This edition of Apostles of Disunion includes a new Afterword by Dew that reflects on the 15 years since its original publication in 2001. Dew narrates the profound hope he felt after Barack Obama’s election in 2008, as a symbol that the legacies of slavery and the Civil War had been overcome. Unfortunately, he witnessed a renewal of racist and Neo-Confederate rhetoric in its wake: the birther controversy, the rise of the Tea Party, and growth in the number of white supremacist hate groups across the US. He describes the publicized police killings of young black men and women, starting with Trayvon Martin in 2014, and the mass shooting committed by Dylann Roof at Emanuel AME Church in 2015. Roof’s racist writings and touting of the Confederate battle flag sparked another harsh debate over the display of Confederate symbols, like the many incidents Dew recounted in Chapter 1 of his 2001 edition.

These national events resonated with Dew’s research for the book project that followed the publication of Apostles of Disunion. In his research, he became fixated on a price list for slaves from a slave trading firm in 1860. Dew was incredulous that white Southerners could have engaged in such brutal, inhumane treatment and commodification of other human beings.