Charles B Dew’s book Apostles of Disunion (published by University of Virginia Press) attempts to prove that Southern secession in 1860-61 was all about slavery. Indeed, the question of slavery (but especially its relationship to the much broader and more important issue of race and civilisation) and how to address it was the occasion for disunion, though as early as 1827 some Southern leaders were calling for secession over the issue of the Northern protective tariff (in fact, South Carolina and the US Federal Government nearly went to war over the tariff in 1833 before a last minute compromise preserved the peace). The Southern nationalist movement had been growing for decades prior to the 1860s and every political and social issue of that age which divided the South and the North had been fiercely contested. Dew, a self-hating Southerner (his introduction is all about how he became such; notice his choice of words in this short excerpt; even the endorsements of the book on its back cover are extremely anti-Southern), does provide much interesting information in his short work despite his admitted bias in writing the book. On pages 37-39, for example, he describes the Lower South’s (notice that he uses the pejorative Yankee term ‘Deep South’) advancement towards secession and confederation after the Northern radical Abraham Lincoln was elected US president:
On December 24 the Charleston Mercury enthusiastically endorsed the idea of putting a new Southern government in place as quickly as possible. “The Convention now sitting in South Carolina, and all the other Conventions which shall assemble to dissolve the existing Union, have the power… of speedily organizing a Confederacy,” the editor wrote. “Uncertainty and delay are dangerous,” he warned, and other seceding states would be looking to South Carolina for leadership. The editorial suggested a meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, in early February “to form a Constitution for a Southern Confederacy, and to put the same into operation.”
The Mercury was the organ of Robert Barnwell Rhett, one of South Carolina’s most outspoken secessionists. Rhett was also a convention delegate and the chairman of the Committee on Relations with the Slaveholding States. Attorney General Hayne’s ideas came back to the floor of the convention on December 26. Rhett’s committee proposed the immediate selection of commissioners and their dispatch to other Southern states that had announced they would call conventions. South Carolina’s agents, like their counterparts from Alabama and Mississippi, were to do everything in their power to advance the cause of secession, but they were given an additional charge as well. They were to propose a meeting in Montgomery on February 13, 1861, to draft a constitution for a Confederate States of America.
…The day after their appointment by the convention, the South Carolina commissioners met in Charleston to plan strategy. They agreed to suggest Montgomery as the site for a constitutional convention. Convenient rail and river access and good hotel accommodations recommended the Alabama capital, and the fact that Montgomery was the home of William L Yancey made it doubly attractive to the South Carolinians. They also decided to propose the earliest possible date for this meeting – the first Monday in February. South Carolina’s commissioners were now ready to sow the seeds of revolution across the Deep South.
their ain’t nothing worse than a self-hating southerner.
The only thing lower than a Yankee Carpetbagger is a Southern Scalawag who is willing to sell out his on people for money, power or stupidity!
A scalawag is the same thing as a TRAITOR because they BETRAY their country and their people!
Deo Vindice!
It is of course true that slavery was an issue, but the idea that the war was primarily about slavery should be rebuffed at every turn. Of course the states with the wealthiest slave owners had to pander to them to some degree, just like slave owners were pandered to some degree during the Revolution. The wealthy and influential are necessary for the success of the cause. If you don’t win them over, victory is far less likely.
Why do these historians never focus on all the slave owner opposition to secession? It was the middle class and common people who voted for secession, not the wealthiest slave owners. How many of the great leaders of the Confederacy actually opposed secession until after it was accomplished? Jefferson Davis for one.
So the common people vote for secession, and then the elite slave owners make accommodation for slavery in a couple of the “declarations of causes” and those documents are all that matter?
How do these historians ignore the fact that a great many of the strongest unionists were also advocates of slavery? Nuts like William Brownlow, the great Unionist in TN besides Andrew Johnson, argued that the Confederacy was in fact a great conspiracy against slavery.
@brian: Yeah, I have several well educated ‘friends’ who are big time self hating Southerners, and it is sad! They know I am a proud descendent of Confederate soldiers and we are from Scots-Irish ancestry-and to them I am ‘ignorant and racist’ though I’m not.
It seems like I am constantly telling people ‘you think northerners, unionists were NOT racist? are you kidding me????’ Unfortunately people really want revisionist history. They need a bad guy-and so they point at us Southerners.
It’s hard, esp. having (homeschooled)kids who are so proud of their heritage-and they make friends and when these people see the ‘Sons of Confederate Veterans’ certificates on the wall they immediately decide we are awful. I am seriously afraid that being proud of our Southern roots is something (for all of us) that will have to be whispered in the near future. Thanks for the opportunity to rant!