In “Dark Mag­ic,” Erik Lar­son reflects on the eerie par­al­lels between his­tor­i­cal events sur­round­ing the Amer­i­can Civ­il War and con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal ten­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing the Capi­tol attack on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. Lar­son, engrossed in research about Fort Sumter and the impend­ing Civ­il War, expe­ri­enced a dis­qui­et­ing con­ver­gence of past and present; both eras were marked by icon­ic moments of nation­al unrest tied to elec­toral process­es and pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tions.

The vis­cer­al emo­tions he felt while watch­ing the chaos unfold—anxiety, anger, astonishment—echoed the sen­ti­ments preva­lent in 1860–1861 among many Amer­i­cans who could sense the nation tee­ter­ing on the brink of chaos. This acknowl­edg­ment pro­pels Lar­son to delve into the sus­pense­ful nar­ra­tive of a frag­ment­ed nation inch­ing toward its great­est tragedy, dri­ven by hubris, deceit, a crav­ing for noto­ri­ety, and the com­plex­i­ties of human emo­tions.

Cen­tral to this inquiry is a per­plex­ing ques­tion: How did South Car­oli­na, seem­ing­ly an incon­se­quen­tial state in eco­nom­ic decline, trans­form into the epi­cen­ter of this nation­al cri­sis? Equal­ly per­plex­ing is the “malig­nant mag­ic” that led Amer­i­cans, both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, to enter­tain the thought of wag­ing an all-out war against each oth­er, cul­mi­nat­ing in the trag­ic loss of 750,000 lives.

Lar­son empha­sizes that his work is deeply root­ed in fac­tu­al recount­ing; all quo­ta­tions stem from cred­i­ble his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, while behav­ioral descrip­tions are derived from eye­wit­ness accounts. He has refined cer­tain his­tor­i­cal spellings and punc­tu­a­tion to align with mod­ern stan­dards while pre­serv­ing the essence of orig­i­nal statements—Lincoln’s delight­ful mis­spellings includ­ed.

With an invi­ta­tion to read­ers to immerse them­selves in this tumul­tuous time, Lar­son aims to evoke the emo­tions of pas­sion, hero­ism, heart­break, and even humor, akin to liv­ing in that piv­otal moment unknow­ing of its dire out­comes. The nar­ra­tive sug­gests a height­ened sense of dread is nec­es­sary, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of today’s wor­ri­some polit­i­cal land­scape, where whis­pers of seces­sion and civ­il war resur­face among some seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion. Thus, the book serves as both a his­tor­i­cal exam­i­na­tion and a cau­tion­ary tale rel­e­vant to mod­ern Amer­i­ca .