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.
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