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

Abstract

Charles B. Dew intends this short, stimulating work as a contribution both to the specialized historiography of secession and to the continuing popular debate over Civil War causation. Dew begins with the question posed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service about what “important issue” the war was fought over (correct answer: either “slavery” or “states rights”). He then reflects briefly on the conflict's contemporary reverberation, especially among southerners, for whom, as he notes with nice understatement, “the past . . . is far from dead.” The book's brevity—only eighty-one pages of narrative—will not satisfy all scholars; some may conclude that this gifted historian should have set his account of the secession commissioners within a fuller examination of Deep South disunionism or perhaps given us more insight into how the message they carried with them was variously received. But all readers will appreciate the perspicacity and eloquence with which Professor Dew has performed his allotted task. They may even feel relieved that such tasty revisionist fare can be digested with so little effort.