Dew recalls accepting Lost Cause narratives about states' rights as the cause of the Civil War during his Southern childhood.

Abraham Lincoln's election triggers immediate coordinated political action across Deep South state governments.

A group of Southern congressmen releases the 'Southern Manifesto,' declaring that the South must leave the Union.

Mississippi commissioner William L. Harris delivers a racially charged speech to Georgia's General Assembly, setting the tone for all commissioners to follow.

South Carolina's delegates vote unanimously to secede from the Union.

South Carolina's Committee on Relations with Slaveholding States appoints commissioners to recruit other slave states to the secessionist cause.

Leonidas Spratt argues before Florida's convention that North and South represent two irreconcilable civilizations.

Andrew Calhoun warns the Alabama Convention that a Republican government will bring 'degradation and humiliation' to the South.

Stephen F. Hale publishes an open letter to Kentucky's governor making a sweeping, explicitly racist case for secession.

Three commissioners from South Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia arrive in Virginia to persuade the state's moderate convention to secede.

Fulton Anderson speaks first to Virginia's convention, arguing that Lincoln's government will progressively abolish slavery throughout the South.

Henry Lewis Benning delivers a vivid, apocalyptic appeal describing the racial catastrophe awaiting the South if it does not secede.

John Smith Preston's celebrated speech stirs Virginia's delegates to tears and thunderous applause.

Confederate forces open fire on Fort Sumter, triggering Virginia's vote to secede and the start of the Civil War.

Dew revisits his original thesis years later, finding that ongoing racist violence confirms a full national reckoning has still not occurred.

The book opens with Dew reflecting on a Southern upbringing shaped by Lost Cause mythology, before Lincoln's election triggers a swift and coordinated secession movement across the Deep South. Mississippi commissioner William L. Harris delivers the first major racially charged speech to Georgia's General Assembly, establishing the rhetorical blueprint all commissioners would follow. South Carolina becomes the first state to vote unanimously to secede, after which it appoints its own commissioners to spread the cause, including Leonidas Spratt in Florida and Stephen F. Hale, whose open letter to Kentucky's governor makes the most sweeping racist case for disunion. The campaign reaches its dramatic climax in Virginia, where three commissioners — Anderson, Benning, and Preston — deliver a celebrated series of speeches before a largely Unionist convention. The attack on Fort Sumter finally pushes Virginia to secede, and years later Dew revisits his thesis to confirm that a genuine national reckoning with these events has still not taken place.

The headline events of Southern secession and the commissioners who drove it.

Dew encounters secession commissioner writings in graduate school, forcing him to question Lost Cause explanations for the Civil War for the first time.

The US citizenship test accepts both 'slavery' and 'states' rights' as correct answers to the question of why the Civil War was fought.

Mississippi and Alabama governors schedule secession conventions and appoint commissioners to rally other slave states to the secessionist cause.

Alabama's governor appoints both radical Democrats and moderate Whigs as commissioners, signaling that secession transcended long-standing party divisions.

Commissioners Elmore and Hooker speak briefly at the South Carolina Convention in a cordial show of secessionist solidarity.

Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy addresses a crowd of fifteen hundred in Maryland, arguing that slavery was 'ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity.'

Jacob Thompson sends an open letter to North Carolina's governor prophesying Southern humiliation and subjugation under an abolitionist government.

South Carolina's commissioners gather for a strategic planning meeting before departing to recruit other slave states into the secessionist cause.

Commissioners visiting Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas find that each state swiftly votes to secede following their presentations.

Alabama's commissioners spread across Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Virginia to argue for a unified secessionist front.

The three commissioners appointed to Virginia meet privately and determine their speaking order before facing the convention.

Virginia's secessionists remain a minority after the commissioners' speeches, but the attack on Fort Sumter shifts the convention's vote toward secession.

Post-war educator Jabez L.M. Curry rewrites history books to minimize slavery's role in causing secession.

Barack Obama's election initially fills Dew with hope that America has overcome the legacies of slavery, a hope quickly dispelled by rising Neo-Confederate activity.

A proposed Alabama bill to prohibit removal of Confederate monuments sparks a new clash between politicians and civil rights activists.

Dew's personal confrontation with Lost Cause mythology begins in graduate school, and his opening chapter uses the US citizenship test's dual-answer question as a symbol for the nation's broader confusion about why the Civil War was fought. State governors carefully select commissioners from both radical and moderate political factions to signal that secession transcended party divisions, and the first wave of commissioners deploys targeted arguments before state conventions from South Carolina to Maryland. South Carolina's own commissioners subsequently gather to strategize before fanning out across the Deep South, where state after state swiftly votes to secede. Alabama's commissioners then carry the campaign into resistant border states, and three commissioners from different states coordinate their presentations to an uphill audience in Virginia, whose Unionist majority holds until Fort Sumter forces the issue. In the postwar years, revisionist educators quietly reshape the historical record, while decades later a proposed Alabama bill banning Confederate monument removal shows how unresolved the legacy of secession remains.

The organizational machinery and secondary speeches behind the secession campaign.

Dew acknowledges that confronting his Confederate heritage made writing Apostles of Disunion a deeply painful personal process.

Dew identifies contradictions between Jefferson Davis's states' rights inaugural address and Alexander Stephens's shifting explanations for secession.

Dew argues that the commissioners' documents, marked by 'amazing openness and frankness,' provide the clearest evidence of secessionist motivations.

Georgia's General Assembly immediately adopts a joint resolution condemning the Northern press and pulpit following Harris's speech.

South Carolina's forces fire on a Union supply ship approaching Fort Sumter, escalating military tensions in Charleston harbor months before war begins.

Hale's letter to Kentucky's governor shifts from restrained constitutional arguments to fervent racist prophecies about racial equality and 'amalgamation.'

Kentucky ultimately refuses to secede despite Hale's impassioned letter, remaining sharply divided over the question.

Benning turns dramatically to the president of the Virginia Convention and hands him Georgia's Ordinance of Secession during his speech.

Preston invokes the 'two civilizations' argument before Virginia's delegates, declaring that the South cannot exist without African slavery.

After the war, Preston delivers a graduation speech reframing the Confederate cause as a defense of the founders' vision, with no mention of slavery.

Dew argues that commissioners' racist statements were made too many times and with too much fervor across too many venues to be dismissed as insincere.

Dylann Roof's mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina and his display of the Confederate flag reignites the national debate over Confederate symbols.

Dew discovers a slave trading firm's 1860 price list and is forced to confront the brutal economic commodification of human beings by white Southerners.

Dew calculates that the South's slave industry was worth roughly four billion dollars, equivalent to approximately one hundred billion dollars in present-day terms.

Dew quotes a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and urges America to answer honestly what caused the Civil War.

Dew's painful personal reckoning with his Confederate heritage drives the book's central inquiry, which begins by exposing contradictions in Jefferson Davis's and Alexander Stephens's postwar statements about secession's causes. The commissioners' own candid writings emerge as the most revealing evidence of secessionist motivations, and Georgia's immediate legislative response to Harris's speech demonstrates how effectively racist rhetoric translated into political action. Hale's letter to Kentucky's governor marks a pivotal rhetorical turning point, shifting from constitutional justification to explicit racist prophecy, while Benning's theatrical gesture before Virginia's convention illustrates the performative intensity of the entire campaign. Preston's postwar graduation speech, which conspicuously omits any mention of slavery, shows how swiftly former secessionists moved to rewrite the historical record. In the Afterword, Dew confronts both the enduring violence of white supremacy — including Dylann Roof's massacre at Emanuel AME Church — and his own startling discovery of slavery's staggering economic value, before calling on America to confront the Civil War's true causes with full honesty.

The key discoveries, rhetorical turns, and emotional revelations that shape Dew's argument.