Preview

Book Review of Apostles of Disunion

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
612 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Book Review of Apostles of Disunion
Maya Austell
January 31, 2012
Book review
Apostles of Disunion

The way Charles B. Dew opened up this book was touching and smart. He and I share the same qualities in thinking about issues by looking at things from both sides, and in ways that haven’t been discussed or thought about. He was a born and raised southerner, and told of his up bringing in the south. His ancestors fought and died for the Confederacy. Although it may seem that he should be a die-hard supporter of the Confederate, he openly looked at this issue at hand and dissected the facts. He also had actual documents, speeches, and writings that supported his these views. He said “I believe deeply that the story these documents tell is one that all of us, northerners and southerners, black and white, need to confront as we try to understand our past and move toward a future in which a fuller commitment to decency and racial justice will be part of our shared experience.” (pg.3) People, who think that the South broke away from the Union in the late 1860s because of slavery, should read this book. The reason is, Dew gives a dark and factual view of how much racist fears and slavery propaganda in leading up to the secession of the South’s states by speeches and writings of the secessionist commissioners appointed by South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. This opened my mind as to why, how, and what caused the secession? I think what drove the secession is clear racism, and the critical belief of the commissioners had on slavery. They said Lincoln's election was "nothing less than an open declaration of war." Dew believed that if slavery did not exist, we would have never had the civil war. We can look at bigger picture, which is, this war was a great loss for everyone, both Confederate and Union. Charles Dew took a different approach to the reason of the why the secession happened. He chronologically outlines the secession crisis. These commissioners were not

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Civil War Essay

    • 390 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The main reason the South wanted to secede was to become independent. Southerners did not want to get rid of slavery because it was critical to the southern economy. The Election of 1860 was another reason the South wanted to secede because Southerners were afraid that President Lincoln would abolish or get rid of slavery in the South. Sectionalism was another problem because the South had made their needs or desires more important than the Union itself.…

    • 390 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Loyalty and Loss written by Margaret M. Storey is a well-written and persuasive book studying how the Unionists in Alabama, the Deep South state, confronted the Confederate authorities during the civil war and their life in the Reconstruction. The first interesting thing I found was that the diversity of the Unionists. The author tried to find the similarities among the different Unionists and surprisingly she found out that the Unionists were highly distributed. Some of them could from the infertile hill county and the others could from the rich Tennessee Valley. No matter how different their backgrounds were, all of them undertook great risks on defying the confederate authorities and fight for their belief.…

    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    This book focuses on the of number southern black and white who opposed the confedecy. He documented in The Road to Disunion, that anti-Confederates got strength from the weakness of slavery in the Border South, while slavery stunted population growth. The author argues that the varying support of the upper and lower South contributed to the fall of the Confederacy placing most of the blame on anti confederalist. He states that anti-Confederate whites undermined the Confederacy by remaining outside the nation while slaves unified form within and enlisted into the Union Army. Both groups guaranteed that the Union would have more men for the army which cause the Confederacy to lose because anti-Confederates waged war against Confederate southerners. That author also discusses the neutrality of the border slave states that made the Confederate war effort vulnerable. Losing nearly half of the slave states neutrality and the support for the Union army's invasion damaged the geography and population that the Confederacy could use for its defense.…

    • 232 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From the ashes of the Civil War, rose a unified nation still embroiled with one another over memory. David Blight argues in Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory that “[s]ome of the real war, and much of an imagined one, was already getting into the books.” A fierce battle of words and history dominates the post-war landscape. “Civil War memory had become a creature of the mass market,” Blight argues, “and like all markets, it produced winners and losers.” As the South endeavored to reconnect with their pre-war way of states’ rights and negro bondage, the north, through reconstruction, attempted to pummel the old southern way of life into submission. However, as reconstruction neared its end in 1877, the South emerged ready to…

    • 180 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When Abraham Lincoln was elected president and vowed to abolish slavery, he promised that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists” (Source C). However, South Carolina did not believe in his ideas of slavery and chose to secede on December 20, 1860 along with six other states, which are Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. They seceded because the secessionists thought that the new Republican administration would subvert the right of southern slaveholders to carry their human property into the territories (pg. 407), but they did not believe that Lincoln would not interfere with slavery where it already existed. Due to the strong belief that…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The South Since 1865 delivers an entertaining account and perspective on the drastic changes in the South. This book is an excellent resource to students, educators and history enthusiasts. In reviewing the book, the principal criteria included content, organization, and reference sources. While editing errors and organizational incongruities plague some of the latter chapters, these are only minor distractions to the story being told.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prior to 1860 the United States was already split into opposing sides fighting for power. Although these conflicts never reached the battlefield, the slave’s states and Free states were always competing for representation in congress. South Carolina felt that certain powers were restrained from them and it imperiled their continued existence as sovereign states (DOC A). So, as the leader, they declared secession with several states following shortly after. They were then called the Confederate states of America. This was so revolutionary because the Union destroyed everything in the South and it led to the strengthening of Federal Power over the states.…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Because of this the seceding states increased their militia and confiscated federal arsenals. Most secessionists believed their reaction was legal and constitutional. 4 The South took these measures because they were afraid of the extinction of slavery.5 The South began to think of situations of what Republicans might do. Some thoughts were the Republicans would exclude slavery from the territories, Lincoln would pick Republican Justices for the Supreme Court, which would devastate the South, Congress would take back the Fugitive Slave Law so slaves would escape to free territories, and they thought slavery might be demolished in D.C.6 During this time Lincoln told his southern friends that his presidency would not hinder slavery in the states or D.C.…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    South Carolina’s argument was that it shouldn’t have to follow the Constitution if other states weren’t following it themselves. The Constitution was created as a whole to govern every individual states under one Declaration. In the Constitution it stated that if a slave were to runaway to another state it was that state duty to return the slave to its rightful owner. However in “ Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” its states “In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed”. Since several northern states such as Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island have failed to obey the Constitution South Carolina felt justified in their…

    • 185 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1860 Dbq Analysis

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Many aspects and events throughout the time period of 1860 through 1861 had an overall contribution to the secession of several Southern states. Slavery was one of the major issues that led many conflicts between the Northern states and the Southern States. These compilation of events progress to the secession of the Southern States from the Union afterwards and the formation of the Confederate States of America.…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    South Carolina view the United states not as a unified nation. I think if they saw the United States as a unified nation, they would not have thought of seceding in the first place. They were scared of what the federal government was going to do to slavery, especially after Lincoln became president. After they left and other southern states began to follow, they declared themselves as the confederacy. South Carolina tore apart what was once a unified nation into two separate ones.…

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Secession Dbq Essay

    • 1828 Words
    • 8 Pages

    There is certainly no shortage of opinion on whether the southern states had the right to secede from the union in 1860-61. After all, northern state governments as well as the election of Lincoln placed the south into a defensive posture to protect their particular institution. Secession has a long history in world governmental intercourse and the founding of American independence did not inoculate them from the threats of secession. States began to discuss secession even before the ink had dried on the new constitution. Justification, regardless as to the state threatening secession, was founded on the belief that the states had the right to govern themselves and the right of the people to abolish a government when it becomes destructive…

    • 1828 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Calhoun 's commitment to his two-part defense and his efforts to expand them to the fullest would give him an exceptional role in American history as the political, spiritual, and moral voice for Southern autonomy. The fact was, he never wished the Southern states to sever themselves from the Union as they would eleven years after his death. Calhoun’s experience and life’s career as a public servant gave him the understanding he needed to redefine the theory of secession. Due to his impassioned writings on the interpretation of the constitution and state’s rights, his speeches identified the federal government as encroaching in the very livelihood of the South; Calhoun, with great commitment augmented and molded the catalyst to the American Civil War.…

    • 5816 Words
    • 24 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    why the war came

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Why the War Came: The Sectional Struggle over Slavery in the TerritorieLincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era: David Herbert ...…

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Constitution Dbq

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages

    On February 7, 1871, seven slave states declared independence, joined the confederate states of America and elected Jefferson Davis as president.In davis’ message to Confederate Congress (Doc H), he expressed his view that the constitution set up a compact between independent states, rather than a national government made up of states. The misconception that the Constitution set up a national government, he said, was the perception of a certain political school in the North. In contrast, Lincolns message (Doc I) questions how the southern states could withdraw from the Union without the consent of the other states. As these two documents have pointed out, the different interpretations by which the Northerners and Southerners interpreted the Constitution was one of the main sources of sectional discord and tension. Despite efforts at preserving the Union, social and economic forces were pulling the North and South apart. Northern society was beign cultured by the industrial revolution, and by educational and humanitarian movements that had little effect in the South. Southern society was dominated by agriculture, and therefore slavery was a necessary institution and way of life. Since the North and South were essentially two different societies united under…

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays