Cry Havoc!: The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861

A compelling re-creation of the eight crucial weeks preceding the Civil War.

In early March 1861, civil war loomed. By late April, Americans had begun to kill their fellow citizens. Cry Havoc! recounts in riveting detail the events that divided the states and reveals how quirks of timing, character, and place all conspired to transform the nation into a battlefield. Nelson Lankford, author of Richmond Burning, chronicles the eight critical weeks that began with Lincoln's inauguration through the explosion at Fort Sumter and the president's fateful response to it. Before Fort Sumter, the balance could have tipped in favor of a peaceful resolution. This book addresses the many mighthave-beens, both familiar and lesser known. What if Lincoln had delayed the proclamation calling for troops? Could wavering Unionists in the upper South have held the line?

A must read for all who wish to understand the birth of the modern United States of America, Cry Havoc! probes the fateful series of events and analyzes each of the failed possibilities that hindsight affords.

"Might-have-beens haunt this absorbing study of the opening act of the Civil War. Historian Lankford (Richmond Burning) focuses on March and April of 1861, months when the future, he feels, was up for grabs. The crucial political struggle then, he argues, was for the Upper South: the eight slave states that had not yet joined the newborn Confederacy, where pro-Union sentiment was initially strong and whose loyalties would decide the war. Lankford minutely examines critical events and their effect on Upper South Unionists and the debate over secession, particularly in Virginia and Maryland, emphasizing the importance of individual decision-making in this volatile period. For him, history is contingency — if Lincoln had evacuated Fort Sumter without a fight, or not called up troops to suppress the rebellion, or if Lincoln's generals had treated Maryland less gently, then the Upper South might have remained loyal, or neutral, or plumped more decisively either for the Union or the Confederacy. His underlying historiographical point — that the conflict might have been finessed so as to save the Union without a devastating war — is a none-too-convincing imponderable. But it frames a lucid, often dramatic account of how the nation's confusion and anxiety finally gelled into clear-cut lines of battle. Photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"One of the virtues of Mr. Lankford's approach is to put readers in the minds of ordinary Americans trying to make sense of volatile events." New York Times

"[T]his well-reasoned work is a useful addition to a controversy that will be debated eternally." Booklist

"Lankford cites contemporary newspapers and journals and letters fromordinary citizens of both regions, as well as from national leaders....[A] good summary of the run-up to our nation's most destructive conflict." Kirkus Reviews

Nelson D. Lankford is the author of Richmond Burning and The Last American Aristocrat and the editor of Eye of the Storm and Images from the Storm. He edits The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.