43 pages • 1 hour read
Charles B. DewApostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Dew begins with a personal Introduction, describing himself as a “son of the South” and noting that ancestors on both sides of his family fought for the Confederacy (1). As a young man, he accepted the conventional Southern explanation that the issue of states’ rights was the catalyst for the Civil War, only coming to understand the racism inherent in this view during graduate school. Thus, despite his training as a historian, he “found [Apostles of Disunion] in many ways a difficult and painful book to write” (2), because the book’s source material exposes the revisionism in the Lost Cause narratives of his boyhood. Dew’s encounter with the writings of the secession commissioners as a graduate student sparked his inquiry into the true causes of secession. While this book does not present the war’s history in its entirety, Dew acknowledges the broad body of scholarship that explores its many complex causes. Rather than argue against these histories, Dew positions the story of the commissioners as a crucial addition to the larger story, which must be confronted to overcome the legacies of white supremacy that persist into the present day.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Slavery, States’ Rights, and Secession Commissioners”
The events that led to the Civil War are undisputed, but widespread ambivalence persists as to the causes of secession. At the time of Dew’s writing, the citizenship test given by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (what is now US Citizenship and Immigration Services) accepted both “slavery” and “states’ rights” as correct answers to the question of why the war was fought. The timeline following Abraham Lincoln’s election in late 1860 is straightforward: Beginning in December, seven Southern states seceded from the Union, and in February 1861, they held a convention in Alabama to draft a constitution for the Confederate States of America. In April, Confederate forces fired at the Union garrison on Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC, sparking four more secessions and a call in the North to suppress the rebellion. War began shortly after.
The unresolved issue is what drove the seven Southern states to secede. The lack of consensus continues to trouble American social and political discourse. Installation and removal of Confederate monuments incites conflict in states across the South; modern media and the internet provide fertile ground in which Neo-Confederate sentiment persists and flourishes; even the scholarly community has failed to reach an unequivocal stance. Dew believes the answer lies in the motivations of those who advocated for secession: “If we can get inside the secessionist mind-set […] we can go a long way toward explaining the coming of the American Civil War” (5).
Records from the state secession conventions held before the outbreak of the war use unambiguous language to describe their motivations, indicating that the anti-slavery movement in the North had driven them to a breaking point. However, the writings of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Alexander H. Stephens are not as clear cut: Davis’ inaugural address names states’ rights as the core issue, and Stephens has instances of naming both slavery and states’ rights as driving forces. To make sense of these contradictions, Dew turns his attention to the writings of the secession commissioners, which are detailed, well-preserved, and strikingly direct. In their “amazing openness and frankness” (21), these documents articulate the racist logic behind their ardent calls for secession. They present revelatory, decisive, undeniable evidence that there should be a single correct answer to the INS’ question.
Introduction-Chapter 1 Analysis
Apostles of Disunion begins with a description of the personal, academic, and cultural contexts surrounding Dew’s study of the secession commissioners. Addressing his personal relationship to his subject matter as a white descendant of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, he builds trust in the reader and emphasizes his complex relationship to the material. His acknowledgment of the painful process of reckoning offers a point of entry that readers with similarly fraught relationships to the material may find compelling and relatable. By citing the other historians and works which point “to a multitude of causal factors” (3), Dew acknowledges the complexity of the academic conversation to move beyond it toward a simpler, more direct statement of the facts. His stated goal is to present the commissioners’ story “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” (3). This lends a level of ethical urgency to his examination. Dew demands the reader’s engagement on intellectual and moral levels.
Dew’s prose engages the reader using anecdotes and imagery. He captures the insidious romanticism of his white Southern childhood on the first page: “[T]he rifle was my constant companion during those seemingly endless summer days in Florida when plinking at cans and dreaming of Civil War battles constituted a significant part of my boyhood activities” (1). The citizenship test’s multiple answers offer a useful metaphor for a much broader ambivalence, conflict, and confusion on the issue. Dew’s many anecdotes of protests against Confederate symbols demonstrate that the region—and the country—are divided by their differing interpretations of the Civil War. They also impress upon the reader, through litany and repetition, the pernicious, unyielding quality of Neo-Confederate sentiment, which shows no signs of fading with time.
The final pages of Chapter 1 liken the commissioners’ message, through metaphor, to a missionary undertaking: “From December 1860 to April of 1861, they carried the gospel of disunion to the far corners of the south” (18). As in the title, Dew refers to the commissioners as “apostles of disunion” in the chapter’s last lines. The religious reference alludes to the radical beliefs and dramatic rhetoric that drove the secession movement forward; at the same time, the commissioners’ virulent racism and morally bankrupt defense of slavery makes the comparison to “apostles” almost humorous. Dew highlights the irony that while the men may have seen their mission as sacred, it was in fact quite the opposite. These religious allusions continue both in Dew’s words and in the commissioners’ own words in the following chapters.
