APOSTLES of DISUNION: SOUTHERN SECESSION COMMISSIONERS and the CAUSES of the CIVIL WAR (A NATION DIVIDED: STUDIES in the CIVIL WAR ERA) by Charles B. Dew

Originally published in 2001.

The greatest argument among people who study the Civil War isn't who was the best general or what would have happened if Lincoln hadn't have been assassinated or even what would have happened if the Union had lost at Gettysburg.

No, the greatest argument is this: What caused the Civil War?

For the better part of the last century, the argument has been that the Confederacy seceded in order to protect "their rights". The counter-argument has always been to protect "the right to do what?"

For me, the answer has always been a simple one - they fought for their right to own people and to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap in Southern society. For the Confederate States of America, slavery was the reason to fight. For the Union army, maintaining the Union, with or without slavery, was the reason to fight - a goal claimed many times by Lincoln himself. 

There will be arguments that claim that Confederate states seceded over differences in culture and differences in attitude and the disagreement over federal tax policy. If you think so, I encourage you to read the Ordinances of Secession (basically Declarations of Independence) from Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. They are full of all sorts of reasons to secede, but they keep coming back to slavery-related issues. These are wonderful resources because they are frozen in time, before the loss of the war by the Confederacy. Many post-Civil War authors who fought for the South obscure the importance of slavery, perhaps realizing it was a great moral wrong, or perhaps simply being cognizant that slavery had become politically incorrect and it would hurt their overall argument. Let's face it - many Union soldiers became proud of their role in ending slavery long after the war ended, being indifferent to or even mildly pro-slavery during the war.

 Several of the seceding states did more than issue their own Declarations of Independence. Some of these states sent out ambassadors from their newly independent states to try to convince the other slave states to join them. They were generally referred to as Southern Secession Commissioners. The title of this book, Apostles of Disunion refers to them. The Apostles of Jesus were sent out to teach about Jesus. These apostles were sent out by several secessionist states to to convince the other slave states to join them. Just the fact that they were only sent to slave states should serve as a major clue as to what caused the Civil War.

The texts of their letters and speeches make it very clear that their main arguments were these: fear of the abolition of slavery by "Black Republicans", fear of slave revolt, the loss of the investment of money in their slaves, fear of former slaves having the power to vote and the fear of race mixing. William L. Harris, the Commissioner from Mississippi sent to reach out to the state of Georgia said on December, 17, 1860: "Mississippi is firmly convinced that there us but one alternative: This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery; or, slavery under old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us. If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate." (p. 87)

He followed up with a comment about how Mississippi would "...rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pile, than see them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race." (p. 89)

Stephen F. Hale (1816-1862. He served Alabama
as a Secession Commissioner and as a Lt. Colonel
in the 11th Alabama. He died of wounds sustained
during the Battle of Gaines' Mill in 1862.
Hale County, Alabama is named for him.

Stephen F. Hale of Alabama sent a letter to the Governor of Kentucky to convince him to push for secession. In the letter he calls Lincoln's election "...nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassination and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans."

He continued: "What Southern man, be he a slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not distant future associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white stripped by the heaven-daring had of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?" (p. 98)

The author of Apostles of Disunion included plenty of similar quotes throughout the book and also includes the entire text of the Harris speech and the Hale letter. He found snippets of speeches and letters from the other Commissioners in newspaper articles and journals and found similar comments to the ones in the complete texts. Combine these texts with ambassadors hand-picked by the newly-seceded states and the Ordinances of Secession and you have the answer to why the Civil War started.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: APOSTLES of DISUNION: SOUTHERN SECESSION COMMISSIONERS and the CAUSES of the CIVIL WAR (A NATION DIVIDED: STUDIES in the CIVIL WAR ERA) by Charles B. Dew.

Lee: A Life of Virtue (The Generals series) by John Perry

A solid biography in many aspects, but not without its problems

Published in 2010 by Thomas Nelson Inc.

First, a bit about this reviewer and Civil War books. This is my 80th Civil War book. Robert E. Lee figures prominently in almost every one of them. I consider him to be the the most talented general that served on either side in that war and that is high praise indeed because many generals rose to the top and did distinguished themselves in that war. If Lee is the most talented general in that war, he is the most talented American officer of the 19th century and one can make the argument that he may have been the best ever (assuming one overlooks the massive point that he earned that reputation as a fighter by breaking his oath and taking up arms against the United States government, which I am.)

No one did so much with so little against an opponent that was better fed, had better and more numerous weapons, and outnumbered him in literally every battle. He fought with principle and with respect for his enemies (who he refused to call his enemies - he called the Union forces "those people.")

All of that being said, even I cannot approach the standard of hero worship that John Perry creates in the introduction of this book. Perry cites as one of his primary sources the Douglas Southall Freeman biography R. E. Lee.  Freeman was the primary advocate of a revisionist movement of historians popularly called the Lost Cause movement. It emphasizes the noble character of the southern generals, de-emphasizes the importance of slavery as a cause of the Civil War and justifies secession as a legitimate response to aggressive Northern attacks on the Southern way of life and economy. I would consider Lee: A Life of Virtue to be Lost Cause "lite".

For example, Perry makes a big deal of the fact that Lee never personally owned a slave. He also notes that Lee condemned slavery. That is true, but he did not need to personally own a slave - his wife and her family owned more than one hundred slaves and at least one travelled with the family whenever they followed him in his army postings. Condemning slavery while benefitting from it is a difficult position to defend (ask any devotee of Jefferson.)

Clearly, the war was about more than just slavery, but as noted Civil War historian James McPherson notes in his book of essays about the Civil War entitled This Mighty Scourge, modern historians are re-discovering the primacy of slavery in the debates concerning secession. Charles B. Dew notes in Apostles of Disunion, "Defenders of the Lost Cause need only read the speeches and letters of the secession commissioners to learn what was really driving the Deep South to the brink of war in 1860-61."

Perry's biography of Lee, however, is quite good on the whole. He makes the details of Lee's early life interesting, including all of his postings around the country as an engineer in places such as St. Louis and New York City.

More than half of the book concerns his time in the service of the state of Virginia and the Confederate States of America in the Civil War. Perry's description of the battles and the politics of the war is solid, despite glaring glitches such as the time when he refers to the Battle Sharpsburg (Antietam) as "Strategically...relatively unimportant." (p. 167)

Antietam was a massive strategic loss for the Confederacy. This loss caused Lee to stop his strategy of bringing the war to the North for nearly a year and, even more importantly, provided Lincoln with the victory he needed (vague as this victory was) to issue the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation. This document brought in African American soldiers, stopped Britain's attempts to interfere in the war, and laid the groundwork for the laws and Constitutional Amendments that ended slavery forever. Some have argued that Antietam (Sharpsburg) was the most important battle of the war because of all of those strategic losses.

So, to sum up, this is a solid biography, but not perfect. Too much hero worship and a basic misunderstanding of the Union war strategy as typified by the fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of the Battle of Antietam.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lee: A Life of Virtue (The Generals series).

Reviewed September 25, 2010.

I reviewed this book in conjunction with Thomas Nelson's BookSneeze program. I was not compensated for this review. The opinions expressed are mine.

Review updated on July 27, 2024.