Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Monday, January 21, 2008 8:09:51 PM
The inalienable right of self-government had been violated; the POTUS (without even the constitutional requisite of Congressional approval) had declared war against sovereign States, which had only exercised their constitutional rights.
Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune was ably advocating the right of the Southern States to peaceably withdraw from the Union, and pointing out the folly of the claim that the General Government had any right to coerce them. Among other things he said: "If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The Right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless." Again: "We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets." And again: "If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of 3 million colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 5 million Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861."
But what did Lee say? Lee regarded his allegiance to the sovereign State of Virginia as paramount to all others, and that he must obey her voice at whatever sacrifice of feeling, or of personal interest. He regarded any attempt to "pin the States in the Union with the bayonet" as a violation of the fundamental principles for which the fathers fought in 1776.
In his letter of resignation from his commission in the Army (after being offered the supreme command of the army that was to take the field against the seceded States) he says…
"Save in defense of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword." –R. E. Lee
In our day we are so far removed from the foundations of freedom that it is hard of us to understand Americans like Robert E. Lee.
[Quotes from Life & Letters of General Robert E. Lee by J. W. Jones]