Erik Larson begins his new best-selling book, , which recounts the agonizing six months between Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the rebel attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, with these words: “I was well into my research on the saga of Fort Sumter and the advent of the American Civil War when the events of January 6, 2021 took place. I had the eerie feeling that present and past had merged.” One vivid way that present and past had merged was that it fell to the vice president to certify the Electoral College results.
In January 1861, the outgoing vice president, a pro-slavery Democrat, was John C. Breckinridge, who came in second to Lincoln in the 1860 election. As with Mike Pence, there was no assurance that Breckenridge would certify the results.
But he did. The broader parallels between 1860 and 2024 are far more alarming. Now as then, the nation seems divided between two irreconcilable publics.
Now as then, the future of the American Republic is at stake. Trump and his surrogates repeatedly use the language of war, warning of insurrection if Trump is not declared the winner in November, just as the rabid slaveholders of 1860 called for war if Lincoln should be elected. Larson’s book recounts an unfolding catastrophe in slow motion.
For all of his political gifts, Lincoln, who took office only in March 1861, was unable to prevent secession and civil war. The war claimed the lives of close to a million American soldiers and civilians, North and South, about.