Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era

by Charles B. Dew

Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The fifteen years since the original publication of Apostles of Disunion have seen an intensification of debates surrounding the Confederate flag and Civil War monuments. In a powerful new afterword to this anniversary edition, Dew situates the book in relation to these recent controversies and factors in the role of vast financial interests tied to the internal slave trade in pushing Virginia and other upper South states toward secession and war.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American Civil War, American History, School, Historical

151 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2001

About the author

Charles Dew is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College. A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, he attended Woodberry Forest School in Viriginia and Williams College prior to completing his Ph.D. degree at the Johns Hopkins University under the direction of C. Vann Woodward.

Reviews

[Sean Chick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was underwhelmed by this book. It is short and its research focus is limited, its popularity having to do with the anti-Confederate bend of scholarship. Dew tries to mitigate this by discussing how he is a son of the South, but he is here to tell you he has seen the light, and believes that if we do not condemn the Confederacy then racial justice will be impossible. I too used to be of the same mindset, when I lived in the North and wanted to be a professor. I even studied the Union's war memory. I do think the Confederates were wrong, but I doubt that admitting that will actually make things better in this country. In fact, it is a symptom of a creeping disunion, egged on everytime the contemporary left condemns the antebellum compromises, failing to see that those who most hated compromise were the South Carolina secessionists they detest. The twain has met.

The book is well written and not nearly as historically false as the canard about the South leaving due to constitutional issues. Dew is at heart correct. Slavery was at the center of the secession movement. I object to the simplification of the issue. Dew is horrified by the racism, but hardly mentions how slavery was highly profitable and therefore was the key to prestige and political power. This is Civil War causation cut off from class and economics, which is no surprise; academic historians since the 1970s have been unable to deal with class for reasons so complicated it would make this review a tome. The short answer is some poor white people voted Republican after the 1960s, and the elites of the left have never forgiven them. In fact they think the voters did it for racist reasons. It is a point of debate, but I feel it informs Dew's narrow focus. The trouble is, the book leaves one thinking every Southerner was a rabid racist, which obscures our understanding rather than making it richer.

It is a Manichean account of causation, but what can one expect from a book that is avowedly a piece of policy advocacy for racial justice? I applaud the desire, but advocacy makes me wary whenever I read history, for it will dictate the way sources are used and presented. For instance, in describing support for a Lee mural in Richmond, Dew quotes the worst advocates, such as David Duke and the League of the South. More moderate voices, or those who simply want to honor their ancestors, are silent. The NAACP, by contrast, is given the most noble of motives and quotations. Perhaps that was the case then. How though would Dew feel about the recent desecration of Confederate graves? I will not answer for him, but in my experience extremism is mostly condemned when it is the opposing side doing it. After all, if the Rebels were evil racists, then they do not even deserve cemetery monuments, much less public ones.

Sadly, Dew knows he is being narrow minded. In his introduction he mentions the works of others who discuss the myriad reasons for secession. Dew though implies, in a respectful manner, that it is window dressing for racism. I disagree, not with the book's contention that racism was important, but in divorcing it from the economics and politics of the era in order to fashion a moralizing history about a wicked South.

PS: Dew mentions the South African reconciliation commissions and says we failed to do the same here. Given current affairs in South Africa, it sadly appears those commissions were not enough.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable and eye opening account written by a Southerner on the true cause of the Civil War. No revisionist history, no editorializing, no spinning, just the stark unadulterated words and oratory taken from letters and speeches of a group of men called “Secession Commissioners” who fanned out across the South in late 1860 early 1861. Appointed by governors and legislatures just after the election of Abraham Lincoln their professed aim was to convince and lobby Southern slave states to join together in a common confederation and secede from the Union. I have long been familiar with “The Redeemers” who were citizens that worked to restore the South to Ante Bellum status during post war Reconstruction but I was thoroughly startled to learn of this coalition of secession commissioners who did their work immediately prior to the Civil War. Their arguments were steeped in race, imperative solidarity and calculated to preserve slavery in the South as an absolute necessity. Fittingly, little or no assertion of the argument of states’ rights was offered; obviously the primary message was not to be confused with minor issues!!

This is a must read for all, or for anyone even remotely interested in our history.

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Dave Barry once noted, identifying the causes of the Civil War used to be easy: "Slavery. Now go get grandpa a bottle of wine." Nineteenth-century Confederate apologists and twentieth-century historians, some with significant Southern sympathies, complicated this simple interpretive picture by arguing that the Civil War was caused by extremism, or states' rights, or tariff policy, or classical republicanism. Thomas Dew, in this short but compelling book, provides persuasive evidence that the secession movement which initiated the Civil War was motivated by a desire to defend slavery, and a fear of what would happen if the "Black Republicans" took power. His evidence is the body of letters and speeches produced by the Deep South's secession commissioners, a group of 52 men appointed by the first five seceded states to explain their action to other white Southerners and persuade them to join the Southern confederacy. These documents were not merely reflections of the seceders' mindset but indications of what they thought would move their white Southern audiences. What they argued was that secession was the only way to protect slavery from the Republicans, who planned to destroy it and white Southerners at the same time. Having gained the presidency in 1860, the Republicans would surely abolish slavery in Washington DC and the territories, send abolitionist officials into the South, end the ban on mailing abolitionist publications to Southern addresses, and thus incite the South's slaves to rebellion. The same party would eventually add enough new free western states to the Union to abolish slavery by Constitutional amendment, and thus open the door to race war and (horror of horrors) interracial marriage in the South. If we join Dew's findings to James Oakes' argument in FREEDOM NATIONAL (2012), we may argue that white Southerners were not entirely incorrect in calling the Civil war "The War of Northern Aggression.” Republicans certainly planned to take aggressive action against slavery in the West and put it on the road to extinction in the South, and Southern whites saw this as necessarily the end of white supremacy and the "civilization" that rested upon it. Call the Civil War what you like, Dew concludes, but you can no longer say it had nothing to do with slavery.

[Robert Mckay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't fault the writing - Dew is plain and clear and readable. But this book suffers from the great fault of bias. Dew comes to it determined on a conclusion, and reaches it in due course, as people always do who know ahead of time what they're going to find. The problem is that, as always when you know what you're going to discover before you begin the search, the truth suffers.

If Dew had set out to demonstrate that slavery was an issue in the dispute between north and south that led to secession, he would've been entirely correct - though he'd have been beating a dead horse, since everyone knows that already. But his thesis is that slavery was the issue, and that is so historically wrong that it's almost risible. The only thing that prevents the theory from being a huge joke is the harm that has come to all Americans, northern and southern, as a result of the fiction.

To put it bluntly, it's a myth that slavery was the sole reason for secession. Of course it was there. Slavery existed in the south - and in the north, too, though Dew ignores that fact, as do all who promote the myth - and the southern states sought to protect it. Like it or not (and I absolutely don't), slavery was a fact of life in the south, the basis on which the plantation economy rested. That which secures your financial welfare you will always want to preserve, whether it's the existence of the company that employs you, or government handouts, or the business you've built from scratch...or slavery.

But slavery, as Dew proves without ever admitting it, was part of the concept of states rights. Under the Constitution of the United States, the states have rights, just as do the citizens. The states, in ratifying the Constitution and entering into the association called the United States of America, did not surrender anything. They only delegated to the United States government certain powers which were necessary for the federal government to carry out the functions which the Constitution assigns to it. And the original 13 states demanded a bill of rights - an explicit statement of the rights that the states and the citizens retain when delegating those powers to the federal government. Among the provisions of that bill of rights are the 9th and 10th amendments, which explicitly state that every power which the Constitution doesn't plainly delegate to the federal government, remain with the states and the people. States' rights isn't an esoteric theory the southern states devised to justify withdrawing from the United States, but an essential feature of the US Constitution.

The southern states seceded in order to preserve their rights as states - whether they had legitimate cause to believe those rights were under assault is really irrelevant here. What matters is that the states have those rights, thought those rights were under attack, and seceded in order to protect those rights. One of the rights they sought to protect was the right of property, including, but not limited to, human property - slaves. Now slavery is an evil, which is better abolished, but under the Constitution it was perfectly legal in 1860, and therefore constitutionally a slave was a man's property just as surely as a chair or a horse or a piece of land. And rightly or wrongly, the southern states believed that the northern states, and especially the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln were out to abolish slavery in the south, which would be a violation of the Constitution. And so yes, slavery played a large role in the debates over secession, and in secession itself - but it was far from being the only factor.

Dew is very selective in his quotations. Granted that the book specifically examines the roles and statements of the commissioners various seceded states sent to states that hadn't (yet) seceded, to try to persuade them to take the step. With that focus, it would be surprising to find him trawling through the vast repository of documents surrounding the matter. But even within that focus, he is selective.

Dew had the bad judgment (bad in what it does to the myth he's trying to prove) to include, in an appendix, the speech of William L. Harris, a commissioner from Mississippi to Georgia; and a letter from Stephen F. Hale, a commissioner from Alabama to Kentucky, to Kentucky's governor. Blinded by his devotion to the thesis that slavery was the sole cause of secession, he reproduced these two documents in their entirety, thus allowing a reader who's paying attention to realize just how fallacious that thesis is. Yes, this speech and this letter mention slavery. Yes, they defend slavery (in terms that I find repugnant). But no, they do not speak only of slavery. They rather speak of slavery in the context of northern and federal encroachment on southern states' rights, of northerners meddling in southern business and the federal government trying to obliterate an institution which the Constitution made legal.

I suspected all through the body of the book that Dew was misrepresenting things, quoting only those snippets which appeared, in isolation, to serve his cause. Reading these two documents in their entirety demonstrated the validity of my suspicion. Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, I conclude that he is so committed to the idea that slavery! slavery! slavery! is the only factor that impelled secession that he is unable to see anything else that the southern states said. If I don't give him the benefit of the doubt, my conclusion will be somewhat more condemnatory.

Whichever it is, Charles Dew does history a disservice, and he buries the actual truth under a steaming pile of manure. He isn't alone - even before the end of the War for Southern Independence northern myth-makers were writing things that were ridiculously false, in an effort to justify using brute force, terrorism, and blatant violations of the laws of war when they couldn't win through simple military operations. The so-called emancipation proclamation, for instance, was mere propaganda, which didn't actually free any slave, and didn't even pretend to free the slaves where Abraham Lincoln's power actually extended, but which the United States government used to give itself a cloak of high morality. But even in a crowd of of people making obvious myths, Dew stands out for his blatant distortion of facts and refusal to admit the existence of facts.

[Michael Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review of
Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (University of Virginia Press, 2002).


Dew states in the introduction of Apostles of Disunion: “I believe deeply that the story these documents tell is one that all of us, northerners and southerners, black and white, need to confront as we try to understand our past and move toward a future in which a fuller commitment to decency and racial justice will be part of our shared experience” (Dew pg. 3). Thus begins the incisive work that discusses one of the most debated issues scholars face with regards to the Civil War: Did slavery or states rights lead to the Civil War? Dew recognizes in Chapter 1 of Apostles of Disunion that the INS “uncertainty” about what caused the Civil War “reflects the deep division and profound ambivalence in contemporary American culture over the Origins of the Civil War” (Dew pg.4), but he focuses on race as the main reasoning behind disunion and the formation of the Confederacy. Dews’ analysis in the ensuing chapters highlights the diction the commissioners utilize in their speeches at important conventions. Dew argues that the “explanations the commissioners offered and the arguments the commissioners made, in short, provide us with extraordinary insight into the secession of the lower South in 1860-1861” (Dew pg.21). Although Dew does not explicitly analyze the speech of every commissioner, he does expand upon a variety of the individuals. In Apostles of Disunion, Dew argues that the commissioner’s speeches, to their assigned states, exemplify the true reasoning for the Southern states disbanding from the Union and forming the Confederacy: the debate or belief over slavery as an institution.
Dew utilizes multiple commissioners to extract the bias or true reasoning for their belief in secession. He starts by discussing the first group of individuals sent out to “advance the cause of secession” (pg. 23). One of these people Dew talks about is William L. Harris, Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia. Commissioned by Governor John J. Pettus of Mississippi, Harris had to present a speech to the Georgia General Assembly on Monday, December 17, 1860. However, before divulging into the text of Harris’s speech to the state congress, Dew discusses how Harris arrived at the position of commissioner to Georgia. Harris graduated from Georgia’s university in 1825. He moved to Columbus, Mississippi in 1837. Harrison “had an outstanding reputation as a member of the legal profession” (Dew pg.28). He was considered very smart and persuasive. As a result of his history and reputation, he was selected as a “natural choice” by Governor Pettus (Dew pg.28). Dew then proceeds into contextualizing the text of Harris. Harris states how the North is “‘more defiant and more intolerant than ever before’” (Dew pg.29). Harrison continues by stating “‘Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.’” Harrison’s comparison between “the white man” and the “negro” through adjectives such as “ignorant,” “inferior,” and “barbarian race”implies for Dew what Harrison’s motivation for secession is: racism or slavery. After all, Dew contends that “it was Judge Harris who set the tone for what was to follow” (Dew pg. 30). Judge Harris’s speech addressed “racial themes” that would “echo” in the “statements of other commissioners as they spread out across the South in the late 1860 and early 1861.”
Dew then addresses South Carolina, the very first state to secede from the Union, and the process it went through assigning commissioners. Isaac W. Hayne, the state attorney general and convention, along with the effort spearheaded by the creator of the Charleston Mercury, Robert Barnwell Rhett, promoted ideas or considerations that the convention “acted swiftly to implement” (Dew, pg.38). As a result, on Dec. 29th, the members of the assembly “endorsed the idea of appointing commissioners.” Dew then transitions into an analysis of Andrew Pickens Calhoun, South Carolina’s commissioner to Alabama. Calhoun arrived at Alabama on January 6th to spread the ideas founded in the South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession. However, Dew gives quick background information about Andrew Pickens Calhoun: discussing his father, moving to Alabama, working as a farmer, moving back to South Carolina, his important role in the South Carolina Agricultural Society, and his “relative absence from the political arena” (Dew, pg.39-40). However, Dew, as is apparent throughout the text, pays close attention towards the language of the commissioners in their speeches that explain why they favor of succession. Dew provides the context, and then incorporates the actual source to speak for his argument. So, despite his commission to Alabama, Dew showcases the speech that Calhoun gave to the South Carolina Agricultural Society on November 13th, 1860. This speech emphasizes, through comparison, that the speech to the Alabama Convention “lacked some of the rhetorical fireworks of his Agricultural Society address, but the main point he made in Montgomery was the same one he had offered in Columbia eight weeks earlier” (Dew, pg.41). In his speech to the Society, Calhoun mentions, as Dew points out, a relationship between the Republicans and the French Revolution. For example, Dew states how Calhoun propounded the idea that “the effect that the French Revolutionary rhetoric--specifically the slogan ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’--had had on the slave population of Haiti” (Dew, pg.40) would lead to Calhoun’s conclusion that the “‘fury of the beast,’” which “arose” in Haiti against Haitian slave masters, would be the same thing that “‘white fiends [of the North] would delight to see re-enacted now with us’” (Dew, pg.41). Thus, according to Dew, Calhoun believed that the Republican-based Union would ignite revolutionary ideals that would lead to the destruction of the not just the institution of slavery, but the South itself.
Dew incorporates primary sources and secondary sources coherently and intricately throughout his text. Both primary and secondary sources are cited in the back of the work, under the “Notes” section, but he numbers the bits of information that are not his own throughout the text. The Milledgeville Federal Union is a newspaper that re-published the speech William L. Harris gave at the Georgia General Assembly. It is a primary source (a newspaper), and, besides being cited in the back and with an in-text citation, is also identified by a block-quote. Dew utilizes the end of his speech to emphasize the reaction it had on the Georgia legislature. Another example of a primary source Dew uses is the Columbia Daily South Carolinian, published on Nov. 14, 1860. This is another newspaper that re-published the speech Andrew Calhoun gave on Nov. 13, 1860 in an address to the South Carolina Agricultural Society. Dew employs the language from this newspaper to re-construct Calhoun’s argument. Dew’s secondary sources mainly include biographies such as Thomas M. Owen’s History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, four vols. (Chicago, 1921) and Vicki Vaughn Johnson’s The Men and the Vision of the Southern Commercial Conventions, 1845-1871 (Columbia, Mo., 1992) in order to contextualize the background information that helped shape these men’s views. The information for these secondary sources are identified in the same manner as primary sources.
Dew’s argument is that the issue of slavery was the cause that started and stimulated the Civil War. However, The American Journey says slavery “accounted for or played a role in creating distinctions between North and South that transcended their shared heritage” (Goldfield et al., pg.404). Dew does not mention these “distinctions” nor the fact that the North or South had a “shared heritage.” For example, in The American Journey, it mentions how “As the North became increasingly urban and industrial, the South remained primarily rural and agricultural” (Goldfield et al., pg. 404). The North’s economic structure sharply contrasted that of the South, which reflects a growth in different modes of thinking amongst people and could possibly explain the resultant attitudes about the importance of slavery that divided the North and the South. Also, The American Journey mentions how Evangelical Protestantism played a role in the ensuing sectionalism: “In the North, evangelical Protestants viewed social reform as a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ. As a result, they were in the forefront of most movements. Southern evangelicals generally defended slavery” (Goldfield et al. pg. 405). This religious defence of slavery is not discussed in the context of the commissioners. Thus, when Dew discusses the religious justification that Stephen Fowler Hale used in Hale’s speech, the reader is not informed about the historical influence religion had on Southerners like Hale during this time; Hale discusses how secession is the only method to safeguard “‘the heaven- ordained superiority of the white over the black race’” (Dew, pg.53), in order to promote the cause of secession. Why does Hale believe white supremacy to be “‘ordained?’” The audience that Dew is attempting to address is: history students, teachers, historians, scholars, Civil War fanatics, and anyone else who questions the causes of the Civil War in America or the impact of the southern secession commissioners. Dew’s book contains an “Appendix” section, from page 83 to page 103, which has two primary source documents: a speech by William L. Harris and a letter from Stephen F. Hale to Governor Beriah Magoffin. Plus, he has a “Notes” section, from page 105 to 118, which is separated into lists of sources used for each part of the book (the introduction, each chapter, and the conclusion), and each list of cited sources is in numerical order to document where sources are used.The “Notes” also list books that Dew recommends himself. He also includes from page 119 to page 124 the “Index,” where the reader can locate specific people, places, or concepts mentioned in the book. According to the Dew’s index, McSweeney, Patrick S., is mentioned on page 7 or Ruffin, Edmund is on both page 41 and page 44. Dew’s books critically examine the text of the commissioners to decipher the true meaning of the Civil War: the issue of slavery. He perfectly weaves together primary and secondary sources to create an astounding work of scholarly merit. Useful is something that is relevant or instructive towards solving a certain problem, completing a study, learning about a subject or topic, answering or pondering a question, or providing a variegate of viewpoints that aid in our understanding about a study, subject, topic or problem. The book is useful because it provides an analytical argument through the usage of insightful and relevant primary sources that are contextualized by secondary sources that immerse you into the world of the secessionists. Dew allows the primary sources, with minor biographical descriptions of the commissioners, concrete dates of important events, and historical interpretation of ideology and values found on the surface level of the texts, to speak for themselves. Overall, it is a book that brings the reader back to the reality of secession and in-depth glimpse into history.
--To be edited--
- Michael Young

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very short (81 well-spaced pages), but fairly good. Provides plenty of evidence that the Civil War was a war fought over slavery rather than states' rights, but unfortunately doesn't really engage the other side. A bit repetitive too. Not nearly the knock-out punch to states' rights that it portrays itself to be, though only idiots and white supremacists argue that the Civil War was over states' rights.

[Matthew Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in studying the secession winter or the causes of the American Civil War. Although it is based on top-notch scholarship, the book is also concise, well-written, and accessible to the general reader.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was assigned as part of a graduate-level course on the American Civil War. Coincidentally, this book had sat on my shelf for many years without ever being read. I got it at a library sale long ago, and broke the cardinal rule: I judged it by its cover. For some reason, I assumed the book had a heavy pro-Confederate bend and just never felt in the mood to read that. I couldn't have been more wrong! Though Dew was raised in the South, he uses the book to challenge Lost Cause notions that the war wasn't about slavery (or even wasn't primarily about slavery) and offer compelling evidence that slavery was the dominant issue of the period.

Dew's research focuses on secession commissioners, who I had never heard of before reading the book. These men were essentially messengers between the Southern states whose role was to encourage other states to secede from the Union. His coverage is effective for such a slim book and added important details to my understanding of the Secession Crisis in the winter of 1860-61.

Dew takes these men at their word, and allows those who were passionately advocating for secession to define why they wanted to secede. The words are loud and clear: Slavery. Dew does an alright job of explaining how states rights, white supremacy, and the plantation economy all contribute this central cause without superseding it. He quotes heavily from the speeches and letters of these commissioners, and goes to the extent of arguing why we should trust that this is what they believed when they said it.

Obviously, there's only so much you can do in a book as short as this. It isn't a complete history of the secession crisis, and I think critics are reasonable to point out the omissions of the text, but I think Dew has written a fair, and hard, history of these men. I'd recommend it to those interested in secession and the Civil War, and for those who are unwilling to recognize that slavery was the central issue which caused the war - elevated by, and emerging from, other issues from the period, but still the inflection point for the country. For those interested in a more full history of the period and the political context, I recommend The U.S. Constitution and Secession: A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy by Dwight Pitcaithley.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely essential book, actually and randomly. Takes the essence of bad faith and judges it dispassionately, as the Confederacy (and post-war efforts) so often tried to make as obtuse as possible.

[David Britten · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but definitive study on the real causes of the Civil War despite many efforts over the years to shade them under the Lost Cause mythology. The author drew on dozens of primary documents and newspaper accounts to assemble the evidence that racism, white supremacy, and above all slaver were the causes that led to secession and the bloodiest war ever on American soil. Having just spent over a week in Charleston, SC, this work by Charles B. Drew has helped me tie together the many sites and stories I observed during my short visit.

[bored reader]

Really really good! Short and sweet, and not at all dense or annoying to read. Also appreciated the connections to modern day society, as the Civil War is still such a relevant topic today.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a civil war history class. A brief, but effective, argument affirming slavery as the central cause of the civil war. It’s a common-sense examination of speeches commissioners made to southern state legislatures arguing for secession. Their words are unequivocal—southern states seceded to preserve the institution of slavery and uphold white supremacy.

[Justin Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rather short book is packed with a ton of information regarding the Southern reasons for secession. Dr. Dew recounts many of the same kinds of stories that we seemed to be faced with in the introduction. For example, on the citizenship test for becoming a United States Citizen, a question is asked “Why was the Civil War fought?” The answer could realistically be either because of “states rights” or over slavery. Dr. Dew seeks to understand the reasons for secession better in this book; he wants to give clarity that the Southern states did not secede over states rights, as Southern revisionist historians in the 19th century suggested and that became mainstream as Southerns attempted to assuage their guilt over the war, but over the nasty topic of slavery.

Dr. Dew demonstrates this quite skillfully in looking at a little studied piece of history in the Southern Commissioners. After Abraham Lincoln was elected President, South Carolina seceded soon after. They gathered up prominent statesmen to take their case to other Southern states to secede just as South Carolina did. The Southern Commissioners took the message of disunity to Alabama, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and other states. They talked most often in front of the states leading members including the governor and the legislature’s assembled body. Dew says, “From December 1860 to April 1861, they carried the gospel of disunion to the far corners of the South” (Dew, 18).

What ensues is a book full of the highlights of the commissioners reports. These are public documents of their speeches, and they are candid in their explanations. There were a number of reasons for Southerns to be alarmed at the abolition of slavery and these arguments are heard in the speeches. For one, they believed that freeing of the slaves might cause an uprising amongst them, killing the slave owners and their families. They also thought that the freeing of slaves would decimate their economic progress. But at the core of it, they would be considered just plain racist in our day. They believed that white supremacy would be quashed if slaves were free. So they took to preserving their way of life by separating from the very same people who threatened them.

I think the title of this book is so brilliant: the Apostles of Disunion. That’s essentially what the commissioners were. Dr. Dew says, “And by helping us to understand the ‘why’ of secession, these apostles of disunion have gone a long way toward answering that all-important question, ‘The Civil War was fought over what important issue?'” (Dew, 21). And Dr. Dew makes a convincing argument: if indeed these commissioners were making the abolition of slavery an apologetic to get other Southern states on board with secession, then it would put the argument that the states seceded on the issue of state’s rights on precarious ground.

But alas, I believe we will continue to fight against this notion because in our time, it’s just not an issue that we would like to rehash. We are comfortable with the idea of state’s rights which is put in a much better light than white supremacy. Uncovering these documents and looking into what these men actually said is almost frightening and goes a long ways in explaining the fall out of the complete abolition of slavery and the systematic racism that ensued in the South for decades to come. We are still feeling the reverberations of such arguments today in one way or another. So this is an important book and an important topic that we will continue to explore.

[Lawrence A · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the aftermath of the Charleston, S.C., white supremacist terror attack, we are again hearing from some sectors that the South did not secede from the Union because it wanted to preserve slavery. Lest we fall for that tired argument, I would highly recommend the following books: this one---Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, by Charles Dew---as well as Secession Debated: Georgia's Showdown in 1860, by William W. Freehling, and The Road to Disunion: Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861, also by William W. Freehling. All of these works look closely at the letters and speeches of numerous Southern secession commissioners, that is, those elected either by Southern voters or state legislatures as delegates to statewide conventions considering secession or as official "ambassadors" from already seceded states to undecided states, as well as the proceedings of Southern state secession conventions. It is clear from these primary documents that those who took the South out of the union were concerned primarily that Lincoln's election portended the end of slavery, despite Lincoln's repeated promise that he would not take any action to end slavery where it existed. While lip service was occasionally given to "state's rights" and against "overweening federal power," these commissioners were brutally honest that what they most desired was to preserve slavery as a way of life and as a political economy. Now, it is true that thousands of Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders, and it may very well be that they had little truck with the elite plantation owners who drove Southern policy. Perhaps, in their hearts, they thought that they were fighting for home, family, and honor. But it strains credulity that even the poorest white Southern upland non-slaveholding farmer who fought for the Confederacy did not know that he was also fighting for the "Southern way of life," which included a defense of its "peculiar institution." Hence, the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, which we now know commonly as the "Confederate Flag," was the flag of slavery and, given its more recent usages in the 50s and 60s as the flag of resistance to civil rights and federal authority to enforce civil rights laws, it is hard for anyone with an understanding of history to accept the argument that this flag represents merely the bravery and valor of Confederate soldiers.

This slim book gets 3 stars because, for such a slender volume, it was a tad repetitive. Nonetheless, it's an important addition to antebellum history.

[Jon Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dew accuses Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens of concealing their true intentions by conspiring to avoid discussing the issue of slavery as a cause after the war, instead opting to write “from the ashes of Confederate defeat . . . a passionate insistence that states’ rights, and states’ rights alone, lay at the root of the recent conflict.” Dew’s assertion is a good example of how the categorical distinctions in which “Lost Cause” authors thought are conflated today.

In The Rise and Fall Jefferson Davis cited, concerning the reason for war, the “denial of the right of a State peaceably to withdraw.” Included in this discussion was the presence and reinforcement of military fortifications in the seceded states as well as Lincoln’s call for troops. Davis leaves slavery for his discussion of secession. Contrastingly, Dew implicitly assumes the war as the inevitable result of secession. This connection neither Davis, nor the other “Lost Cause” authors, ever assumed. Davis further distinguished between the question of slavery serving as an “occasion” for secession and the question of slavery serving as a “cause” for secession. Dew, like many other contemporaries, simply assumes slavery was the cause. One further distinction Davis adduced was between slavery as a political question and slavery as a moral question. Davis denied that any “moral nor sentimental considerations were really involved in either the earlier or later controversies which so long agitated and finally ruptured the Union.” Edward Pollard made the same distinctions concerning secession when he wrote:

The slavery question is not to be taken as an independent controversy in American politics. It was not a moral dispute. It was the mere incident of a sectional animosity, the causes of which lay far beyond the domain of morals. Slavery furnished a convenient line of battle between the disputants; it was the most prominent ground of distinction between the two sections; it was, therefore, naturally seized upon as a subject of controversy, became the dominant theatre of hostilities, and was at last so conspicuous and violent, that occasion was mistaken for cause, and what was merely an incident came to be regarded as the main subject of controversy.

Choosing by default to view slavery as a moral question, Dew rhetorically asks if “secession and racism [are] . . . intimately connected?” a view he shares with many modern faculty members. Not only does Dew frame the debate over abolition improperly, but he cherry picks only for quotes on slavery while ignoring portions of speeches from commissioners that emphasized the tariff.

[George P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Civil War was fought over what important issue?”

That question begins and ends the 2001 edition of Charles B. Dew’s Apostles of Disunion. It appeared on a test administered to prospective citizens by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services. According to the INS, either “slavery” or “states [sic] rights” was an acceptable answer. This binary option, in Dew’s words, “reflects the deep division and profound ambivalence in contemporary American culture over the origins of the Civil War.”

Today, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the test. The current version of that test, updated in January 2017, includes this question: “Name one problem that led to the Civil War” (emphasis in original). Acceptable answers include “slavery,” “economic reasons,” and “states’ rights.” After 152 years, Americans still don’t agree on the cause of the Civil War.

There is a sense in which the second and third answers are correct. The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 alarmed the South. Southerners feared that a Republican administration would violate their states’ rights and harm their economies in the process. Because they couldn’t see a way of keeping their states’ rights inviolate and their economies flourishing with Lincoln in the White House, they seceded.

And yet, citing “states’ rights” and “economic reasons” as causes of the Civil War is also profoundly misleading. Think of it this way: Why did Southerners think a Republican administration threatened their states’ rights and economies? Because they felt that Lincoln and the Republicans would interfere with their “peculiar institution,” slavery—the source of their region’s economic wealth and the reason for the constant invocation of states’ rights against federal power. Economic reasons and states’ right might have been proximate causes, but slavery was the ultimate cause.

But don’t take either my word or Charles B. Dew’s word for this conclusion. Take the word of the various men profiled in his book, men specifically commissioned by Southern states (e.g., South Carolina) to advocate the need for other Southern states (e.g., Virginia) to secede from the Union and form a new Confederacy, an advocacy that occurred in late 1860 and early 1861, prior to the attach on Fort Sumter. “Over and over again,” Dew writes, “they called up three stark images that, taken together, constituted the white South’s worst nightmare.”

Below are the “three stark images” together with representative quotes from secessionist commissioners:

Racial equality

“Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality” (William L. Harris, Mississippi commissioner, in a December 1860 speech to the Georgia legislature).

Race war

“Under the policy of the Republican party, the time would arrive when the scenes of San Domingo and Hayti, with all their attendant horrors, would be enacted in the slaveholding States” (William Cooper, Alabama commissioner, in a December 1860 speech to the Missouri legislature. He was referring to the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), in which Haitian slaves overthrew their French masters.)

Racial amalgamation

“Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property, and her institutions [i.e., slavery]; nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government [i.e., “the equality of the races, white and black”] destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection [i.e., the Haitian Revolution], consigning her citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans” (Stephen F. Hale, Alabama commissioner, in a December 27, 1860, in a formal letter to Gov. Beriah Magoffin of Kentucky).

In his 2016 Afterword, Dew notes that he reviewed the commissioners’ speeches and formal letters afresh and saw with greater clarity how “economic themes formed a significant undercurrent in their case for secession.” But once again, those economic reasons focused on slavery. After quoting various commissioners, Dew notes: “The two largest industries in the Old South were staple crop agriculture and the [internal] slave trade. No other economic activity came even close to these two enterprises. So they had to figure in the secession commissioners’ argument, and they did.”

With the defeat of the South and the abolition of slavery, Southern partisans recast the ultimate cause of their struggle. The result was the so-called “Lost Cause,” the defense of Southern culture in which the centrality of slavery was downplayed. In light of what secession commissioners said about the cause of their struggle before the Civil War, however, the Lost Cause can only be seen as egregious historical revisionism. The South seceded from the Union in order to defend the ideology of white supremacy and the practice of slavery. That was its ultimate aim and the reason for its invocation of “states’ rights” and “economic reasons.”

Next time you read about a conflict regarding a Confederate monument or the Confederate battle flag, keep that fact in mind.

 

Book Reviewed:
Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, 15th anniv. ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2016).

_____
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The irony of Jefferson Davis’ argument for states’ equality while discounting equality amongst different races of humans is not lost on me: “Nothing less than “the systematic and persistent struggle to deprave the Southern States of equality in the Union” had led first to mounting political antagonism and then finally to war.” (17)

More irony from another person: “He concluded his speech with the impassioned insistence that South Carolinians “from the mountains to the sea-board... will ‘die freemen rather than live slaves.’”” (42)

“It was when he moved to describe the consequences of Republican-backed emancipation that Hale revealed what lay at the core of the secession movement in the Deep South. At its heart the drive to destroy the Union fed off the absolute conviction that the abolition of slavery would either plunge the South into a race war or so stain the blood of the white race that it would be contaminated for all time.” (56)

“They hold Southerners in contempt, he insisted; they believed “that we are a race inferior to them in morality and civilization,” and they were committed to “a holy crusade for our benefit in seeking the destruction of that institution which... lies at the very foundation of our social and political fabric.”” (63)

[Scott Holstad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one surprised me because while I'm not the greatest expert on the Civil War, I thought I had most of the basics down some time ago. This book, however, brought to light in far greater detail elements of things I'd heard but never knew in such vivid ways just how formative these ideas and events were. Obviously, looking at the reviews here, not everyone is a fan and that's their prerogative. For me, I found it great food for thought and it introduced a new perspective I'd not yet acquired, so for me, it's highly recommended.

[Jeffrey Cosen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very brief, but also slightly repetitive. More context, to turn in into a comprehensive look, would be nice.

[Clayton Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book dispels any notion that slavery was not the main cause of the Civil War. I highly recommend this book.

[Ryan Kline]

The book is an active and enthralling depiction of pre-Civil War division.

[Jim Drewery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dew's conclusion in Apostles of Disunion, that white supremacy was at the core of the ardent secessionist movement in the winter of 1860-61, is well founded and completed supported by the body of evidence consulted. The correspondence and speeches of the secessionist commissioners, sent out by Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, to the remaining slave states, clearly illustrated this point. They repeatedly espoused the view that the Southern states must disassociate themselves from the Union, or face the complete breakdown of their society. In their view all hope of future compromise between the North and South had been exhausted with the Republicans in power. Their 1860 platform had advocated the complete abolition of slavery in the western territories. A move which would isolate and confine slavery solely to those states where it then existed, thus inevitably hastening its complete demise throughout the country. Proof of this inevitably they claimed, was clearly represented by the election of Abraham Lincoln, over three other more moderate candidates, each of which would have been at least palatable to the South. There could be no turning back now, the balance of power had finally been irreparably tipped in favor of Northern anti-slavery fanaticism, which would sweep slavery from not just the territories but quickly as well from the entire nation. This could not be allowed to happen if the peace and economic security of the South was to be upheld. All of this would be utterly destroyed by the theology of racial parity, which they decried would become the policy of the new federal government after Lincoln's inauguration. Often offering visions of the horrific bloodshed and chaos which had so recently accompanied slave revolts across the Caribbean, as examples of what the future held for the South under such circumstances. They warned that the murderous designs of fanatics like John Brown were only a sampling of the horrors which would ensue in the wake of emancipation.
Steven Hale cited the degradation of the Fugitive Slave Act though legislative action in many of the Northern states, the lack of federal protection for slave owners in bloody Kansas and John Brown's raid as evidence of the impending doom of racial slavery in the United States, if the Republicans and abolitionists had their way.(53) Mississippi's commissioner to Virginia, Fulton Anderson, reiterated this doctrine in his address to that state's secession convention in February, 1861. He told the assembled delegates that the newly elected Republican administration would not rest until the “ultimate extinction of slavery” was achieved.(62) Mister Henry Lewis Benning of Georgia also repeated this theory, adding that the abolitionist pressures would so negatively influence public sentiment against slavery in the border states that the remaining slave owners in these regions would soon feel compelled to completely divest themselves of slaves. These slaves would be sold south, just as former slave owners in the Northern states had divested themselves of their human chattel a generation earlier, not usually by emancipating them, but rather instead by selling them south, thus cashing out on their investment. This process would now continue to accelerate until slavery was confined solely to the cotton belt of the deep South, at which point he claimed the region's political power would be so eroded, that the Northern majority would be able to totally abolish it. Reinforcing this with the warning, that any who then opposed the law of racial equality, would themselves be branded as criminals, thus condemning whites in the South to the “yoke of equality”.(67)
This was for a large portion of the Southern citizenry the most horrifying thought of all. The idea of racial equality for the four million Black slaves, then held in bondage in the South and the amalgamation of the races which would surely follow was wholly repugnant for them. Hale's letter again affirms this as the most terrifying of nightmares for all Southerners. Whites of all stations would be reduced to being equals in every way with the freed Negroes and forced to suffer the horror of seeing their children soon “associating with free negroes in terms of political and social equality.”(98) William Harris of Georgia asserted this was an abomination of the sacred principles of the nation's founders, who had created a government for the White man, rejecting the negro as ignorant inferiors, totally unfit to be associated as equals with the White man on any terms.(85) This vein is also followed by other commissioners as well and embellished further to evoke the ominous specter of a full scale slave revolt and race warfare such as had occurred on Haiti.
Given the frank language contained in this body of evidence, it would be difficult to arrive at a conclusion other than that put forth by Dew. Despite all arguments to the contrary, these sources clearly point to the preservation of white supremacy was the major rallying point of these commissioners. For its demise would spell the end of the slave society of the antebellum South and bring with it moral and economic ruin for all in their view. The great oratories about slave rebellions, the North's continued encroachment on the property rights of the slave holding South, and the amalgamation of the races, were but the rhetorical vehicle used to rally the emotions and fears of Southerners during those fateful months to take swift action. For it seems these men knew one thing which Lincoln preached was true. They fully understood that only by standing together, did the slave states have any hope of retaining their way of life. Their mission was to see that unity was achieved and maintained, which of course should be taken into account when considering this study's credibility, as a reliable measure of the Southern mindset on the eve of the Civil War. One must also take into account the enormousness of the economic incentives which southern slave owners had for wanting to maintain the existing conditions of their society.
The South had a considerable economic stake vested in the value of the millions of slaves they owned. This fact was well represented by Stephen Hale, who stated its value to be not less than four billion dollars, in his December, 1860, letter to the Governor of Kentucky.(92) Although much of this wealth was concentrated among the elite planter class, in truth the domestic slave trade served to bolster the economies of the states of the Chesapeake region, as well as the border states right up until the eve of the Civil War. This huge investment also related directly to the political power of the South, as Hale continued in his letter, stating that if slave owners were to be stripped of such a large part of their wealth, by the emancipation of the slaves, it surely portended the utter ruin of all. Yet the Republicans would have the slaves freed and enfranchised, made equal to whites in every way. This echoed his remarks prior to leaving on his mission when stated that the destruction of slavery was the clear goal of “Lincoln's minions.”(51-2) Certainly it can be concluded from the statistics and remarks, that economical and political considerations were also very important factors fueling the forces of disunion during that secessionist winter of 1860-61. But again and again the various commissioners return to the concept of white supremacy, conjuring up the eerie image of a world gone gray in their eyes, where ingrained ideas about race were cast aside and replaced with an amalgamated future. Undoubtedly there were a great many people in this country at the time, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line who were extremely uncomfortable with the idea of complete equality between Blacks and Whites. Many may well have shuddered, wondering what could possibly be coming next, the enfranchisement of women or even Indians for that matter! However, the very fact these strongholds of secessionist fervor, felt compelled to send this group of firebrand, states' rights spouting, white supremacists off on their various missions speaks volumes as well, one must also surmise. The mere presence of these men provides strong reason to believe there was considerable opposition to secession and indeed strong Unionist sentiment in many of the South states as well at this time.
Therefore Dew's conclusion is sound based as it is upon this quite limited scope of evidence. Still, the volume's overall importance and indeed its conclusions ought to balanced with consideration of sources derived from those individuals who stood in opposition to the idea of secession. The author's treatment to the economic considerations is also rather trivial, considering the enormous value of the slave assets held by the South. Four billion dollars represented a quite sizable portion of the overall national wealth, not to mention the annual value of its agricultural output of cotton and other cash crops. This should not be so easily dismissed without a more thorough inquiry as well. Also it should be recalled more precisely that it was Lincoln's call for 75,000 militia from the remaining states on April 15, 1861, that really pushed the remaining states in the upper South to leave the Union. Including most importantly Virginia, which had only two weeks early voted to remain in the Union, despite the urgings of several secessionist commissioners. The Old Dominion joined the Confederacy only two days later and was soon followed by Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In the end, Lincoln's single proclamation had more effect at driving the Border States to secede, than all the speeches and letters of the most ardent secessionists.

[Jud Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a much-needed corrective to the "states-rights" understanding of the cause of the Civil War that tries to explain the war without reference to slavery. Dew, in fact, begins the book by observing that "states rights" is popularly accepted as a suitable explanation, along with slavery, even though historians no longer believe this to be the case. He also summarizes how "Lost Cause" revisionism after the Civil War (e.g. Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens) erased slavery as a factor in order to elevate an anachronistic, sanitized, "politically correct" narrative that both excused and justified the actions of the secessionists in terms other than the ones they themselves used.

The heart of this brief book recounts the now-overlooked story of the secession commissioners: the prominent representatives of some of the initial seceding states who were sent out to other parts of the South to explain their drastic action and to convince their brethren slave states to follow them in secession.

Most usefully, Dew appends the full texts of two documents written by such commissioners. These are quite explicit; there is none of the veiled, coded language of the postbellum apologists. In one, a speech given by a Mississippian dispatched to Georgia, it is clear that, unless revolutionary action is taken, the election of Abraham Lincoln will "overturn and strike down this great feature of our Union," namely that "it is a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality." The other, a letter from an Alabama commissioner to the governor of Kentucky, describes the consequences of Lincoln's election as follows: "If the policy of the Republicans is carried out according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. ... all [will] be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life, or else there will be an eternal war of the races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country. ... What Southern man ... can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality?" The "self-preservation" of the Southern man depends on the triumph of the institution of slavery.

It is not that there is nothing about states rights in the arguments of these men. There is plenty, and often it is a complaint about the exercise of states rights by Northern states that failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. The point, however, is that states rights as a doctrine is subordinate to and supportive of the absolute necessity of preserving the essential and region-defining institution of slavery.

Why is this important? Because, while the Confederacy lost the war, the Lost Cause hijacked the memory and the explanation of how it came to be. Popular memory is like the postwar Jefferson Davis, who claimed disingenously in 1881 that "sectional hostility" would have "manifested" anyway "even if there had not been a negro in America." But the whole truth of the matter understands this to be thinking conditioned by defeat and the need to justify one's actions in a catastrophic war, and looks to the total picture to understand the actual causes, a total truth that includes Davis's opinion, stated shortly after the capture of Ft. Sumter, that what drove the South into action was the prospect, caused by the prohibition of slavery outside the region, that its property in slaves would be rendered "so insecure as to be comparatively worthless." Slavery, the institution by which "a superior race" transformed "brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers," had an importance to the South "of such overwhelming magnitude" that the South had to resort to drastic action "to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced."

To hear only the postwar Davis at the expense of the prewar Davis is as historically untenable as it is intellectually dishonest. Thanks to this book we are able to understand clearly that Davis's personal whitewash -- as it were -- represents the distortion of an the entire country's understanding of Civil War causation that has negative consequences to this day.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who makes the fallacious claim that the Deep South rebelled from the Union in late 1860 and early 1861 because of state’s rights without slavery being an issue should be told, “Here’s your sign,” and then told to read this book. The author, a native Southerner whose devotion to historical truth fortunately (for us) outweighed his love for his native people, gives a damning and historically impeccable account of the pivotal role of racist fears and slavery propaganda in leading to the secession of the South’s states through a thorough account of the speeches and writings of the obscure secessionist commissioners appointed by South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi in late 1860 and early 1861.

The book itself is a short one, just over 100 pages of written work (followed by the meticulously cited notes). The book opens with a touching introduction of the author as a native Southerner, then examines the first wave of Alabaman and Mississippian secession commissioners, then the South Carolinians, then the Alabamans, and then the mission to Virginia, and follows with a conclusion on how the secession commissioners themselves joined the “party line” of figures like Davis and Stephens in whitewashing their own racist and slavery-based appeals after the Civil War was lost, serving a role in formulating the neo-Confederate Lost Cause myth that still remains potent in the memory of the historically ignorant.

The one complaint that could be made about this book is that it could easily have been made much longer, and much more destructive of the false claims of neo-Confederate historians, by including even more of the primary documents of the slave commissioners themselves, with their florid and overheated rhetoric about Black Republicans, the horrors of submission to authority, the specter of race wars and the most shocking horror of them all, the prospect of racial amalgamation. Racial rhetoric did not advance much in the South between 1860 and 1960, as the same arguments that got trotted around the dog and pony show for secession were also used by racists in the 20th century against integration. The book as a whole is required reading for anyone who wants to know what arguments really reflected the Southern drive to secede in 1860 and 1861, and the answer isn’t “state’s rights” but rather the specific right to own and exploit other people.

In reading this book I also had a very dark realization that the same techniques used by the secession commissioners in 1860 and 1861 were techniques I had seen used by the dissidents within UCG over 2010. The same spirit motivated each of them–the refusal to accept equality, the same overheated rhetoric about the “other side,” the same refusal to accept legitimate authority and obey it, which was equated with surrender and submission, the same elitism, the same prickly sense of personal honor and unwillingness to honor and respect others, the same tendency to repeat the same false accusations and insults and buzzwords and talking points over and over again in different letters and appeals, and the same goal of disunion in order to preserve unjust systems of government and debased and immoral cultural traditions. It is a sobering thing to see the same script being followed for the same goal of rebellion, a way of demonstrating the continuing relevance of the American Civil War even in seemingly unrelated issues.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in 2001.

The greatest argument among people who study the Civil War isn't who was the best general or what would have happened if Lincoln hadn't have been assassinated or even what would have happened if the Union had lost at Gettysburg.

No, the greatest argument is this: What caused the Civil War?

For the better part of the last century, the argument has been that the Confederacy seceded in order to protect "their rights". The counter-argument has always been to protect "the right to do what?"

For me, the answer has always been a simple one - they fought for their right to own people and to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap in Southern society. For the Confederate States of America, slavery was the reason to fight. For the Union army, maintaining the Union, with or without slavery, was the reason to fight - a goal claimed many times by Lincoln himself.

There will be arguments that claim that Confederate states seceded over differences in culture and differences in attitude and the disagreement over federal tax policy. If you think so, I encourage you to read the Ordinances of Secession (basically Declarations of Independence) from Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. They are full of all sorts of reasons to secede, but they keep coming back to slavery-related issues. These are wonderful resources because they are frozen in time, before the loss of the war by the Confederacy. Many post-Civil War authors who fought for the South obscure the importance of slavery, perhaps realizing it was a great moral wrong, or perhaps simply being cognizant that slavery had become politically incorrect and it would hurt their overall argument. Let's face it - many Union soldiers became proud of their role in ending slavery long after the war ended, being indifferent to or even mildly pro-slavery during the war.

Several of the seceding states did more than issue their own Declarations of Independence. Some of these states sent out ambassadors from their newly independent states to try to convince the other slave states to join them. They were generally referred to as Southern Secession Commissioners. The title of this book, Apostles of Disunion refers to them. The Apostles of Jesus were sent out to teach about Jesus. These apostles were sent out by several secessionist states to to convince the other slave states to join them. Just the fact that they were only sent to slave states should serve as a major clue as to what caused the Civil War.

The texts of their letters and speeches make it very clear that their main arguments were these: fear of the abolition of slavery by "Black Republicans", fear of slave revolt, the loss of the investment of money in their slaves, fear of former slaves having the power to vote and the fear of race mixing. William L. Harris, the Commissioner from Mississippi sent to reach out to the state of Georgia said on December, 17, 1860: "Mississippi is firmly convinced...

Read more at: https://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2020...

[Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finished Apostles of Disunion. I was unaware of the role that the commissioners played in promoting secession and just how influential it was in fostering the acrimonious political atmosphere that led to the Civil War. Very nice piece of history.

HOWEVER:

1) While it is probably beyond the scope of the book, the fix was in long before Lincoln was elected and the factionalism promoted by the Fire Eaters that led to the fracture of the Democratic Party in the election of 1860 might warrant some attention as would the actions up through Ft Sumter. I think it should be acknowledged that there’s other stuff going on during this period.

2) The rhetoric of the commissioners is interesting, but it should be pointed out all their dire predictions were not part of Lincoln’s agenda. Some of the things that they talked about became part of the war aims/consequences of the Civil War. But not in 1860. It’s ironic that the very things the commissioners were most afraid of came true because of secession. This would be racial equality, race war and race mixing. White southerners continue to fight equality and try to promote conflict. As for race mixing, that had been going on for forever, Civil War or no. Using slaves as sex workers and producing children for profit was already happening.

Like the author, I got the same treatment when growing up in terms of how the Civil War was explained to me in school. I call this the “Birth of a Nation” school of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

It is interesting that today’s neo confederates have a hard time understanding that they were beaten by a Union Army that was 10% African American (approximately 180,000) and according to Garfield received assistance from enslaved people. I imagine this aspect of Civil War heritage would destroy their whole outlook. One of them cited in the book, Arthur Ravenel, referred to the NAACP as “the National Association of Retarded People.” Clearly some things never change.

The role of African Americans appears to have been something so fantastic that they refused to acknowledge it. See page 75 in the book, the section dealing with Preston’s take on how the south was humbled. He speaks of Hessians and Milesian mercenaries. African American soldiers fought for LESS money than whites were paid.

Such are my thoughts.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of the causes for secession. Certainly a must read. While many will be moved to read it due to its brevity and strong thesis, my lower review is regarding the lack of context surrounding the time that the “apostles” or commissioners were sent out about the South. I was thankful to be armed with knowledge of the white fear of slave rebellions beginning with Stono, the remarkable myths told to create the Jim Crow world through deadly stereotype that persisted into the CRM and the contemporary experience of mass incarceration based on the creation of black criminality—all of which enriched my reading but is not extended to Dew’s readers. But I walked away with questions surrounding the uniqueness of each state presenting and the actual campaign platform of Lincoln and the Republicans. Clarification on the many instances of the term “Black” Republican would have been helpful as well. It was astonishing to me how much of the commissioners remarks are echoed throughout history and within contemporary understandings of what can now only be called white supremacists. I would argue that from a 2020 perspective, that the root of so much prejudice, whether overt or covert, is still the seeds of these commissioners remarks. I would argue with Dew now that in fact, I wonder if these arguments ever really died, but were rather still present because I tend to agree with the commissioners that many of the Founders did in fact share their views. I think the documents are true...it was political, they did see themselves as carrying on the true legacy of the Founders from a strict constructionist viewpoint. Granted, that legacy was white supremacy specifically through the legacy and practice of slavery. So it was about slavery. But thank God the majority of the country believes in a better America and not the exact one the Founders would have imagined.

[Gregory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Southern states sent commissioners to other slave-holding states to convince them to secede from the union. In this short monograph, Charles Dew examines the letters and accounts of these commissioners and demonstrates that the Civil War was undeniably about slavery, and not, as some -- including CSA president and vice president Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, for example, -- tried to claim after the war and contrary to their own well-documented statements in 1860 and 1861, a constitutional debate. In their blatant appeals to white supremacy, the commissioners frequently referred to Lincoln and the "Black Republicans" as promising emancipation (which they did not do) and whose goal was to subject the South to what they considered the horrors of racial equality. In their effort to convince the upper South and borderlands to join them in secession, commissioners reminded politicians and opinion makers in those states the Confederate constitution would ban them from participating in the domestic slave trade and close off that important economic safety valve. The commissioners' rhetoric is filled with the most vile assertions of what racial equality would mean. One commissioner even wrote that his state (Mississippi, I think but could be another one) would rather see their loved ones immolated in a collective pyre than to suffer what they considered the humiliating degradation of racial equality. There can be no disputing what drove secession. Dew lets the commissioners speak for themselves, but there could have been, in my humble opinion, more analysis and study of how they affected the outcome secession. How did the commissioners shape public opinion and debate during the crisis? A little more follow-up on the role played by the commissioners during the war and after would have been beneficial as well.

[Kyra Swartz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a concise dive into the oft-forgotten Secession Commissioners'- men who were tasked with spreading the motives behind why their respective state seceded and why other slave states should as well- speeches and writings. In doing so, Dew outlines clearly the true reason for the eleven Southern states seceding between Dec 1860 and Apr 1861- that being the election of Abraham Lincoln and the looming "threat" of the abolition of slavery. It puts to rest the Lost Cause myth and States' Rights revisionism- these men were unabashedly and proudly declaring that they would rather go to war and die over their desire to keep their slaves rather than watch the South fall into the degradation of racial equality.

No, seriously, the amount of times these men described the very idea of Black people being considered equal as humiliated and catastrophic is insane.

I have seen some comments on how Dew's view of the causation is a bit one-dimensional, and that is true. However, I would argue that a point-blank book like this is needed because it is fairly accessible. It's not long and is pretty readable- meaning it's not overwhelmingly academic. I think this would be a good book for someone who isn't a Civil War historian (arm-chair or legit) but is interested in learning more about an incredibly complex time in United States' history without being weighed down by just how complex the issues at hand were. Even more so if someone is coming from a Lost Cause/States' Rights background- they are the ones who need a simple telling of history more than a complex one.

So does this book give the full social-political-economic reasons behind the Civil War? No. But it does get to the meat of the issue which allows for the reader to then build on that knowledge with other more complex research. So I would argue that it's important for that reason.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short volume (at only 103 pages) is a must read for everyone who is interested in why the South seceded from the United States in 1860/1. After the war, many Southern apologists insisted that it was State Rights (the right to do what, exactly?), clashing economies, differing philosophies, etc. But Dew's analysis of the arguments made before the war, by Commissioners sent to convince other Southern states to secede, illustrates perfectly that the main conflict of Southern politicians with the North was slavery.

The election of Lincoln prompted the states to secede, because he and his party were viewed as Black Republicans who were bent on abolishing slavery and, worse yet, making the Black American equal in standing to the Whites. This would, the Commissioners were adamant, incite racial unrest and destroy Southern civilization---a civilization that was beneficial to both slave and master, they argued; after all, it was their subservient position in the Christian society that kept them from acting like the Barbaric race that they in actuality were. Their words, not mine.

"Apostles of Disunion" is required reading for anyone who still believes that the South fought for nought but honor and the defense of their home. For anyone to believe that the War of Northern Agression (sic) had nothing to do with slavery, because the North didn't fight to free slaves, requires ignoring the motivations of the Southerners who chose to secede. After all, they believed that Lincoln was, indeed, motivated by abolitionism, which led to their secession, which in turn led to the Civil War. They sincerely believed that their institution of slavery was in danger. If nothing else, the letter of one of the Commissioners, which is printed in its entirety, makes this abundantly clear.