Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

As tensions between the northern and the southern United States rose in late 1860 and early 1861, five of the southern states appointed commissioners to other slave states in order to encourage secession. Dew (social sciences, Williams College) explores the arguments of these men to their peers as a window into the real motivations of the secession of the South. He debunks persistent arguments, first advanced by the former vice president of the Confederacy, that the Civil War was fought over "great principles" of states rights versus federal centralism. Instead he finds that these men had white supremacy and slavery at the very dark heart of their arguments and their motivations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Charles B. Dew, W. Van Alan Clark Third Century Professor in the Social Sciences at Williams College, is the author of Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge and Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works.