Apostles of Disunion Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civilsouthern Secession Commissioners and the Causes [Hardcover]

Confederate apologists constantly insist it was all a question of the Constitution. The Northern states were violating the Southern states rights to do something or another, and the South had no choice except secession in order to preserve 'Constitutional' govt. Union supporters insist that this isn't so. So what really happened?

Prof. Charles Dew cuts right to the heart of things by quoting the arguments made in 1861 by supporters of secession. Seven states passed secession ordinances in 1860 and '61, and four of them sent representatives to other slave states, explaining the reasons why they too should secede.

So what was the Southern cause? Surprise, surprise. It was WHITE SUPREMACY. The South needed to secede before the North amended the Constitution. In the nightmare world of the disunionists, the "Black Republicans," as the South invariably called them, were bent on seeing a South simultaneously: drenched in blood when the slaves rose in revolt; drenched in equality, as whites and blacks lived together withouth a master race; and drenched in miscegnation, as the races became one. Of course, it was logically impossible for all these things to happen at the same time, but logic was not the South's strong point.

Neither was honesty. As Dew makes clear, disunionists started lying about why they'd pushed secession as soon as they lost. Dew notes he was indoctrinated during his Florida youth with the story that "the South had seceded for one reason and one reason only: states' rights;" Dew also quotes contemporary neo-Confederates trying to deny the truth that the South was trying to preserve White Supremacy and Slavery.

Their sucessors keep it up: Art Chance maintains "No serious student of the War of Southern Independence can doubt that slavery and Southern perceptions of Northern fanaticism were the proximate causes of secession." Chance then tries to change the subject to 'why did the North resist Southern Aggression?' (Answer: we were fed up with being pushed around by the South).

'A reader from USA' sets up a fantasy about the Founding Fathers, citing a book titled FORCED FOUNDERS (go look at the reviews; they say the Virginian Founders were motivated by anti-slavery).

'tabsaw' says the book "walks down the road well traveled," without giving titles of any of the other books making this argument.

Still, we progress. Not even the apologists for slavery reviewing this book have the nerve to deny that preserving Slavery and White Supremacy was the South's reason for secession. Once we get that established, we'll be able to go on to more interesting issues.

If this were the only evidence that supported Dew's case, and if Dew's were the only book to come to this conclusion, it would be fairly thin gruel. But there is plenty of other evidence to confirm the point. Before the war, President Buchanan had rejected Kansas's petition to abolish slavery, and the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision mandated governmental support of slavery even in states which had determined to reject this "peculiar institution." Both of these decisions were clear violations of the doctrine of states' rights, yet slaveowning Southerners cheered. The problems came with the possibility that future states, given a free choice (and a Republican presidency), would not embrace slavery -- and might even endorse social and political equality for Black Americans.

_Apostles of Disunion_ is refreshingly concise, direct and accessible; the book can be read in less than an hour, but its impact is impossible to shake. Dew has found a remarkable series of documents in the letters and speeches of secession commissioners.

Even more disturbing, the commissioners' arguments for secession in December 1860 and January 1861 closely resemble Southern anti-civil-rights rhetoric over a century later. Dew reminds us, once again, how much has changed in race relations over the past forty years, and how little had changed before that.

What Dew does manage to do is show that the issues of slavery and states' rights were intertwined. Why would Southerner's have cared about whether or not the Federal Government had the authority to abolish slavery if slavery was not immensely important? The answer, of course, is that they would not have. Dew examines the speeches of Deep Southerners sent to Western and Border states to convince their legislative bodies secede to show exactly why slavery was such an emotional issue for Deep Southerners. The answer is racism; and more specifically, fear of emancipation under any terms. The three common points made in the speeches of all fifty-two secessionist commissioners were: white supremacy (and the fear of being made equal); a race war in the South; and the genetic (and, obviously, sexual) mingling of the two races.

An interesting point that Dew makes in his introduction and his conclusion is that many of the major powers of the CSA retracted their racist statements immediately after the war. It was them -- Davis, Stephens, and many of the secessionist commissioners -- that began to perpetuate the myth of "states' rights." It is as if they realized that there only escape from shame was to become martyrs for an honorable cause -- and that slavery was not it.

Finally, Dew's work is simply a short and refreshing look at an ignored aspect of the five months between Lincoln's election and the attack on Ft. Sumter. These hundred pages are very much worth your time. I look forward to reading more of Dew in the future, and I am certain that, after reading Apostles of Disunion, you will too.