In the immediate wake of Lincoln's
election, several Southern governors appointed
"commissioners" to other states with the avowed purpose
of consulting with those states on the appropriate course of
action. Many of these commissioners were natives of the state to
which they were appointed, and many of them were allowed to speak
to the state legislature or state convention.
The activities of these "secession
commissioners" are detailed in a 2002 book by Charles Dew,
titled Apostles of Disunion: Southern
Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (University
of Virginia Press), and an article on the same subject in (the now defunct) North &
South magazine (vol. 4, no. 4 (2001)).This
section of the web site contains those speeches or letters of the
commissioners that I was able to find, either in Dew's work or in
the sources he cites. Series IV of the Official Records contains
a lot of material on the Alabama commissioners.
The Alabama Commissioners:
Speeches to Virginia:
Other Commissioners:
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