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

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. "In late 1860 and early 1861, state-appointed commissioners traveled the length and breadth of the slave South carrying a fervent message in pursuit of a clear goal: to persuade the political leadership and the citizenry of the uncommitted slave states to join in the effort to destroy the Union and forge a new Southern nation.". "Directly refuting the neo-Confederate contention that slavery was neither the reason for secession nor the catalyst for the resulting onset of hostilities in 1861, Charles B. Dew finds in the commissioners' brutally candid rhetoric a stark white supremacist ideology that proves the contrary. The commissioners included in their speeches a constitutional justification for secession, to be sure, and they pointed to a number of political "outrages" committed by the North in the decades prior to Lincoln's election. But the core of their argument - the reason the right of secession had to be invoked and invoked immediately - did not turn on matters of constitutional interpretation or political principle. Over and over again, the commissioners returned to the same point: that Lincoln's election signaled an unequivocal commitment on the part of the North to destroy slavery and that emancipation would plunge the South into a racial nightmare.". "Dew's discovery and study of the highly illuminating public letters and speeches of these apostles of disunion - often relatively obscure men sent out to convert the unconverted to the secessionist cause - have led him to suggest that the arguments the commissioners presented provide us with the best evidence we have of the motives behind the secession of the lower South in 1860-61."--BOOK JACKET. 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 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 America's great national crisis. Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Slavery, States’ Rights, and Secession Commissioners 2. The First Wave 3. The South Carolinians 4. The Alabamians 5. The Mission to Virginia Conclusion: Apostles of Disunion, Apostles of Racism Afterword: Apostles of Disunion Fifteen Years Later Appendix: Documents Notes Index