Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era)

Charles B. Dew’s Apostles of Disunion is a quick, concise, and fascinating book that delves into the primary causes of the Civil War. Dew is a professor of American history at Williams College and has written three additional books on topics such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the American South. Deeply rooted in primary sources, Dew draws on the words, letters, and speeches of not only the titular secession commissioners to form his thesis but also the words of Confederate leaders such as President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. While Dew provides all the necessary elements of his eventual thesis through the introduction and preceding chapters, he does not unveil his completely sequenced argument until the conclusion stating that “slavery and race were absolutely critical elements in the coming of the war” and that the Southern secession commissioners preached the looming threats of racial equality, race war, and racial amalgamation if the South did not secede (Dew, 2016, 58-59, 61). Before revealing his evidentiary sources to prove his thesis, the author first builds a solid foundation in the first chapter on why the argument is necessary. For example, the author writes that the American citizenship test states two possible correct answers for the causes of the Civil War: slavery or states’ rights and that both historians and the American public largely disagree on the causes of the war (Dew, 2016, 9, 12). As Dew shows, one of the issues that have exacerbated the disagreements surrounding this topic is that the same individuals who sought secession over racism and slavery, such as the secession commissioners and the Confederate leadership, walked back or ignored, many of their previous incendiary comments in later writings and speeches to present a revisionist history of the Confederate cause as an honorable, necessary movement to prevent aggression by the federal government (Dew, 2016, 17-18, 57-58). After building the foundation, Dew reveals that five of the lower Southern States appointed commissioners in 1860-1861 to preach the message of secession to the remainder of the slave states speaking in various venues such as state legislatures and state conventions and that the coverage given to them by the United States Department of War in the late 19th century is “clear indication” that the commissioners “were key players in the sequence of events leading up to the war” (Dew, 2016, 18-19). Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia, William L. Harris, in speaking to the Georgia General Assembly denounced the Republicans in the Federal government stating that they “demand equality” between whites and blacks and that they would bring “freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and us” (Dew, 2016, 24-25). These were not his thoughts alone, as secession commissioner Jacob Thompson wrote in an open letter to the North Carolina legislature that Republicans sought to destroy the government by perverting it “into an engine for the destruction of our domestic institutions and the subjugation of our people” and that slavery’s overthrow would bring “common humiliation and ruin” (Dew, 2016 26-27). Commissioner Alexander Hamilton Handy declared to the Maryland Institute Hall that “slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity” and the South would not allow their “beautiful cotton fields” to transform into “barren wastes” (Dew, 2016, 27-28). As shocking and offensive as these comments are, the deeper Dew gets into the book, the worse he reveals, proving his thesis even more. South Carolina Secession Commissioner Andrew Calhoun delivered impassioned and racist language about the Republican government seeking “to seduce the poor, ignorant, and stupid nature” of the slave to embrace freedom and to prevent it, a complete “disentanglement” was necessary (Dew, 2016, 33-34). Alabama secession commissioner Stephen Fowler Hale took it even further warning that the Federal government sought for the South’s women to be subject “to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of the half-civilized Africans” (Dew, 2016, 41, 43). Sadly, the above comments are only a part of the overwhelming primary source evidence that Dew provides to support his argument on slavery and racism. For such a small volume, the author packs it full of explosively overwhelming evidence that the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War is obvious mythology. Dew clearly and definitively proves his thesis. When considering the depth of his research and sources, there should be no debate on the cause of the Southern secession from the United States. Unfortunately, the author chooses to delve into divisive modern-day American politics in the 15th Anniversary update chapter which may detract some of his intended audience from his thesis in this important work of history. Regardless, Dew’s Apostles of Disunion is an illuminating read that should be mandatory for all students of American history.

Great book! Eye-opening look at the Southern Commissioners that I was never taught in school!

The main premise of this book is the Secession Commissioners (SC), "[T]he lower South...appointed commissioner to other slave states and instructed them to spread the secessionist message across the entire region. These commissioners often explained in detail why their states were exiting the Union, and they did everything in their power to persuade laggard slave states to join the secessionist cause." (Dew 2001) Dew takes forty speeches and public letters from the Secession Commissioners to show, not in his words, but in the words of the men who were sent all over the south in late 1860 and early 1861 to gather all the states they could to break away from the union. The commissioners were charged by their respective states to make an appeal for secession throughout the South, which they did, without ambiguity. They were quite clear on the reasons the Southern states needed to break away. There were comments about honor and an oppressive North filled with Black Lincoln Republicans, but it was what those Black Lincoln republicans were going to do with the South if they got their way. They were going to destroy slavery and create equality between Blacks and Whites. Amalgamation and equality was their stated fear. The greatest portion of the book is when Dew uses the speeches and letters from the same Commissioners that used vitriolic race baiting fear mongering during the turbulent times before the Civil War's onset, to show the developed amnesia in their rhetoric after they lost. It is almost as if they had no concept that their previous speeches, and letters would be kept for posterity. First they (the Commissioners) speak of the how slavery is the only way for the White man to interact with the inferior Negro, four years later..."The Lost Cause". Do not take my word for it, borrow the book, buy the book, read the book for yourself. The author has notes and an index. Use the references and read the full speeches. Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion, (Virginia : University of Virginia Press, 2001), chap. 5.

Historians have been debating the cause of the American Civil War since before the guns fell silent to end that conflict. Multiple theories have been proposed and examined, but regardless of the theory, the issue of slavery cannot be ignored. With the advances in historiography in that era’s history, examinations of the primary sources from that period have been emphasized. Charles Dew, a Southerner himself who described his background as one that embraced the notion of state’s rights as being the cause of the Civil War, explained how his research involving primary documents in Confederate records brought up documents that challenged what he had been told about the war and its cause, and that inspired him to look at the subject to determine the answer for himself. The result was a study into the letters and speeches of the secession commissioners from the first states that seceded to the remaining slave owning states in the attempt to form a new nation. Dew’s analysis of those documents revealed what was said about the reasons for secession by leading figures of the South and the secession commissioners. The study served as the reason he wrote Apostles of Disunion where he presented both the primary documents he examined and his conclusions. The result is a concise assessment of the secession commissioners themselves and their beliefs, what they wrote and said concerning the issue of secession both privately and publicly, the reactions to their words by their audiences, and the conclusions Dew drew from his research. Instead of trying to speak for the commissioners, Dew chose to let their words and actions speak for themselves. He detailed the personal history of each commissioner as well as the context of the situation in the various states the commissioners spoke in. This gave the words of these commissioners a setting in which they could be understood for what they were instead of just words on paper. Dew drew attention to the rhetoric of slavery and race which were prominently mentioned multiple times in each address to the secession conventions. This was a sharp contrast to long held views by some that the war was not about slavery or race, but that of state’s rights, economic differences, or constitutional arguments. Dew pointed out that while the commissioners did bring up those points, they did not place the emphasis on those points while they spoke at length about slavery and race. He also described the reactions to the commissioner’s addresses from both individuals and newspapers which also focused on the issues of race and slavery stated by the commissioners, and not on any other issue. Dew’s major drawback is that he did not explore the conventions or the makeup of the delegates beyond that of a cursory examination. In many cases the commissioner’s speeches were merely exhortations to openly receptive audiences while others failed to sway their audiences into outright secession although in some instances the speeches may have caused some delegates to finally side with secession. The result is a slim tome in which Dew was able to show that the fear of slavery’s elimination as well as racial equality was the primary cause of the war because that was what those commissioners focused on in those speeches. In doing so Dew was able to fill in a gap in the historiography of the months prior to the war by limiting the book’s topic to that of the secession commissioners and their own words which speak for themselves as to why secession was desired by many in the South.

Yes, indeed! and chiefly for its cherished rights: 1. to enslave Africans and their descendants, and to coerce their labor by force; 2. to institutionalize the religious and 'scientific' doctrine the racial inferiority of those Africans in perpetuity; and 3. to extend the institutions of slavery into new territories and eventual states to the west and south. In ante-bellum Southern public opinion, the Constitution had guaranteed those rights, which were central to the concept of true liberty for the white race. The first right - of slavery - was the irreconcilable difference between Southern and Northern society by 1830, and the root cause of violent conflict, as Southerners hardened in the opinion that slavery was not only legal but moral and even righteous. The second right - of socially sanctioned racism - was destined to survive even defeat in the Civil War, in the form of Jim Crow apartheid that has lasted very close to the present day. The third right - of expansion - was the right threatened by the victory of Lincoln's Republican Party in 1860, and the fear of containment, by a Northern party of 'fanatics' bent on extinguishing the first two rights, was the proximate cause for secession, military preparation, and the first attack on Fort Sumter. Those are not merely my opinions, dear readers! Those were the sentiments expressed by the advocates of secession in the months BEFORE Lincoln took office. They were embedded in the recorded deliberations of the Southern legislatures and conventions that led to secession and the formation of the Confederacy. They were the message carried by the "Secession Commissioners" whose speeches and writings are neatly analyzed in this irrefutable study by the Southern historian Charles B. Dew. None of those commissioners and none of those legislators who voted for secession had any reservations about declaring that the preservation of slavery and racial inequality was the chief motive for their radical decisions. Not BEFORE the war, that is, though some of them lived to sing a different tune after the fact. Professor Dew begins his book with an apologia and a confession: that as a Southerner he himself had thoroughly accepted the notion that the 'War Between the States' was a battle for "states' rights" and for the original meaning of the Constitution. He had worshiped Lee, had hung the 'Stars and Bars' on the wall of his dorm room in high school. However, his study of the rhetoric of the leading spokesmen for secession had forced him to the realization that the odious racism expressed in the justification of segregation, during his boyhood, was absolutely the same odious racism that excited Southerners to go to war in 1861. Secession agitation was not new at the time of Lincoln's election. The rhetoric had been heard in Congress, in the state legislatures, and in public fora. Immediately after the Republican victory and months before Lincoln's inauguration, in December of 1860, the governors of Mississippi and Alabama appointed 'commissioners' to travel to the other slave states and to foster resistance to Northern domination, up to and including secession and war. Gov. Moore of Alabama declared that such action was necessary because the Republicans aimed for "the destruction of the institution of slavery." Mississippi's Commissioner to the state of Georgia, Judge William Harris, spoke to the Georgia Legislature on Dec 17; the North, he said, had refused "to yield to us our constitutional rights in relation to slave property... They have demanded, and now demand, equality between the white and n-gro races... in representation, equality in the right of suffrage... equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony..." The Secretary of the Interior under Buchanan, Jacob Thompson, had no doubts about the need for secession. In an open letter to the legislature of North Carolina, in December of 1860, he declared that Republican abolitionists would pervert the federal government 'into an engine for the destruction of our domestic institutions, and the subjugation of our people." It was simple common sense, he concluded, "that all questions arising out of the institution of slavery, should be settled now and settled forever." Judge A. H. Handy, Mississippi's commissioner to Maryland, was even more explicit: "Slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity... The first act of the black republican party will be to exclude slavery from all the Territories, the District, the arsenals and the forts, by the action of the general government... That would be a recognition that slavery is a sin... The moment that slavery is pronounced a moral evil - a sin - by the general government, that moment the safety of the South will be entirely gone." On January 1, 1861, Alabama's commissioner to Delaware, warned the governor of that state that Lincoln's party sought "the establishment of an equality of races in our midst." It's hard even to credit the hysteria these secessionists expressed, particularly since one of the standard Lost Cause arguments against the causative role of slavery in the War has been the antipathy of most Northerners to any equality of races. It is absolutely true that the North did NOT fight to free the slaves, but the commissioners were correct that containment of slavery to the Old South was the chief goal of the Republican "free soil" Party. Thus they were almost certainly correct that such containment would be the prelude to the abolition of slavery. As events emerged, however, Northern support for racial equality never matched Southern fears; not even the brief tenure of "radical reconstructionists" in Congress, or the passage of the post-war amendments, in any way threatened white supremacy in the South over the next 100 years. Yes, the war was lost, slavery was abolished as such, but the Cause of racism wasn't Lost after all! That "right" survived. Occasionally, history provides its delectable ironies. Southern fears that abolitionist 'fanaticism' would lead to social and political equality, and eventually to the 'nightmare' of racial integration and amalgamation, were absolutely RIGHT! for which I am joyfully thankful. We now have a President whose father was African and whose mother was White, with cultural roots in the South. To spice the irony, this President is a member of the Democratic Party, while the once 'black' Republican Party has become the bulwark of 'states' rights' reaction, utterly confined by its own 'Southern Strategy.' How bizarre to think that so many scions of secession have taken "neo-con" to mean "neo-confederacy"! This short book is powerful, my friends! Perhaps the truth shall make us free after all.

As someone who agrees with Charles Dew that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War and that more attention needs to be paid to the South’s path to secession, including looking at the secession conventions and their leaders, I expected to love this book. Instead, it left a bland taste in my mouth despite its usefulness. Simply put, Dew hedged his bets on two major fronts. Was he writing a book or an essay? Was he writing history or about public affairs? Dew tried to split the difference in both areas, leaving this slip of a book that often seems more concerned with politics in the 1990s and the early 21st century than 1860 and 1861. Between kicking Republicans like Jim Gilmore and admitting to tears of joy when Barack Obama was elected president, Dew offered some excellent insights on the secession commissioners sent out by South Carolina, Alabama, and other Deep South states to other slaveholding states. Dew seems to think these commissioners are the smoking guns to prove that secession was only about slavery and race. But he could have gone far deeper on this front and looked beyond speeches and public letters. Much of Dew’s attention is spent on commissioners sent to states where secession was an easy lift--Florida, for example--or on states where it ultimately failed, like Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. Even in the battleground states that he focused on--namely Virginia--Dew quickly notes that the commissioners did not make much of an impact until Lincoln called for 75,000 troops, putting his own argument in question. This book could have used another 100 to 150 pages to really examine the topic. Instead, Dew had the evidence he wanted to make his case, and I was left with the impression that he wrote this book with his thesis already in his mind. While I agree with his main historical points, Dew could easily have fleshed out his arguments instead of going into modern politics and even recommending policy. At the close of the revised book, Dew calls for a truth and reconciliation commission in the U.S., like what was set up in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid regime. Of course, Dew offers nothing on what it would entail, how it would be set up, who would name its members, and so on. It’s one more indication of how Dew really didn’t want to flesh out his various points. That’s not to say this book is without merit. Dew shines some much-needed light on the secession movement and offers some insights into why the South rushed to disaster. However, he seems far more focused on preaching to the choir that already agrees with him instead of trying to gain converts. The smug tone--Dew clearly thinks this is an important book and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he proved the war was all about slavery (in 2001, no less)--does not help. I finished the book annoyed that he did not offer a memorable essay or an in-depth study. Instead, Dew offered a skeleton of a book that straddled between history and public affairs that will simply reaffirm the views of those who already support his positions and simply be rejected by those who don’t.

This small volume packs a wallop. Dew uses the writings and speeches of secession commissioners to show that the secession of southern states was motivated primarily by slavery and race. The job of the commissioners was to travel to other states and convince those states to join the secession movement. There were 52 commissioners in all. Consider the statements of three commissioners to the Virginia convention. Virginia’s wealth, manpower, resources, and prestige would likely be essential to the south’s cause. So what was the message these commissioners delivered? Mississippi’s commissioner told the convention that Lincoln’s aim was the “extinction of slavery”, i.e., the institution that “lies at the very foundation of our social and political fabric.” Georgia’s commissioner spoke of “a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery.” According to the commissioner from South Carolina, “the conflict between slavery and non-slavery is a conflict for life and death… The South cannot exist without African slavery”. Over the top glum and doom rhetoric was often carried to the point of being comical. For example, “our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for the women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination.” Perhaps contemplating the horrors that African American women had endured for the past 250 years would have stimulated their imagination. Another example is that of Leonidas Spratt, a South Carolina commissioner sent to Florida. South Carolina was in a vulnerable position. She had seceded, the possibility of war loomed on the horizon, and she could ill afford to enter such a conflict without allies. So what was Spratt’s message to the Florida convention? Spratt spoke of “two societies… The one is the society of one race, the other of two races. The one is based on free labor, the other slave labor. The one is braced together but by the two great relations of life—the relations of husband and wife, and parent and child; the other by the three relations of husband and wife, parent and child, and master and slave. The one embodies the social principle that equality is the right of man; the other, the social principal that equality is not the right of man… There is and must be an irrepressible conflict”. By seceding South Carolina has “erected at least one nationality under the authority of which the powers of slavery may stand in that fearful contest for existence”. Spratt, incidentally, was a proponent of reopening the African slave trade. Dew provides multiple quotations from various commissioners who again and again called up three stark images: the looming specter of racial equality, the prospect of a race war, and racial amalgamation. States rights and constitutional arguments paled into insignificance when whites considered the possibility of having to endure racial equality, race war, and the staining of their blood. Although Dew considers such apocalyptic visions as the end of white supremacy, race war, and amalgamation the primary motivators of secessionists there were also economic incentives. As one commissioner pointed out, slavery “constitutes the most valuable species of their property… not less than $4,000,000,000.” There “rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these states.” The Confederate Constitution contained a clause barring the importation of slaves from any state not belonging to the Confederacy. Thus the states of the upper south were threatened with the loss of their domestic slave trade if they refused to join the states of the Deep South. The total slave sales in Richmond in 1859 is estimated at eight million dollars. Or over 235 million in todays currency. Or as a delegate to the convention put it, “the most potent money power, that ever has existed in Virginia.” The 4 billion dollar estimate of the above commissioner translates to over 100 billion in today’s currency. Edmond Ruffin declared Spratt’s address to the Florida convention “a logical and able argument.” Apparently the Floridians agreed for they too seceded shortly thereafter. Ruffin went on to receive credit for firing the first shot of the war of rebellion. In his final diary enter following the south’s defeat he declared his “unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.” He then wrapped himself in a Confederate flag, put the muzzle of a rifle in his mouth, and pressed the trigger with a stick. Apart from his contribution to agriculture this may very well have been the most significant act he ever performed toward the betterment of mankind.

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