Analysis Of Apostles Of Disunion By Charles B. Dew

Most people don't know for sure why the American Civil War came to be. However, one theory that repeatedly comes up is the issue of slavery and whether it was just or wrong in America the land of the freedom throughout history and discussions. Charles B. Dew the author of, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and The Cause of The Civil War, claims to be a southerner himself and explains his thoughts and education growing up in the south. In his youth, he was taught by his family that the reason the South went to war was to fight for their State’s rights, but as an adult, he explains that it may not have been the only reason they fought after researching for himself.
His research led him to write the, Apostles of Disunion,

However, in order to push their belief of a secession, “South Carolina’s headlong rush to secede required some explanation and justification, particularly in light of the state’s well-deserved reputation as the most radical of all the slaveholding states” (49) So these commissioners did. Judge Handy said to the audience in Baltimore, that the Republicans will take their God given right way to own slavery because, “slavery was ordinated by God and sanctioned by humanity,” (33) and that it was religious and state right for southerners to own slaves. Judge Harris was the one to set the tone for the racial theme that the commissioners needed to persuade the southern states to join them in the secession. In his speech at the George General assembly he said that, “she had rather see the last of her race…immolated in one common funeral pile, than see them to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.” (29) That the secession was necessary because there would absolutely be no way unless dead that the south would accept black as equals because is would degrade and be the downfall of America. Garret and Smith, were two of many that said that, “submission would but invite new and greater aggression…”(36) that giving into abolishment movement would give the government, abolishment, and

What he found was that Southerners and commissioners believed that whites were a superior race to negros. If the Republicans, Lincoln, and Abolishment went through with their push for race equality than according to Hand, the, “racial fate of the south was hanging in the balance.”(33) because he believed that by freeing the black, then southerners’ worst nightmares would come true. By implementing racial equality, “safety of the rights of the south will be entirely gone,” (33) because it would “Excite the slave to cut the throat of his master.” (33) This racial equality would put southerners in danger from the black slaves they owned. They feared retaliation from the blacks that outnumbered them and the commissioners knew that and played that hand to persuade the southern states to join the secession. Because if blacks were freed than according to Benning “we will be completely exterminated and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa or St. Domingo.”(67) They could not leave the bright fate and glory of America in the hands of these barbaric blacks because they would not hesitate to kill off the white race and return it back to the uncivilized way it was before America came to