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

Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War is a historical account of the secession movement in the antebellum Southern US written by Charles B. Dew. Dew is a distinguished professor of history at Williams College specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. Apostles of Disunion was published in 2001 by the University of Virginia Press and won the 2001 Fletcher Pratt Prize from the Civil War Round Table of New York. This 15th-anniversary edition was released in 2016 with a new Afterword.

Apostles of Disunion examines speeches and letters of commissioners who were appointed to spread the message of secession across the South after the election of Abraham Lincoln. Before diving into this examination, Dew introduces himself to the reader as a practicing historian and a white Southern descendant of Confederate soldiers. He describes an emotional process of confronting the racism of his ancestral heritage, which emerged from an encounter with the writings of a secession commissioner. He acknowledges the scholarly discourse around the causes of the Civil War and positions Apostles of Disunion as a supplement to, rather than an argument with, that scholarly dialogue. In Chapter 1, Dew examines the contemporary sociopolitical climate, which lacks a clear consensus around the key factors that led to the war.