Apostles of Disunion

Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War: Fifteenth Anniversary Edition

By: Charles B. Dew

Narrated by: Mitchell Dorian

Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The 15 years since the original publication of Apostles of Disunion have seen an intensification of debates surrounding the Confederate flag and Civil War monuments. In a powerful new afterword to this anniversary edition, Dew situates the book in relation to these recent controversies and factors in the role of vast financial interests tied to the internal slave trade in pushing Virginia and other upper South states toward secession and war.

©2016 The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (P)2020 Upfront Books

Powerful debunking of Lost Cause nonsense

Excellent research and documentation of the real causes of the Civil War. This book thoroughly debunks neoconfederate Lost Cause myths that somehow the antebellum South was noble or fought for states rights. Slavery and white supremacy caused the Civil War.

Racist Take - Leaves our a lot of information

Absolutely disgusted by this incredibly racist take on the Civil War. Of the Civil War information, nothing was patently false, but lies of omission are rampant. The same goes for current headlines used to make divisive racist points. I can’t believe this is required reading for college students. The voiceover actor used a caricature southern accent to make his racist points. I could not be more disgusted. If we are ever going to bridge the racial divide and truly understand the causes behind the Civil War, this is not the way to do it, through lies and hatred.

Becomes progressive BS the last hr.

starts out well with factual accounts and quotes from speeches and letters. then the last hour it goes into modern times and it becomes a sob story for controversial publicized deaths of black people in the US. asserting that these are products of racism and that those people were dead because of their race. when in fact records show these people weren't racially killed or anything. the author should have shut up at that point. this hasn't aged well. neither have the southern commissioners words.

Yes, it was about slavery in America

Over the last 25 years in histories of the events and people leading up to the US Civil War a good effort to set the record straight. Despite, post-Reconstruction narratives put forth by such organizations as the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the KKK historians are shining light on slavery in America and the real cause of the US Civil War. It was not "States Rights (unless it was the State's right to continue legalized slavery,") nor was it "Northern Aggression. Simply, it was slavery that was the cause of the US Civil War. Charles B. Dew clearly shows that the states that joined the Confederate States of America did so not because they were forced, but because they were propagandized by those, in the South, who had a vested economic interest in the use and trade of slaves, and racism. By recitation of speeches given by Secession Commissioners from states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina the message was clear enough, if a state did not succeed that state would see the end of slavery, economic collapse, and mixing of the races, with possible subjugation of whites by African-Americans. This is a work of history and while I understand the need to recite the speeches, by the narrator Mitchell Dorian the use of reciting the whole speech in that voice, and not just the key elements made the narrator, at times, sound like Foghorn Leghorn. The book is a work of history and not drama. That said, the author does clearly show that the issues and attitudes of pre-Civil War America certainly play to a segment of the US population even today.

Easy to listen to

I found myself in the middle of the conversation. I felt the anger of the people who lost.

Educational

It's a phenomenal book! Based on facts and actual recorded events. Very educational. It should be required reading in highschool.

The causes of southern secession

This is a short but I think important work piece of scholarship on the arguments the south deployed on behalf of secession. The author cuts away all the post war revisionism and lost cause mythology. This is the true voice of southern secessionists talking to each other in clear and unmistakable fashion. I consider this an essential piece of history that people should know about. Essential