Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

Abstract

[...]we can see from Dew's same evidence that while the upper South rejected the slavery arguments urging secession, it could not overcome the idea of Federal military operations being directed against their Southern relatives intended to force them back into the Union. Since the upper South seceded after Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers, they were ultimately won over to the Confederate States by arguments centering on the issue of states' rights rather than the fear of losing the institution of slavery. [...]Dew's research and argument will make it difficult to champion states' rights or other issues over the controversy of slavery as the main factor causing the secession of the deep South, South Carolina's firing on Fort Sumter, and Lincoln's consequent call for troops to suppress the open rebellion. [...]it may be that further research and thinking along Dew's lines will show the issue of states' rights, in addition to slavery, had a definite role to play in the secession of Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia.

CHARLES B. DEw, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001. Pp. 124. $23.00/$12.95.

Charles Dew grew up in a Southern culture. For him the civil war had been fought over the issue of states' rights. As so often happens during historical inquiry, Dew stumbled across a new field while researching another. He was reading the Official Record of the Civil War searching for materials on manufacturing, but happened upon secession commissioner Stephen F. Hale's letter to the Governor of Kentucky. Dew experienced a first-class paradigm shift when reading this letter. He discovered that Stephen E Hale stressed the issue of racial integration as a tactic for scaring Kentucky into secession rather than appealing to the noble cause of states' rights. This dramatic episode during an otherwise mundane historical quest prompted the writing of Apostles of Disunion.

After the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, states of the deep South began sending out commissioners to persuade the slave states to secede from the Union. Although they were not entirely successful with their task, their recorded speeches have left a trail of evidence connecting the secession cause with the issue of slavery and attitudes of racism. Dew marshals considerable evidence to reveal that slavery was the predominant concern in the eyes of the secession commissioners, rather than the issue of states' rights. For example, Judge William Harris, a native Georgian living in Mississippi, was sent as the latter state's commissioner for secession at the Georgian General Assembly. Harris's fiery words flickered with the flames of racism. The original founding fathers had "made this government for the white man, rejecting the Negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race" while the Black Republicans were pushing "their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races" (29). Others, like Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy, Mississippi commissioner to Maryland, argued along theological lines. Whereas the Black Republicans thought slavery to be a sin, Handy responded that "slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity" (33). He thought that since Lincoln had become President, there was a threat to slavery where it had always existed so secession was the only way to secure the future of slavery.

Of particular interest is Dew's chapter dealing with "The Mission to Virginia." When commissioners Fulton Anderson (Mississippi), Henry Lewis Benning (Georgia), and John Smith Preston (South Carolina) arrived at the Virginia State Convention in early February 1861, they feared that a very small number (forty) were for secession while the rest of the delegates thought that, given time, the seceding states would renounce secession and rejoin a newly reconstructed Union (61). The commissioners knew Virginia would be a tough sell so they had to make their best case. They decided to appeal to racist arguments in their attempt to push the moderate Virginians toward secession. With John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry in mind, they warned that Lincoln was intending the "extinction of slavery, and the degradation of the Southern People" (62), that Northerners thought the South was "a race inferior to them in morality and civilization," and that secession was the only way to "place our institutions beyond the reach of further hostility" (63). Worse yet, Lincoln would send the army, swelled by the ranks of volunteers, into Virginia to fight alongside the slaves in overthrowing their white masters with the ultimate purpose of white "extermination," with the land going over to the blacks (67). Despite this rather desperate line of reasoning, Virginia did not secede until after Lincoln had called up the first 75,000 volunteers.

Through well-chosen examples of the work of the secession commissioners, Dew establishes his argument that slavery was indeed the primary issue that led to the first wave of secession, the firing on Fort Sumter, and the beginning of the war. Dew admits that he has "not presented the whole story here" (3). He acknowledges the work of others including those with divergent views. However, Dew has made his case and with so much evidence at hand, future historians dealing with the causes of the Civil War will have to include the intentions of the commissioners if they want their research to be complete. His work draws needed attention to the lighted fuse of individual actions near the outbreak of the war, rather than the long fuse and powder keg of the long view causes of the Civil War.

The historian might find other interesting lines of inquiry into Civil War causation while reading Dew's book. Considering Virginia's resistance to the first wave of secession, the reader may well pursue the notion that there were actually two different sets of secessions, each with its own rationale for action. The deep South seceded due to its fears that Lincoln would eradicate slavery where it existed and begin the feared process of integration of whites with blacks. However, we can see from Dew's same evidence that while the upper South rejected the slavery arguments urging secession, it could not overcome the idea of Federal military operations being directed against their Southern relatives intended to force them back into the Union. Since the upper South seceded after Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers, they were ultimately won over to the Confederate States by arguments centering on the issue of states' rights rather than the fear of losing the institution of slavery.

In conclusion, Dew's research and argument will make it difficult to champion states' rights or other issues over the controversy of slavery as the main factor causing the secession of the deep South, South Carolina's firing on Fort Sumter, and Lincoln's consequent call for troops to suppress the open rebellion. On the other hand, it may be that further research and thinking along Dew's lines will show the issue of states' rights, in addition to slavery, had a definite role to play in the secession of Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia.