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

By February 1, seven Deep South states had left the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas. Alongside these secessions, Alabama’s commissioners redoubled their efforts to complete their mission and “to bring the rest of the slave South into the fold” (51). Throughout January, Alabama’s commissioners in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Virginia made their case for a swift and unified exit from the Union. Their rhetorical tactics echoed those of those of the commissioners from South Carolina; they warned of humiliation and “subjugation,” imagining the many ways abolitionists and slaves might rise against the white South in insurrection. They continued to villainize Lincoln and his supporters as aggressive villains with no regard for Southern ways of life.

Dew centers this chapter on a letter sent by commissioner Stephen F. Hale to the governor of Kentucky, Beriah Magoffin, on December 27. This document encapsulates nearly all the arguments made across the South by other commissioners. Hale addresses constitutional justifications for secession and the region’s economic stake in slavery. He narrates the difficulties of the sectional crisis already endured by the South throughout the 1850s, culminating in Lincoln’s election in 1860, which, secessionists believed, was a sign of hostile intention, if not outright declaration of war.