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Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
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Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “The First Wave”
Abraham Lincoln’s election in late 1860 sparked coordinated political action across the Deep South. In late November and early December, the governors of Alabama and Mississippi scheduled conventions to consider seceding. They appointed commissioners to rally other slave states across the South to join their cause. On December 13, a group of Southern congressmen met in Washington DC to discuss any remaining possibilities for compromise; they ultimately agreed to advocate for secession. They released a statement entitled “A Southern Manifesto” that articulated their insistence that the South must leave the Union. This unequivocal statement “drove a final nail into the coffin of unity […] and helped pave the way for the secession of South Carolina one week later” (24).
From December 17 to December 20, commissioners from Mississippi and Alabama traveled to South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and North Carolina. Both states’ governors chose distinguished public figures, many of whom were born in the states to which they traveled. Governor Andrew B. Moore of Alabama appointed members of both the radical Democratic and moderate Whig parties to send a message that the secession went beyond regional and party differences and would unite the South. The commissioners’ messages were similarly strategic: At the South Carolina Convention on December 17, commissioners Elmore and Hooker spoke briefly and cordially in support of the radical secessionist sentiment that already stood strong there. On the same day in Georgia, Mississippi’s commissioner, William L. Harris, presented a strong persuasive argument to counter the state’s strong Unionist sentiment. Harris gave an impassioned speech denouncing abolitionist values of racial equality. In response, Georgia’s congress adopted a joint resolution condemning “the Northern people, press, and pulpit” for joining a political party “organized…for the avowed purpose of destroying the institution of slavery” (30). Harris’ rhetoric “set the tone for what was to follow” in the speeches delivered over the next few days (30).
On December 19 in Maryland, Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy, commissioner from Mississippi, addressed a crowd of 1,500 at Maryland Institute Hall. He argued that the North’s position “subvert[ed] the rights” of Southern slaveholders and was a moral offense, as slavery was “ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity” (33). On December 20 Jacob Thompson, the US Secretary of the Interior and Mississippi’s appointed commissioner to North Carolina, penned an open letter to North Carolina’s governor. Thompson prophesied that abolition of slavery would foster a hatred of Southern ways of life, resulting in the “humiliation” and “subjugation” of Southern people. The same day, December 20, South Carolina passed its ordinance cutting ties with the United States, initiating a new phase with “a new set of dangers” on the path toward secession (36).
Chapter 3 Summary: “The South Carolinians”
On December 20, 1860, delegates at the South Carolina Convention voted unanimously to secede from the Union. Local papers lauded this decision. Nine days later, South Carolina’s Committee on Relations with Slaveholding States approved a proposal to hold a Constitutional Convention to form a Southern Confederacy. The committee named commissioners, as Alabama and Mississippi had done, who would travel to Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas; Virginia and North Carolina were added later. On January 3 the commissioners met for a strategic discussion, and shortly afterward made their way to their states.
The first two speeches occurred on January 7 and 8 in Florida and Alabama, respectively. Leonidas Spratt, an outspoken secessionist, argued at the convention in Florida that two distinct societies had emerged in North America—North and South—with differing societal structures and core values, primarily in their attitudes toward slavery. Appropriating the terms of the “Irrepressible Conflict” anti-slavery movement in the North, Spratt asserted that a direct conflict between the two societies was unavoidable. Andrew Calhoun, commissioner to Alabama, gave a similarly forceful speech to the Alabama Convention, articulating the threats posed by the “Black Republican” government, which would submit the South to “degradation and humiliation” (43).
Both commissioners defended South Carolina’s haste and justified their urgency by casting the North as an out-of-control aggressor. Commissioners’ visits to Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas during January followed a similar script: Prominent men, often with affiliation to the state in which they spoke, appeared before delegates attempting to rally them to the secessionist cause. They characterized Lincoln’s election as a threat to Southern institutions, to the purity and superiority of the white race, to the honor, safety, and prosperity of the Southern people. Each of these early state conventions swiftly agreed to secede and join South Carolina at a constitutional convention in February.
In all their speeches, South Carolina’s commissioners delivered passionate defenses of their ideological concerns but had practical motivations as well. South Carolina would be vulnerable if it could not win allies in secession; additionally, tensions between North and South appeared to be increasing, and “war seemed a distinct possibility” (45). In late December a Union garrison relocated to Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, and South Carolinian forces opened fire at a passing supply ship a few weeks later, aggravating tensions that would erupt into war in a matter of months.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
Chapters 2 and 3 detail the South’s immediate reaction in the days and weeks after Lincoln’s election. Dew’s retelling emphasizes state governments’ forethought and coordination in anticipation of a military conflict. His citations of commissioners’ writings demonstrate a wartime logic at work in their arguments, as many characterize the call for secession as strategic and defensive rather than hasty and offensive, casting the North as an irrational, “fanatical” enemy. Though Dew’s Introduction shows he is no longer sympathetic to Confederate ideology, he narrates from the perspective of the secessionists to illuminate their thinking. In Chapter 3, Dew recognizes that South Carolina’s commissioners urged other states to secede for ideological reasons and because, practically, “South Carolina could ill afford to enter [a war] without allies” (45). Though they present their passionate arguments at a fever pitch, Dew shows throughout both chapters the ways in which every choice in the push toward secession was deliberate: appointing both radical and moderate commissioners, selecting commissioners with ties to the states where they traveled, the crafting of the messages themselves.
The pace of Chapter 2’s opening paragraphs captures the urgent but organized quality of the response to Republican victory: “Immediate action needed to be taken. […] military appropriations should be made, and a state coat of arms should be adopted” (22). Dew describes commissioners’ first journeys to their respective states in a manner reminiscent of a mobilizing army: “[I]n a matter of days, Mississippi’s emissaries were fanning out across the South” (23). The precarity of the moment rings out clearly, as commissioners proceed “in the face of danger” and the South suddenly faces an “unprecedented crisis” (23). While Lincoln or the federal government had made no threats, Southerners saw themselves “teetering on the brink of destruction” (24).
In Chapter 2, momentum builds as commissioners deliver their speeches one after the other in a matter of days. The perspective shifts from a bird’s-eye view of commissioners’ simultaneous travels across the South to a front-row seat in individual conventions from South Carolina to Maryland. Chapter 3 heightens the drama further by opening immediately on South Carolina’s momentous unanimous vote. Faithful to his training as a historian, Dew does not indulge in lengthy visual or sensual description; instead he uses key facts (about the size of audiences, biographical details for each commissioner, or how speeches were received) and careful arrangement of his material to engage the reader with a sense of the scene and stakes.
Dew’s argument that racism and slavery drove the push for war becomes immediately apparent from the commissioners’ words, which are quoted extensively in both chapters. Dew also cites talks that the commissioners gave years before their convention speeches to prove a certain consistency in their racist views. These quotations are rife with racist language; they refer to slavery as an essential facet of Southern culture and society. Several commissioners harshly denounce the abolitionist cause. Descriptions of dishonor, degradation, and humiliation appear in many speeches. Dew shows through direct quotes of the commissioners themselves how much calls for Southern unity were based in racist or white supremacist values and worldviews. This explicitly racist rhetoric was also effective in its goal. Often shortly after a secession commissioner made his case, their state voted to secede.
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