In the chap­ter titled “A Wife’s Dis­ap­point­ment,” set against the back­drop of ris­ing ten­sions in Wash­ing­ton, the cre­ation of a “Select Com­mit­tee” high­lights a deep­en­ing sus­pi­cion with­in the gov­ern­ment regard­ing poten­tial trea­so­nous acts. This “Com­mit­tee of Five”—comprised of two Repub­li­cans, two pro-Union Democ­rats from the North, and one South­ern Democrat—casts a wide net of inquiry, spurred on by infor­ma­tion from Edwin M. Stan­ton, the new attor­ney gen­er­al. Stan­ton’s covert com­mu­ni­ca­tions point to a trai­tor with­in the cab­i­net, specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing Isaac Toucey, the Sec­re­tary of the Navy, due to the Navy’s inac­tion as South­ern forces seized the fed­er­al navy yard in Pen­saco­la. The com­mit­tee’s find­ings expose a dire sit­u­a­tion: twen­ty-eight naval ships unfit for ser­vice despite a con­sid­er­able repair bud­get.

As polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence esca­lates with fears of a South­ern coup aim­ing to dis­rupt Lin­col­n’s inau­gu­ra­tion, the com­mit­tee piv­ots to inves­ti­gate pur­port­ed threats against the cap­i­tal. Influ­en­tial sources kin­dled rumors spurring mil­i­tary prepa­ra­tions as Gen­er­al Win­field Scott deployed troops to Wash­ing­ton, tem­porar­i­ly alle­vi­at­ing fears of insur­rec­tion.

In Con­gress, fierce debates unfold, ampli­fy­ing divi­sions between “Black” Repub­li­cans and South­ern Democ­rats. Jef­fer­son Davis’s fore­warn­ings of war pro­voke a stark response from Sen­a­tor Seward, who sur­pris­ing­ly aligns with South­ern sen­ti­ments in an effort to assuage ten­sions. His asser­tion that states should dic­tate their own poli­cies regard­ing prop­er­ty, includ­ing the con­tro­ver­sial issue of slav­ery, dis­gusts many Repub­li­cans, includ­ing his own wife, who can­did­ly cri­tiques his readi­ness to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect slav­ery to main­tain the Union.

Despite his con­cil­ia­to­ry efforts, Seward’s stance reveals an essen­tial mis­un­der­stand­ing of the cri­sis: the South’s grow­ing resent­ment towards the North’s con­dem­na­tion of slav­ery. The lat­ter per­ceives this moral stance as a direct attack on South­ern hon­or and iden­ti­ty, ignit­ing a sim­mer­ing ani­mos­i­ty that could lead to vio­lence. Lin­coln, too, strug­gles with the com­plex­i­ties of this con­flict as he nav­i­gates a divid­ed nation, acknowl­edg­ing that the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence regard­ing slav­ery lies at the heart of the discord—a chasm far beyond the reach of polit­i­cal com­pro­mise.