The book that I read was the Apostles of Disunion by Charles B. Dew. This book explains the action of secession commissioners who were given the assignment to travel throughout the South and to other slave states in the years 1860 and 1861. Eventually, their efforts were for not because those men were found guilty of recruiting people to follow secessionary ideals as well as supporting secessionary ideals. I think Dew is trying to get his main point across that people are mistaken if they think that the preservation of slavery in the south was not the primary ideal that lead to the secession and Civil War. I think that he tries to explain through most of the information given to us that states rights may have sparked the secession and civil war but it …show more content…
The Declaration of Immediate Causes stated that, “the North has encouraged as well as assisted thousands of southern slaves to leave their homes “(pg.12). That same declaration states that ‘”Lincoln’s inauguration means that the republican party will take sole possession of the government, the south will be excluded from the common territory, and war must be waged against slavery until is shall cease throughout the United States” (pg. 12). In my opinion, the most important evidence that Dew uses to describe his point or stance to the reader was the letter written by Stephen F. Hale. Dew explains that the letter caught his eye as he read it from start to finish. Hale stated that “Republican victory was 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, to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized African’s” (Pg. 54). He also stated that the letter surprised him with the rhetoric the Hale