them I would not have believed it possible to survive them.

A number of unlikely people guide to the events of these few months,

including Major Robert Anderson, Sumter's commander, and a former slave owner sympathetic to the

South, but loyal to the Union, Edmund Ruffin, a bloodthirsty radical, who stirred secession his passions at every opportunity,

and of course Lincoln himself, who was in the middle of it all, and battle with his duplicitous Secretary

of State William Seward, as he tried to prevent a war that he feared was inevitable. a heartbreak and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War.

We analyze these chaotic months leading the up to the Civil War,

a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications,

personal tragedies and betrayals.

This episode shows that we often don't see that a cataclysm is coming until it's too late.

Hope you enjoy this discussion with Eric Larson.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for word from our sponsors.

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