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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Secession

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Dew uses letters and speeches of the secession commissioners to assess their effect on sparkling resent and bitter emotions by the south to foster the secession movement. Dew’s central thesis is that the secessionist movement was largely motivated by racial inequality and the need to keep that as the status quo. Dew writes that a lot of the secession leaders used that as a reason for wanting the secession. He writes that, “Alabama's Leroy Pope Walker summarized that Republican rule would cost southerners first, ‘our property,’ ‘then our liberties,’ and finally ‘the sacred purity of our daughters’ (Dew, 80). Dew writes that historians neglect this as a causal factor of the war. He, however, believes this is the central reason for the war. Many …show more content…

He often references academic works and their inaccuracies in analyzing this period in American history. He is addressing the educational system on its depiction of historical issues. A lot of things are glossed over and not acknowledged. This seems to be a problem. Dew grew up believing the secession movement was a noble cause. He writes about, “boyhood dreaming about Confederate glory,” and confesses that he is “still hit with a profound sadness when I read over the material on which this study is based” (Dew, 2). He believes a lot of people are still being misled to believe that this cause should be glorified, when in reality, it was meant to restrict freedom and human rights. Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion is intended to end the discussion on whether or not the South's primary goal in 1861 was to defend its slave-based culture. The book allows all of us who struggle with myth of states’ freedom and rights as the cause of the war to critically analyze the part that race played in the war. It is an effective way to allow students and scholars alike to confront the role of slavery, white supremacy, and racism in the mind of the Old South and the popular movement for

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