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LEE AND HIS CAUSE 
 
Lee and His Cause 
 
 OR 
 
 The Why and the How of the War 
 Between the States 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN R. PEERING, D. D. 
 
 Chaplain Kentucky Division, U. C. V., Once of Claiborne GuanJs. Co. K. 
 12th Regt. Miss. Vol. Inft., Army Northern Virgiiiia, and Later of Cap!. 
 Qyirk's Scouts, Morgan's Kentucky Cavalry 
 
 JBflO, verum amo^ verum volo mihi did : Mendacem odi ! 
 
 —Plautus 
 
 New York and Washington 
 
 THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 1907 
 

 LIBRARY of CONi'aNESS 
 Two Copies Heceived 
 
 DEC n i907 
 
 yA)opyrl£ht Entry 
 
 <i / /COPY B. 
 
 Copyright. 1907, by 
 
 JOHN R. DEERING 
 
 First Published in December, igoy. 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 TO 
 
 MY THREE DAUGHTERS 
 
 AND SIX SONS 
 
 Who have been faithfully taught the Truth 
 of History, the Nature of our Government, and 
 the Love of our Country; in whom I trust to 
 transmit these precious things to coming gener- 
 ations, as they may have the power, for their 
 own sake, and for the honor of those, who at 
 home, in council chambers, legislative halls, 
 hospital wards, prison cells and on hard-fought 
 fields, have taught and toiled, sorrowed and 
 suffered, bled and died, to maintain and estab- 
 lish them. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The matter here presented to the reader was 
 first given as a ''Memorial Day'' Address, 
 before Confederate Veteran Camps, and Chap- 
 ters of the Daughters of the Confederacy, in 
 several cities and towns. Its original use has 
 modified its final form ; whilst to embody more 
 of historic fact, and so enhance the permanent 
 value, its limits have been largely expanded. 
 
 There are many and worthy "Lives of Lee," 
 and some excellent "Histories of the United 
 States," and still more abundant "Sketches of 
 Battles and Minor Engagements," with almost 
 innumerable "Narratives of Generals," and of 
 "Commands and Campaigns." Many of these 
 are large and expensive, too heavy for handling 
 and too costly for wide circulation, and their 
 readers are correspondingly few and well to do. 
 This is quite unlike any of those. We have also 
 able and elaborate discussions of the Federal 
 Constitution, with their ample deductions learn- 
 edly and long drawn out; but little read and 
 
8 Introduction 
 
 less understood. This is not at all like those. It 
 is as simple, I hope, as short, and makes for 
 truth as much as it lacks of beauty. 
 
 We have many other books — some of them, 
 like the down-easter's razors, ''made to sell," 
 and therefore to suit all sorts of readers all the 
 world over. I am not concerned that this little 
 book shall please everybody. It was made to 
 vindicate but one side. The only important 
 question is. Does it do so? My ambition is to 
 state facts, not to get money. I cheerfully leave 
 conclusions to my readers. They may strike, if 
 they will but hear me ! 
 
 Q The historical items recorded here are more 
 or less involved in the solution of questions 
 which have arisen as to the rightfulness of 
 secession; the origin and conduct of its cause; 
 the character, motives and sentiments of the 
 people who espoused and defended it, as well 
 as of those who forced them to fields of blood. ] 
 I thought to give these facts in form so cheap, 
 and style so terse, as to bring them within the 
 means and times of our busy men and women. 
 I have tried to condense and yet comprehend; 
 to be clear, yet not "too dear" for the common 
 people's purse. 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 "History, as written, if accepted in future 
 years, will consign the South to infamy," says 
 Honorable J. L. M. Curry. The truth, the only 
 antidote for the poison of falsehood, should be 
 set to work at once, or the evil effects will be- 
 come incurable. No time is to be lost. Soon 
 the cemetery will hold us all. What shall be 
 then thought of our cause and conduct will de- 
 pend upon what we leave in the books of our 
 era. Books live on. They should not misrepre- 
 sent us or our dead. But think of the stream 
 pouring from the press, a stream so strong and 
 so full of ignorance of us, and of prejudice 
 against us — think of the political interests, and 
 sectional rivalries, and financial superiority, 
 and numerical preponderance, and commercial 
 advantages, and the immen'^e Governmental in- 
 fluence, all combined upon the successful side — 
 will posterity ever know who we were, or why 
 we fought? It all depends upon what they 
 read. {This book is a soldier's small contribu- 
 tion of something reliable and readable. 
 
 It may not be quite needless to say in this 
 place (though I certainly came near forgetting 
 to say it), that the sentiments expressed in this 
 book or justly inferable from it, are such as 
 
lo Introduction 
 
 befit a Confederate soldier's discussion of war 
 times and topics, and might not have been de- 
 nied or dissembled without the guilt of insin- 
 cerity or hypocrisy, qualities hated of God and 
 man. 
 
 To have given for every statement my au- 
 thority, and credit for every fact related, to 
 every author consulted, would have made very 
 unsightly pages, and diverted at most interest- 
 ing moments, the reader's attention. ( Due ac- 
 knowledgment is made in another place in a 
 printed list of "sources," and also by the fre- 
 quent use of quotation marks throughout the 
 text. 
 
 I wish to close this prefatory note without 
 other remark, save a saying that I judge worthy 
 in itself, and well suited to my work, from 
 the pen of Rev. Thomas E. Bond, M. D., of 
 Baltimore. *'Truth for her own sake — without 
 calculation of probabilities, or hope of results ; 
 Truth, solitary, friendless, impotent, on her 
 way out of the world; Truth at the bar of 
 Pilate, dead on the Cross, still in the grave — 
 Truth, always and everywhere, is the one thing 
 to be sought and kept, defended and clung to. 
 Whenever you see a lie rampant, hit it; wher- 
 
Introduction 1 1 
 
 ever a truth down, give a hand to it. There is 
 no nobler work in this Hfe than to help the 
 Truth/-' 
 
 Jno. R. Deering. 
 October 4th, 1907. 
 
 "Dixie/' 
 
 Lexington, 
 
 Kentucky. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Paot 
 
 Introduction „ 7 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. A Confederate Memorial Address.... 15 
 
 II. That Conflict Was Plainly a People's 
 
 War 38 
 
 III. Upon Our Part, It Was a Justifiable 
 
 War 54 
 
 IV. It Was a Great War 158 
 
 V. It Was a Hopeless War 167 
 
 Sources 182 
 
I 
 
 A CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL 
 ADDRESS 
 
 I BELIEVE THAT, IN THE END, TrUTH WILL CONQUER. 
 
 — Wyclif. 
 In 1381 A. D. 
 
 Daughters of the Confederacy, Soldiers, 
 Sailors, and Fellow-Citizens : 
 
 It is strange to me that I am here to speak 
 to you of Lee and his Cause — the long-lost 
 Cause. A still stranger thing is that you are 
 here to listen to me. My limitations are so 
 limitless ! My disabilities are so distressing ! 
 As I am a poor preacher, I must of course 
 eschew politics; and I must steer clear of all 
 constitutional questions, for I never studied 
 law or meddled with statecraft ; and no matter 
 what was the Constitution, the Amendments 
 13, 14 and 15, have come to pass and are in 
 force. Why talk about the one, when th^ 
 others "are it?" (I might reply, simply to know 
 
i6 Lee and His Cause 
 
 the facts.) Nor dare I mention military mat- 
 ters, for I am unlearned in the science of war, 
 and never practiced the art save as a boy-pri- 
 vate on the "far-flung battle line." The field 
 of history is posted against me, so they 
 say, because it has yet to be written. There 
 is no history of the war, for it must be 
 written by men unborn, because they weren't 
 in it and know by experience nothing of 
 it! Our schools are now being filled with 
 histories, so called, yet the men who helped 
 to make history must not dare to write it. 
 
 The biographical region is also yet closed, 
 because it is confidently claimed that, we stand 
 too close, we lack the perspective, which pos- 
 terity will have, of course, in which to view the 
 mighty men of renown, as they should be seen. 
 Just why a man who wasn't born for a century 
 after Lee had gone to God, will be able to see 
 and know and describe him better than the one 
 who camped, marched and fought under him, 
 does not yet appear to me; but I believe it, of 
 course, because I see it so often in the news- 
 papers! In sheer despair, I thought of Lee 
 himself — it is h'is birthday, and was his cause, 
 as much as ours — might I not venture to speak 
 of him, but one of our chief captains ? Could I 
 
Lee and His Cause 17 
 
 not be cautiously critical, or critically cautious, 
 modest and moderate, in this solitary instance, 
 and for a single hour, whilst I should speak of 
 him? Why, yes, but alas for me! *'Only an 
 Apelles may paint Alexander;" — and had I the 
 skill to do it, where is the time for the task? 
 It would take a year to do the work, and a week 
 to examine and enjoy it, not an hour. Listen, 
 it has already been done. Buy for your winter 
 nights, for your college and city libraries, such 
 volumes as "General Lee," by Fitzhugh Lee, 
 his nephew and cavalry commander, and "Rob- 
 ert E. Lee and the Southern Confederacy," by 
 Alexander White, M. A., D. D., Ph: D., and 
 "Personal Reminiscences of General Lee," by 
 J. William Jones, D. D., his chaplain in camp 
 and in college; and "Recollections and Letters 
 of Lee," by his son Robert, and "Four Years 
 Under Marse Robert," by Major Robert Stiles. 
 In these you will find worthy work from able 
 hands and from ample, original sources, work 
 that has already won world-wide fame, and 
 recognition of Lee as the greatest captain of 
 this country, or era, the idol of his army, and as 
 President Davis well said, "The high model 
 for the imitation of generations yet unborn." 
 
1 8 Lee and His Cause 
 
 The Virginia Lees were of early English 
 stock. R. E. Lee was born January 19th, 1807, 
 in Stratford, Westmoreland County. His father 
 was "Light Horse Harry," Washington's Chief 
 of Cavalry. His mother was Anne Hill Carter. 
 His father dying when he was but eleven, Rob- 
 ert was her very own. When he left home for 
 the academy, she said of him, "Oh, how can I 
 live without Robert, he is both son and daugh- 
 ter to me?" He grew up in Alexandria and 
 went from there at eighteen to West Point, in 
 1825. In a class of forty-six, he graduated sec- 
 ond, in 1829, and without a single mark of 
 demerit. The young lieutenant was married, 
 June 30th, 1 83 1, at Arlington, to the beautiful 
 and charming Mary Randolph Custis, great- 
 granddaughter of Mrs. George Washington. 
 He was then twenty-four, past. Five years 
 later, he was in Mexico under General Win- 
 field Scott, who said, "My success was largely 
 due to the skill, valor and undaunted courage 
 of Captain R. E. Lee." Later, General Scott de- 
 clared, "Lee is the greatest military genius of 
 America, and the best soldier that I ever saw in 
 the field." He also said that, "If opportunity 
 offers, he will show himself the foremost cap- 
 tain of his time." It isn't at all strange, there- 
 
Lee and His Cause 19 
 
 fore, that Mr. Lincoln, moved by the old com- 
 mander's judgment, should have sent Lee, a 
 dozen years later, and when he wanted the best 
 man among men, through Mr. Francis P. Blair, 
 an offer of the command of all the United 
 States forces being organized for the invasion 
 of Virginia; nor that General Scott considered 
 him as worth to the Union cause an army of 
 fifty thousand men; nor can any man wonder 
 that a few days after, Virginia,, his noble 
 mother, put into his hands her sword and gave 
 him command of all her troops. 
 
 As he stood in her Convention to accept this 
 trust, he was thus described : — "Tall, straight, 
 strong, brown-eyed, of gentle and benevolent 
 countenance, and of remarkable beauty, of un- 
 affected dignity and gravity. In robust health, 
 and of almost boundless powers of endurance, a 
 perfect and beautiful model of manhood." 
 Ladies, I am no artist, but I may hold up a 
 sketch that is as hfelike as it is elegant. I do it 
 with pleasure, for you will enjoy it immensely. 
 It is by the Honorable Ben Hill of Georgia: 
 "Lee possessed every trait of other great com- 
 manders without their vices. He was a foe 
 without hate, a friend without treachery, a sol- 
 dier without cruelty and a victim without mur- 
 
20 Lee and His Cause 
 
 muring. He was a public officer without vices, 
 a private citizen without wrong, a neighbor 
 without reproach, a Christian without hypoc- 
 risy, and a man without guilt. He was Caesar 
 without his ambition, Frederick without his 
 tyranny. Napoleon without his selfishness, 
 Washington without his reward. He was as 
 obedient to authority as a servant, and a royal 
 in authority as a king. He was as gentle as a 
 woman in life, pure and modest as a virgin in 
 thought, watchful as a Roman vestal, submis- 
 sive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as 
 Achilles !" Such was our hero — ''great in his 
 goodness, and good in his greatness," far be- 
 yond his fellows. A careful writer says : — 
 "Such a character for balance, for charity, for 
 affection, for gentleness, for sufficiency, for re- 
 straint, for silence, for simple piety, for uncon- 
 scious greatness, this world has seldom seen." 
 
 Mr. W. W. Corcoran, of Washington, a 
 name honored, and revered wherever big- 
 hearted benevolence and the graces of the 
 Christian religion are recognized, was invited 
 by the Committee in charge of the laying of the 
 corner-stone of the Lee monument in Rich- 
 mond to be present on that occasion. The ven- 
 erable philanthropist, finding that he could not 
 
Lee and His Cause 21 
 
 accept, wrote the letter quoted below in which 
 he thus advisedly speaks of General Lee: 
 
 "It was my good fortune to have been hon- 
 ored with the immediate acquaintance and close 
 friendship of General Lee during the whole 
 period of his public career; and whether I re- 
 call him as he moved in the social sphere, which 
 he adorned by his virtues and graces, or as he 
 towered above his contemporaries on that 
 higher stage where the luster of his great qual- 
 ities shone in the eyes of the whole civilized 
 world, I can truly say, with no small experi- 
 ence of my fellow-men, that of all the men I 
 ever knew, he always seemed to me the most 
 remarkable for the grandeur as well as for the 
 symmetry of the elements which composed the 
 strength and beauty of his peerless character. 
 For such was the natural constitution and such 
 the harmonious blending of these elements that, 
 in the gentleness and benignity of his de- 
 meanor, he was seen to be as great in his good- 
 ness as he was good in his greatness. 
 
 "Like all truly great and good men. General 
 Lee had in the highest degree that simplicity of 
 character which springs from purity of heart 
 as well as from the perfect transparency of a 
 clear intelligence. Endowed with an under- 
 
22 Lee and His Cause 
 
 standing which was as calm as it was pene- 
 trating and profound, he always possessed his 
 soul in a patience which never murmured, and a 
 serenity which was never ruffled, whatever 
 might be the duties he was summoned to per- 
 form, or whatever might be the perils he was 
 called to face. 
 
 "No duty ever found him unprepared. No 
 trial ever shook his steadfast mind. Intrepid in 
 all assaults of fortune, and the very soul of 
 honor, he was the Chevalier Bayard of his 
 day — a knight without fear and without re- 
 proach, because in him all that was soldierly in 
 conduct met and mingled with all that was 
 blameless in life. With an integrity which 
 rooted itself in the very fibre of his moral con- 
 stitution, and which, therefore, never gathered 
 spot nor stain throughout the whole of his long 
 and eventful career, he yet had not the slight- 
 est trace of censoriousness in his nature, but 
 walked before men with the modesty and hu- 
 mility born of a deep religious spirit. 
 
 "It is only those who knew him well in all 
 the serene depths of his mental and moral being, 
 who can account for the heroism he displayed 
 after he had sheathed his sword and bowed, 
 
Lee and His Cause 23 
 
 without repining, to the decree of an overruHng 
 Providence. 
 
 "Although the hfe and example of such a 
 man may justly seem to belong, in some special 
 sense, to the State and section which stood in 
 the clearest sight of all his greatness and all his 
 goodness, yet the whole country may rightly 
 claim its share in the heritage of that renown 
 which all generous minds are quick to accord 
 to exalted virtues wherever found, and to mag- 
 nanimity of soul wherever it is inspired by a 
 conscientious sense of right." 
 
 President Roosevelt, in his life of Thomas 
 H. Benton, says : 'The world has never seen 
 better soldiers than those who followed Lee, 
 and their leader will undoubtedly rank as with- 
 out exception the very greatest of all the great 
 captains that the English-speaking people have 
 ever brought forth ; and this, although the last 
 chief of his antagonists may himself claim to 
 stand as the full equal of Marlborough and 
 Wellington." 
 
 Lord Garnet Wolseley, Commander in Chief 
 of the Armies of Great Britain, has said, 
 "I have met with many of the great men 
 of my time, but Lee alone impressed me 
 with the feeling that I was in the presence 
 
24 Lee and His Cause 
 
 of a man who was cast in a grander mold, and 
 made of metal different from, and finer than, 
 that of all other men. I believe that all will 
 admit that Lee towered far above all men on 
 either side in that struggle. I believe Lee will 
 be regarded not only as the most prominent 
 figure of the Confederacy, but as the greatest 
 American of the nineteenth century; whose 
 statue is well worthy to stand on an equal ped- 
 estal with that of Washington, and whose 
 memory is equally worthy to be enshrined in 
 the hearts of his countrymen." 
 
 Assuming that it takes a great soldier to 
 pronounce a sound judgment upon a soldier's 
 greatness, I beg leave to close this series of 
 tributes with that of the first Lieutenant- 
 General in the Confederate Armies — the man 
 most nearly Lee's equal in military genius, 
 in -Christian cc^mpleteness, and in the admira- 
 tion and affection of the Southern people. 
 He said, ''General Lee is a phenomenon. He 
 is the only man I would be willing to follow 
 blindfold." Such was the estimate of the man 
 whom the world calls "Stonewall Jackson." 
 If the cold mute marble of Lee's tomb shall 
 ever ''speak his matchless worth," then the 
 lines inscribed over the dead body of England's 
 
Lee and His Cause 25 
 
 mighty and illustrious Christian soldier, "Major- 
 General Charles George Gordon, who lies in 
 London's great cathedral, would sum up as 
 truly and express as tersely the virtues of the 
 noblest of all Americans — of our peerless Lee — 
 ''who at all times and everywhere gave his 
 strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, 
 his sympathy to the suffering, and his heart to 
 God." 
 
 At least three decisions of General Lee and 
 their consequent events in his life, were so im- 
 portant, and so illustrative of his character, that 
 they must be recalled here in closing this imper- 
 fect account. These were the surrender of his 
 army; the choice of the presidency of Washing- 
 ton College; and his dying without saying a 
 word or leaving a line to vindicate his conduct 
 or enhance his fame. 
 
 Whilst moving his army and trains towards 
 Appomattox, the situation ( for which Lee was 
 in no wise responsible, because he would, if 
 allowed, have chosen a better line of defense, 
 months before he was forced to^ leave Peters- 
 burg and give up Richmond) became so nearly 
 hopeless through hunger, weakness, marching, 
 fighting, wounds, captures, desertions and the 
 death of brave men, steadfast to the end, that 
 
26 Lee and His Cause 
 
 a desperate attack in the early morning of April 
 9th was ordered upon Grant's surrounding 
 hosts, in strength, "five times our numbers." 
 Col. C. S. Venable, at the General's request, 
 rode to the front at three o'clock that morning 
 to ask General Gordon if he could cut his way 
 through the enemy. He found Gordon with 
 the Chief of Cavalry, Fitzhugh Lee, planning 
 the movement. In reply to the Commander's 
 inquiry, Gordon said: 'Tell General Lee I 
 have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I fear 
 I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported 
 by Longstreet's corps." The last attack by 
 Gordon's men had routed Sheridan's cavalry 
 and brought in prisoners and captured cannon, 
 but it also uncovered heavy lines of infantry be- 
 yond. When Gordon's reply was borne back to 
 Lee, he said, "Then there is nothing left me 
 but to go and see General Grant, and I would 
 rather die a thousand deaths." A heart-broken 
 subaltern standing near cried, "O General, 
 what will History say of the surrender of the 
 army in the field ?" Lee replied, "Yes, I know 
 they will say hard things of us; they will not 
 understand how we were overwhelmed by num- 
 bers ; but that is not the question, Colonel ; the 
 question is, Is it right to surrender this army? 
 
Lee and His Cause 27 
 
 If it is right, then / will take all the responsi- 
 bility." 
 
 For General Lee to know his duty was to 
 do it. At Appomattox, he saw it clearly and 
 did it promptly. What it cost him to hand over 
 to his enemy "that body of incomparable in- 
 fantry, the Army of Northern Virginia," that 
 ragged, half-starved, fighting remnant, no 
 words can tell, unless it may be summed up in 
 these two — his life! General Gordon, in a de- 
 liberate, carefully prepared address delivered at 
 Richmond soon after Lee's death, said : "Can 
 I ever forget? No, never, never, can I forget 
 the words which fell from his lips as I rode 
 beside him amid the dejected and weeping sol- 
 diers, when turning to me, he said, 'I could 
 wish that I were numbered among the fallen in 
 the last battle.' " 
 
 The soldier's death would have been the easy, 
 the glorious thing. Lee craved it, and spoke 
 of it, but was too great and good to court it. 
 He chose the harder lot of living and work- 
 ing, suffering and sorrowing over his van- 
 quished people and ruined country. During 
 the agonizing hours of suspense and whilst 
 he was weighing the momentous interests 
 and obligations involved in the question of 
 
28 Lee and His Cause 
 
 longer resistance — ^burdened with the trust 
 laid upon him, and bending under the weight 
 of woe about to fall upon his beloved South- 
 land — he exclaimed from the depth of his 
 tender heart, — so one of his officers tells us, — 
 ''How easily I could get rid of this and be 
 at rest! I have only to ride along the lines 
 and all will be over ! But, it is our duty to live 
 — for what will become of the women and chil- 
 dren of the South, if we are not here to support 
 and protect them ?" Fortunately, our splendid 
 leader had the strength to do this ; and for five 
 and a half years did it. The one thing that he 
 was determined to die rather than do, was not 
 so much as named to him. General J. A. Early 
 declares that, in his last conversation with Lee, 
 when the surrender was mentioned, Lee told 
 him that he ''had only 7,900 men with arms in 
 their hands, but that when he went to meet 
 General Grant, he left orders with Gordon and 
 Longstreet to hold themselves in readiness, and 
 that he had determined to cut his way out at all 
 hazards, if such terms were not granted as he 
 thought his army was entitled to demand." 
 General Lee had feared to suggest to Grant 
 any willingness to listen to terms, lest Grant 
 should suspect his weakness and ask "an un- 
 
Lee and His Cause 29 
 
 conditional surrender," and "sooner than that, 
 I am resolved to die," so reads the record 
 made by General Fitzhugh Lee. General Grant 
 perhaps knew the Confederate Chieftain too 
 well to mention any "terms inconsistent with 
 the honor of my army." So far from it, he re- 
 quested General Lee to state what he regarded 
 as honorable terms, and when it had been done, 
 Grant assented and wrote them, at Lee's re- 
 quest, and then both captains signed them, and 
 Lee and his aide, Colonel Marshall, rode off, 
 prisoners on parole. He had calmly taken "all 
 the responsibility." Forty-two years have 
 rolled away, and with them soldiers, great and 
 small, but till now, no voice has been heard in 
 condemnation of the men or his deed. 
 
 With the close of his career as Commander 
 of the Confederate Armies, there came to Gen- 
 eral Lee the question of future employment. 
 Many business interests sought his services. 
 Among these, a corporation in Atlanta made 
 him an offer with very fine salary. A wealthy 
 insurance company would have given many 
 thousands for the mere use of his name. His 
 preference, as expressed in a letter to a friend, 
 was a "little quiet house in the woods, where I 
 can procure shelter and my daily bread, if per- 
 
30 Lee and His Cause 
 
 mitted by the victor. I wish to get Mrs. Lee 
 out of the city as soon as practicable." The 
 curiosity of crowds and homage of admirers 
 was more than they could bear. 
 
 Very lucrative business proposals were kindiy 
 declined. To one such, his reply was : *'I am 
 grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which 
 I must accomplish. I have led the young men 
 of the South in battle; I have seen many of 
 them die on the field ; I shall devote my remain- 
 ing energies to training young men to do their 
 duty in life." 
 
 The presidency of more than one university 
 was declined for some one or another reason. 
 On August 5, 1865, he was lovingly urged to 
 accept the headship of "Washington College of 
 Virginia." There was in the offer, says Pro- 
 fessor E. S. Joynes, who knew it best, "abso- 
 lutely nothing that could have tempted him." 
 His habits, associations, pecuniary interests and 
 strong desires for privacy and quietude were all 
 against it. The school had merely local reputa- 
 tion and patronage. The salary was only 
 $1,500; hardly half a living for those cruel 
 times. The college buildings, apparatus, libra- 
 ries, and investments were all wrecked by the 
 waves of war. Nor had it credit, patronage, or 
 
Lee and His Cause 31 
 
 prospects to speak of. The faculty of four had 
 been only partially paid and the students num- 
 bered but forty. There was also considerable 
 debt. Our land was wasted, our people crushed, 
 our hopes buried. Everywhere the struggle 
 was for food and fire and shelter; not for the 
 arts or sciences or literature. The position 
 could confer neither fame nor fortune. Its 
 acceptance by General Lee was due, says Pro- 
 fessor Joynes, "to a profound and deliberate 
 sense of duty." Why ! the man who carried him 
 the official notification of his election to the 
 presidency had to borrow the money for his 
 journey's expense, and also the suit of clothes 
 that he wore, and which had been recently sent 
 to his friend by a son sojourning in New York, 
 in order to appear decently garbed before the 
 greatest of Virginians. The bearer of the 
 honor to be bestowed upon Lee was the Hon. 
 John W. Brockenbrough, Rector of the college, 
 and thus was obtained his outfit for the mis- 
 sion. 
 
 General Washington had in 1785, accepted 
 from the State of Virginia $50,000, as a gift 
 in appreciation of his very successful services 
 to the Commonwealth and the Union, upon 
 condition that he might use it "for the educa- 
 
32 Lee and His Cause 
 
 tion of the children of the poor, particularly of 
 such as had fallen in defense of their country." 
 This sum he had donated to the school then 
 known as ''Liberty Hall Academy/' and thence- 
 forward by his own honored name. The 
 friends of General Lee believe that his desires 
 so far coincided with this deed and desire of 
 Washington as to have determined him in the 
 devotion of his remaining years to the same 
 noble end. To him it seemed, says Bishop Wil- 
 mer "the door of Providence." It was the op- 
 portunity to do somewhat by way of compensa- 
 tion to Virginia for the loss of her wealth, 
 strength and manhood. He seized and used it. 
 The Trustees, who having neither silver nor 
 gold, had the wisdoms and "happy audacity" to 
 choose Lee for their College's Head Master, 
 made no mistake. So correct was their knowl- 
 edge of his character, and so well-founded their 
 faith in his impoverished countrymen, that all 
 the rest worked out rightly. They gave Lee 
 work and bread, and he brought to their Col- 
 lege, honor, patronage, and immortality. 
 
 If any doubt could have arisen as to the 
 motives of the Christian soldier in taking the 
 President's place, or as to his fitness for it, it 
 must have been dispelled by his own remark to 
 
Lee and His Cause 33 
 
 Dr. W. S. White : "I shall be disappointed, sir, 
 I shall fail in the leading object that brought 
 me here, unless these young men all become 
 consistent Christians." Again, he said, — "I 
 dread the thought of any student's going away 
 from the College without becoming a sincere 
 Christian." And he was not denied the desire 
 of his heart in seeing the salvation of "many of 
 the young men of the South." 
 
 General Lee left nothing in the way of vindi- 
 cation of his choice or career. Conscious of his 
 rectitude, he was unconcerned for his fame. 
 Till his death, he was silent, though often urged 
 to write. For a time, he did think of a narra- 
 tive of his campaigns, and made a slight effort 
 to collect materials for it, but being denied all 
 use of the records in Government custody, and 
 the destruction in the retreat of his own per- 
 sonal papers still further preventing him, the 
 thought was given up. Nor was it ever in his 
 mind to publish anything to justify himself. In 
 requesting from one of his generals a report, he 
 plainly tells him — "I shall write this history not 
 to vindicate myself, or promote my own reputa- 
 tion. I want that the world shall know what 
 my poor boys, with their small numbers and 
 scant resources, succeeded in accomplishing." 
 
34 Lee and His Cause 
 
 To another, he wrote — ''My only object is to 
 transmit the truth to posterity and to do justice 
 to our brave soldiers." And more than any- 
 thing else, let it be ever remembered, that the 
 fear of bringing blame upon some whose fail- 
 ure to obey orders had been most disastrous 
 to our cause prevented Lee from writing in 
 honor of the men whose devotion, gallantry, 
 endurance and achievement have become the 
 wonder of the world. 
 
 An extract from a letter written to General 
 J. A. Early in Mexico, March 15, 1866, shows 
 clearly how very reluctant he was to speak or 
 write, even in his own defense. He refers first 
 to attacks being then made upon President 
 Davis, and later says — "The accusations 
 against myself I have not thought proper to 
 notice, or even to correct misrepresentations of 
 my words and acts. We shall have to be pa- 
 tient, and suffer for a while at least; and all 
 controversy, I think, will only serve to prolong 
 angry and bitter feelings, and postpone the 
 period when reason and charity ma)^ resume 
 their sway." 
 
 A month later, to another friend, he writes ; — 
 
 "Your letter of the 5th inst., inclosing a 
 
 slip from the Baltimore American, has been 
 
Lee and His Cause 3$ 
 
 received. The same statement has been pub- 
 lished at the North for several years. The 
 statement is not true, but I have not thought 
 proper to publish a contradiction; . . . . 
 believing that those who know me would not 
 credit it, and those who do not would care 
 nothing about it. I cannot now depart from 
 the rule I have followed. It is so easy to 
 make accusations against the people at the 
 South upon similar testimony, that those so 
 disposed, should one be refuted, will imme- 
 diately create another; and thus you would 
 be led into endless controversy. I think it 
 is better to leave their correction to the re- 
 turn of reason and good feeling. Thanking 
 you for your interest in my behalf, and beg- 
 ging you to consider my letter as intended 
 only for yourself, I am, most respectfully, 
 your obedient servant, R. E. Lee." 
 
 There is scarce an end to such expressions 
 of repugnance to speak upon the platform or 
 write for the press, either in behalf of him- 
 self or in defense of his people. He longed 
 for peace and good will, regardless of repu- 
 tation, past, present or to come, and hence 
 could not be moved by love or lucre to break 
 his self-imposed silence. Thus he lived and 
 
2,6 Lee and His Cause 
 
 died, the unpardoned patriot, the paroled 
 prisoner, the citizen without a country, or the 
 right to vote in the State which his fathers 
 and he had fought to liberate, establish, en- 
 large and ennoble. Two of his utterances can 
 never be forgotten ; "I determined at the outset 
 of her difficulties to share the fate of my peo- 
 ple." Once in replying to Hon. Robert Quid's 
 letter proposing to him to accept the nomina- 
 tion for the Governorship of Virginia, in de- 
 ference to the wishes of the leading men of 
 the Commonwealth, Lee concludes his refusal 
 of the honor in this language; — "If my dis- 
 franchisement and privation of civil rights 
 would secure to the citizens of the State the 
 enjoyment of civil liberty and equal rights 
 under the Constitution, I would willingly ac- 
 cept them in their stead." How noble! How 
 like the magnanimous Soul, who riding about 
 on the bloody field of Gettysburg to rally his 
 retreating troops after that murderous re- 
 pulse, for which certain subordinate com- 
 manders were alone to blame, said so cheerfully 
 — ''Never mind, men; all this has been my 
 fault. It is I that have lost this fight, and you 
 must help me out of it, the best w'ay you can." 
 Was ever nobility so noble ? 
 
Lee and His Cause 37 
 
 In sheer despair, my comrades, I leave Lee 
 for your leisure, and to your library, whilst 
 I turn to topics which have not been so often 
 presented, or so eloquently depicted — to the 
 cause and consequent war, matters so much 
 misunderstood; so often misrepresented. 
 
I/' 
 
 & 
 
 II. 
 
 My Country ; may she be always in the right ; but 
 right or wrong, my country. — commodore stephen 
 Decatur. 
 
 THAT CONFLICT WAS PLAINLY 
 A PEOPLE'S WAR. 
 
 The whole heart of Dixie was in it. As a 
 people the South deeply deplored, but bravely 
 accepted it, and fought it through to the end, 
 the bitter end. Not all were secessionists, but 
 the majority were, and the rest rapidly became 
 so. Not all believed in slavery, but the masses 
 did. The Union had no truer friend than Lee 
 himself, who said, "I think slavery a greater 
 evil to the white than to the black race." And 
 his State had opposed it even in her Colonial 
 days. Lee had declared, "If the millions of 
 slaves in the South were mine, I would free 
 them with a stroke of the pen, to avert this i/ 
 war." Thomas Jefferson, the expounder of 
 States' Rights and the founder of Democracy, 
 
Lee and His Cause 39 
 
 had been "The consistent enemy of every 
 form of slavery." Patrick Henry once said — 
 "Much as I deplore slavery, I see that pru- 
 dence forbids its abolition." And Virginia, 
 the proud mother of these patriots, was the 
 first of all the American commonwealths to 
 outlaw the slave trade. Secession also was 
 firmly opposed by many who later died for 
 Dixie under the Stars and Bars; but the war 
 was something different; it was forced upon 
 us, and it was for political self-preserva- 
 tion,— "For God, and Home, and native 
 LandP The war was for the very existence 
 of sovereign States, for "life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness," — not to break up the 
 Union. We had nothing against the Union, 
 but very much against the party which was 
 running the Federal Government, and it was 
 only when all hope of bringing it, vis. the 
 Abolition majority — to respect the Constitu- 
 tion and laws of the Union had died in loyal 
 breasts, only then, that ordinances of secession 
 were passed, and the "Solid South" began to 
 be. There was in Southern hearts no lack of 
 loyalty to the General Government : the trouble 
 was the sad want of loyalty on the part of the 
 Government to the local welfare and political 
 
40 Lee and His Cause 
 
 rights of the Southern people. According to 
 Mr. R. E. Lee, Jr., the withdrawal of the 
 r/ States grew out of that. 
 
 A more intelligent and truthful witness liv- 
 ing or dead could not be found to testify upon 
 this subject than Bishop George F. Pierce, nor 
 did any such witness ever speak more elo- 
 quently in defense of his people than did he 
 in his 'Tast Day Sermon, delivered before the 
 General Assembly of Georgia, in the city of 
 Millidgeville, on March 27th, 1863," in which 
 I find the following undeniable statement: — 
 "This war is not of our seeking. We labored 
 to avoid it. Our propositions for amicable ad- 
 justment were rejected with subtlety and guile. 
 We claimed only our own. We asked nothing 
 of our enemies. We do not seek their land, or 
 houses, or property. We are not fighting to 
 extend our territory, to subdue a neighboring 
 people, to usurp dominion, to gratify ambition, 
 or malice, or revenge. Faithful to the letter 
 and the spirit of the old Constitution — assert- 
 ing only the fundamental right of self-govern- 
 ment, we are but defending ourselves against 
 a proud, rapacious, malignant foe, who, with- 
 out right or reason, against law and right and 
 
Lee and His Cause 41 
 
 humanity, comes down full of hate and rage 
 to enslave or exterminate us. We are fighting 
 for liberty and home and family; for firesides 
 and fields and altars ; for all that is dear to the 
 brave, or precious to the good; for our herds 
 and our flocks, our men servants and maid 
 servants; for the heritage of our fathers and 
 the rights of our children; for the honor of 
 humanity and the institutions of Providence. 
 We are fighting against robbery and lust and 
 rapine ; against ruthless invasion, a treacherous 
 despotism, the blight of its own land, and the 
 scorn of the world; mongrel armies whose 
 bond of union is plunder, and whose watch- 
 words are but delusion and falsehood ; a fraud 
 upon the African, a lie to the North, and an 
 insult to the South. There is therefore no 
 object proposed by our Government, no end 
 aimed at on which we may not consistently, 
 piously, Scripturally invoke the Divine bless- 
 ing. We may pray "according to the will of 
 God.'' The triumph of our arms is the tri- 
 umph of rig^ht and truth and justice. The de- 
 feat of our enemies is the defeat of wrong and 
 malice and outrage. Our Confederacy has 
 committed herself to no iniquitous policy, no 
 
42 Lee and His Cause 
 
 unholy alliances, no unwarrantable plans 
 either for defense or retaliation, and now, with 
 numerous hostile hosts quartered on her soil, 
 and a powerful navy beleaguering her coast, 
 amid provocations innumerable, under threat- 
 enings the most diabolical, without fear of the 
 future, ready for the conflict if our deluded, 
 infatuated enemies urge it on her, she is ready 
 to make peace on just and honorable terms. 
 In praying for such a government, I feel that 
 the way to the mercy seat is open. My faith is 
 unembarrassed. My hope is buoyant. I feel 
 that I have access to Him who rules in 
 righteousness. The attitude of our country is 
 sublime. With her foot planted on right and 
 her trust in God, undismayed by numbers and 
 anmaments and navies, without the sympathy 
 of the world, shut in, cut off, alone, she has 
 battled through two long, weary years, gal- 
 lantly, heroically, triumphantly, and to-day is 
 stronger in men, resources, faith and hope than 
 when Fort Sumter's proud flag was lowered 
 to her maiden arms. It is the Lord's doing, 
 and it is marvelous in our eyes. Standing, 
 then, upon the justice of our cause and the 
 righteousness of our aim, and encouraged by 
 
Lee and His Cause 43 
 
 the experience of the past, let us Hft up humble, 
 thankful hearts to the God of all our mercies, 
 and with emboldened faith commit our destiny 
 into His hand, whom winds and seas obey, who 
 ruleth in the armies of heaven and among the 
 inhabitants of earth." 
 
 The ordinances of secession were acts of the 
 people's representatives, and so, of the people 
 themselves; not of the politicians, as we are 
 now told, on every side. Hear one speak who 
 has the best right to testify. When Mr. Lin- 
 coln made the call for troops to invade the 
 South, the President of the Virginia Conven- 
 tion, Mr. J. B. Baldwin, who had himself 
 voted against secession, said — "There are 
 now no Union mqn in Virginia; but those 
 who were Union men will stand to their arms, 
 and make a fight which shall go down in his- 
 tory as an illustration of what a brave people 
 will do in defense of their liberties, after 
 having exhausted every means of pacifica- 
 tion." 
 
 Was this not a true prophet? And his 
 statement concerning Virginia applies as well 
 to the other Southern States. There were 
 many Unionists among the ignorant and illit- 
 erate mountaineers of Eastern Kentucky and 
 
44 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Tennessee and Western Virginia, but the 
 South -was practically solid for secession 
 after Lincoln's call for troops to subdue 
 her. General Lee was himself a leader, social, 
 civil, and military, yet even he was not needed 
 to lead the secession movement. He was 
 rather a reluctant and unwilling witness of it. 
 He thought it a calamity. Whilst it was 
 going forward, he wTOte on January 23d, 
 1 86 1, "I must try and be patient and await 
 the end, for I can do nothing to hasten or re- 
 tard it." I do not deny that political doctrine 
 had political expounders, nor that they did a 
 deal of talking, but the people, as free citi- 
 zens, did both the voting and the fighting. 
 They had to, and so the war became their 
 own; it absorbed them; in it the sun rose and 
 set ; to it, they gave their time, money, energy, 
 heads, hearts, fortunes, families and sacred 
 honor; for it everything gave way, at home 
 and abroad, public and private, civil and 
 social, educational and religious, domestic and 
 governmental. It was soon the theme of 
 shop and street, of fireside and counting-room, 
 of barn and business house; it filled our 
 papers, letters, songs, sermons, prayers, table- 
 talk and telegrams; it speedily closed out our 
 
Lee and His Cause 45 
 
 schools and colleges, shut up stores, banks, 
 places of amusement, resorts of pleasure and 
 health, and even houses of worship; it opened 
 mines for lead, copper and saltpetre, mills for 
 cotton-thread, for domestic yarns, for high 
 explosives, for percussion caps, for rifles, bayo- 
 nets, saddles and sabers. The business of 
 turning out blankets, clothes, shoes, hats, can- 
 teens, cartridge boxes and cooking utensils, 
 was booming from Texas to old Virginia. 
 Magazines, hospitals, bureaus of information, 
 depots of supplies sprang up as by magic. 
 Then appeared those domestic legions, that 
 no man could number, of wool-carders, yarn- 
 spinners, sock-knitters, weavers of cloths, the 
 gray, and the brown, and the mixed, like 
 Joseph's coat; but what were these compared 
 with the glove-makers, the hat and helmet 
 braiders, button-cutters, belt, buckle, and 
 sword-knot contrivers; or these compared to 
 the braiders of gold lace, weavers of rye 
 straw, and makers of battle flags, and needle- 
 books, and smoking-bags, women of whom 
 the world was not worthy! These equipped 
 us for the field and cared for us in the camp, 
 cheered us to the battle and nursed us in the 
 hospital. Why! the war furnished more 
 
46 Lee and His Cause 
 
 trained nurses the first year than the schools 
 of Christendom had in all her centuries! It 
 raised up a host of boy scouts, women spies, 
 and sent out scores of female blockade runners. 
 It vacated the bench, and bar, and pulpit, and 
 college hall, and editorial chair, and banker's 
 desk, and mechanic's stool, and every place of 
 sweet repose or of peaceful toil. It left the 
 forge cold, the foundry silent, the flock un- 
 tended, the field unturned, the sick to suffer 
 alone, and weeping women to bury their de- 
 voted dead. Oh ! its transforming power was 
 marvelous. It made the old young, the weak 
 strong, the sick well, the foreigner as the na- 
 tive, the sojourner as the citizen, or it made 
 them get out of Dixie Land ! Believe me, the 
 men all went to boots and beard ; the women all 
 became angels clad in homespun ; the girls cried 
 to become boys and join the cavalry, and the 
 boys had to be locked up to keep them from 
 running off to Manassas. The very negroes 
 shared the general feeling and hundreds went 
 with young Marse to help whip "Dem Yanks." 
 Mothers and daughters, wives and widows, 
 sisters and sweethearts organized regular re- 
 liefs to feed, clothe, bathe, nurse, watch by. 
 
Lee and His Cause 47 
 
 read to, write for, sing with, and pray over 
 the wounded and bury the dead. 
 
 The war reformed society, created new 
 classes, set new fashions, estabhshed new in- 
 dustries, organized new charities, gave us new 
 ideals of duty, new tests of friendship, new 
 charms to womanhood, new proofs of patriot- 
 is!m, new motives for living, new delights in 
 dying. It fused and moulded into one solid 
 and glorious mass the whole population, with 
 all its sorts, sexes, sizes, orders, ranks, creeds, 
 colors and conditions of folk, native and 
 foreign, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gen- 
 tile, and so made the awful engine that we 
 called "The Army," to smite and hurl back the 
 hated, dreaded Yankee! It could be done, it 
 had to be done; the only question was, who 
 could help most to do it? Oh, the Southern 
 heart was hot, it burned and blazed, and this 
 enthusiasm inspired its songs, winged its 
 prayers, crowded its camps, built its ships, sup- 
 ported its Congress, framed its laws, created 
 its literature and revived its religion; gave us 
 a life worth living, a death worth dying, and a 
 Heaven worth going to — the place of peace 
 and rest to which no hated enemy could ever 
 come, forever and forever! Is it strange that 
 
48 Lee and His Cause 
 
 everybody was for it? The wonder is that 
 anybody could stay at home. BeHeve me, "It 
 robbed the cradle and the grave," so eager 
 were our people to share its triumph or die 
 with its defeat. 
 
 The South was never so whole-hearted, so 
 uplifted, so self-consecrated in any cause, 
 before or since. Never! The war feeling 
 was not limited to the army or monopolized 
 by the men, it was even more intense among 
 the women. But here I must allow one of 
 them to speak for all her own sex. I find 
 the simple, eloquent utterance in the ''Con- 
 federate Veteran^^ of a recent month. It 
 is from an address of welcome made by Mrs. 
 Sarah D. Eggleston, of Mississippi, to the 
 United Daughters of the Confederacy, in their 
 last annual assembly, and its simplicity and 
 pathos are fully equalled by its truthfulness. 
 I like it better than anything I have ever seen 
 from the hand of man, for it manifests better 
 the very heart of our people. The letter and 
 spirit are all her own, and the world has none 
 like her — The Southern Woman! Mrs. Eg- 
 gleston says: — "The men gave, or offered to 
 give their lives. The women gave what was 
 dearer to them than life: they gave the men 
 
Lee and His Cause 49 
 
 they loved. I will give some instances to 
 prove the spirit of those women. I had a 
 friend, a widow, who had only two sons. 
 They both enlisted for the war. The first one 
 was killed in the battle of Fredericksburg; the 
 other was killed by the same volley that laid 
 low our immortal Jackson at Chancellorsville, 
 and this heroic boy, with his lifeblood ebbing 
 fast, had only breath to gasp : 'Ts the General 
 hurt?" When I was weeping with that poor 
 mother, she said : "Both of my boys are gone ; 
 but if I had to do all this over again, I would 
 not act differently." 
 
 I knew a boy who belonged to the company 
 that was organized in the village where I am 
 now living. When he had been in Virginia 
 over two years and had been in many battles, 
 his mother wrote to President Davis, using 
 these words : 'T notice that General Lee has 
 gone into winter quarters and there will be no 
 more fighting for several weeks ; so, if my boy 
 has done his duty, I respectfully beg that he be 
 granted a furlough, that he may come home to 
 me, for I greatly long to see him." Mark the 
 simplicity and sublimity of that mother's 
 words : '7/ my hoy has done his duty." 
 
50 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Bishop Polk gives an instance of the sublime 
 devotion of a Tennessee mother who gave five 
 sons to the Confederacy. When the first one 
 was killed, and the Bishop was trying to say 
 some words of comfort, she said: "My son 
 Billy will be old enough next spring to take his 
 brother's place." The only idea of duty that 
 this heroic mother had was to give her sons 
 to the cause she loved, as soon as they were 
 old enough to bear a musket. Such was the 
 spirit of your mothers and your grandmothers. 
 
 I will tell you of two funerals that I wit- 
 nessed — one in 1861, the other in 1865. I was 
 in New Orleans in the early part of the sum- 
 mer of 1861 when I witnessed the funeral of 
 the gallant Colonel Charley Dreux, who had 
 been killed in a skirmish in Virginia before any 
 of the great battles had been fought. He was 
 the first Louisianian who had the honor of 
 sealing his devotion to the cause with his blood, 
 and among the very first from any State. 
 When he was borne to his last resting place, a 
 vast concourse of people followed with droop- 
 ing flags, muffled drums, bands playing the 
 dead march, and the tolling of all the church 
 bells of the city. It was indeed such a funeral 
 
Lee and His Cause 51 
 
 as befitted a hero who had died in the defense 
 of his country. 
 
 Far different was it, nearly four years later, 
 when I was in Mobile during those last sad 
 weeks of the war. The enemy were vigor- 
 ously pushing the siege against Spanish Fort, 
 across the bay from Mobile. The roar of the 
 cannon was heard above all the noises of the 
 city. I was attending service in Trinity 
 Church, for while the men were fighting, the 
 women were praying. The services were pro- 
 gressing, and we heard the mufiled tread of 
 feet, when, looking up, I saw eight soldiers in 
 their worn and faded gray, and on their 
 shoulders was a rude, pine coffin which con- 
 tained the remains of a comrade who had been 
 killed that morning at Spanish Fort. The 
 burial squad, taking their comrade for burial, 
 had seen the church door open, and, hearing 
 the voice of the minister, had gone in, that 
 some prayers might be said over the fallen 
 soldier. Slowly and sadly they bore him down 
 the aisle, placing him at the foot of the chancel, 
 they standing reverently about the coffin. 
 Without one word, the aged minister began 
 the burial service, all of us joining in. We did 
 not know over whom those prayers were said ; 
 
52 Lee and His Cause 
 
 but we did know that he was the father, or hus- 
 band, or son, or brother, or lover of some 
 Southern woman, and we knew that he had 
 died in defense of his country. The services 
 over and the burial squad having removed their 
 dead comrade from the church, the congrega- 
 tion slowly dispersed, some of us being loath 
 to return to our lonely apartments. It so 
 chanced that I was the last person to leave the 
 church ; and when I reached the steps, I saw a 
 woman standing there. Doubtless she saw in 
 my face the same tense anxiety which I had 
 noticed in hers, for, pointing in the direction 
 of the Spanish Fort, she said in a voice that I 
 have never forgotten : *'0, listen to those 
 guns ! All that I have in this world, my only 
 boy is there." And I said : — "And my hus- 
 band is there too." 
 
 During the four years of the war it was my 
 lot to hear the guns of three besieged cities — 
 Vicksburg, Richmond and Mobile. I saw 
 many partings on the eve of battle. But 
 seldom did I see women weep when those fare- 
 wells were taken. We parted from our loved 
 ones with a smile upon our lips ; but when the 
 night came, our pillows would be wet with 
 tears. 
 
Lee and His Cause 53 
 
 I have told you some things that I saw. I 
 will now tell you what I did not see. I saw 
 no mother trying- to keep her boys from going 
 into battle, I saw no wife trying to persuade 
 her husband not to go to the front, and I saw 
 no woman who cried, " Surrender T If you ask 
 me to explain this, my answer is : — "Because 
 we knew we were right, our cause was just." 
 
 Comrades, does that sound like the utterance 
 of a politician, "a fire-eater;" or is it the voice 
 of a Southern woman — the revelation of her 
 Confederate soul ? Ah ! Gentlemen, it was that 
 self-same spirit, which in the soldier, swept the 
 field at Shiloh, and stubbornly held the ground 
 at the second battle of Manassas and in ''the 
 bloody Angle," and again on the gory field of 
 Sharpsburg, that broke the Yankee lines at 
 Chancellorsville and sent the blue-coats flying 
 from Chickamauga, that stormed the cannon- 
 crowned heights of Gettysburg, and piercing 
 the Union centre, waved the red flag of the 
 Confederacy in the very faces of its foes ! Yes, 
 comrades, it was the Southern woman that was 
 in us ! God bless them forever ! 
 
III. 
 
 The greatest calamity that can befall a State is 
 for its people to forget its origin. 
 
 — William E. Gladstone. 
 
 We cannot ESCAPE history. — Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 UPON OUR PART, IT WAS A 
 JUSTIFIABLE WAR. 
 
 The Confederate cause was as good as the 
 support it had ; it couldn't be so now, of course, 
 for the case is altered, the law is different ; the 
 amendments are ratified and respected; but 
 then the Constitution had not a line in it against 
 secession, and all analogy favored it. Seces- 
 sion had been frequently threatened, and once, 
 had been actually practiced. Rhode Island is 
 doubly distinguished, though she is the small- 
 est of the States, she was once the champion of 
 ''State's rights." She was the last to enter 
 "The Union," but she had been the first to 
 secede from "The Confederation." She had 
 
Lee and His Cause 55 
 
 entered that "Perpetual Union," in 1781, but 
 in less than five years, in 1786, she kicked out 
 of it, and recalled her delegates from its Con- 
 gress ; nor did she re-enter the family of States 
 for four long years, or until 1790; not until 
 she had waited two years and seven months 
 after the adoption of the Constitution, and over 
 a year and one- fourth after it had been ratified 
 by the other twelve States, and was in full 
 operation; yet no attempt was ever made to 
 coerce her. Rhode Island's ratification was on 
 May 29th, 1 790, and even at that late day, such 
 was her fear of imperilling her precious 
 sovereignty that she expressly reserved the 
 right to withdraw again, if her welfare should 
 require it; declaring *'that the powers of gov- 
 ernment may be reassumed by the people when- 
 soever it shall become necessary to their happi- 
 ness." Could South Carolina have claimed 
 any more? Certainly, she never enacted any 
 more, although she had more abundant provo- 
 cation. 
 
 When the Louisiana Purchase was proposed 
 in 1803, there was in the Northeast a strong 
 dissatisfaction, because — "The influence of our 
 part of the Union (New England) must be 
 diminished by the acquisition of more weight 
 
56 Lee and His Cause 
 
 at the other end." Mr. Tracy, of Connecticut, 
 gave terse and timely expression to the North- 
 ern view and their opposition to this territorial 
 addition, when he declared that it would result 
 in ^'absorbing the Northern States and render 
 them insignificant in the Union." Moved by 
 that consideration, the Legislature of Massa- 
 chusetts in 1804, resolved — "That the annexa- 
 tion of Louisiana to the Union transcends the 
 power of United States' Government. It 
 forms a new Confederacy, to which the States 
 united by the former compact are not bound to 
 adhere." 
 
 Ten years before this, Dr. Fisher Ames of 
 Boston, a member of the Massachusetts Con- 
 vention, which in 1788 had adopted our 
 Federal Constitution, the orator, statesman, 
 and friend of Washington, confessed that, 
 "The spirit of insurrection has tainted a vast 
 extent of country besides Pennsylvania." And 
 Governor Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, in 
 1796, dreading the election of Jefferson, boldly 
 advocated disunion. He said — "I sincerely 
 declare that I wish the Northern States would 
 separate from the Southern the moment the 
 election of Jefferson shall take place." How 
 is that for a son of Yale — a judge of law, a 
 
Lee and His Cause 57 
 
 Major-general in the Army, and a signer of 
 the Declaration of Independence? 
 
 In 1805, Governor Plumer of New Hamp- 
 shire acknowledged that the New England 
 patriots entertained the purpose of breaking up 
 the Union. The scheme was to be made good 
 by putting a suitable man at the head of a mili- 
 tary force strong enough to accomplish it. 
 This conspiracy of 1803-4 was announced to 
 all men by no less a person than John Quincy 
 Adams over his own name — so says Dr. J. L. 
 M. Curry and several others. A denial of it 
 has never been heard. 
 
 Colonel T. Pickering, who was a member in 
 good standing of Washington's Cabinet and 
 his Postmaster General, and Secretary of State, 
 and also a Senator from Massachusetts, was 
 troubled somewhat over the political situation, 
 but saw a hopeful solution. He writes — 
 December 24, 1803, — 'T will not yet despair. I 
 will rather anticipate a new Confederacy, 
 exempt from the corrupt and corrupting in- 
 fluence and oppression of the South. There 
 will be (and our children, at farthest, will see 
 it) a separation. The white and black popu- 
 lation will mark the boundary." This pros- 
 pect was in nowise discouraging, for the prog- 
 
58 Lee and His Cause 
 
 nosticator could see neither fire nor blood. He 
 says, "The principles of our Revolution point 
 to the remedy — a separation. That this can be 
 accomplished, and without spilling one drop of 
 blood, I have little doubt." Such views sound 
 strangely enough now, and down South, but 
 one hundred and four years ago, and in the 
 loyal (?) State of Massachusetts, they struck, 
 with responsive moral effect, the great New 
 England heart! 
 
 The admission of Louisiana came under dis- 
 cussion in 1811, when one Senator said: 'Tf 
 this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that 
 it is a virtual dissolution of the Union ; that it 
 will free the States from their moral obliga- 
 tion, and as it will be the right of all, so it will 
 be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a 
 separation, amicably if they can, violently, if 
 they must." This sounds like South Carolina, 
 but it was the speech of Honorable Josiah 
 Quincy of Boston, and the first distinct advo- 
 cacy of disunion, just fifty years before the 
 South enacted it. An objection was raised, 
 but no dispute made of the right. A Southern 
 member, Mr. Pointdexter objected, that, ''The 
 suggestion of a dissolution of the Union is out 
 of order." The point was decided by the 
 
Lee and His Cause 59 
 
 Chair against Mr. Quincy, but when an appeal 
 was tLken to the House, Quincy was endorsed 
 by a two-thirds vote; so it was not out of order 
 in the Congress of the United States in 181 1, 
 to avow the doctrine of even "violent" seces- 
 sion, provided only that it be done by sons of 
 Massachusetts. In support of his position, 
 Mr. Quincy said — "Is there a principle of pub- 
 lic law better settled, or more conformable to 
 the plainest suggestions of reason, than that 
 the violation of the contract by one of the 
 parties may be considered as exempting the 
 other from its obligations? Suppose in private 
 life, thirteen form a partnership and ten of 
 them undertake to admit a new partner with- 
 out the concurrence of the other three. Would 
 it not be at their option to abandon the partner- 
 ship after so palpable an infringement of their 
 rights?" 
 
 When the Federal Secretary of War issued 
 in 181 2, a call for troops from Massachusetts, 
 Rhode Island and Connecticut, to fight against 
 Great Britain, their governors sent him a stern 
 refusal, and the Legislature of Connecticut in 
 supporting the Governor, "Denounced the war, 
 and declared that Commonwealth to be a free, 
 and sovereign and independent State, and that 
 
6o Lee and His Cause 
 
 the United States was not a national, but a 
 Confederated Republic." And this novel doc- 
 trine was solemnly sanctioned by the Supreme 
 Court of the dear old, Nutmeg State! Here 
 we see the same doctrine held and avowed and 
 judicially sanctioned in 1812 by Connecticut 
 that was taught by Calhoun and acted upon by 
 South Carolina in i860 — fifty years later! 
 
 Although made to resist the so-called ''right 
 of search/' and to punish the unlawful seizure 
 of American ships and seamen by British 
 Captains, "the War of 181 2 was generally and 
 bitterly opposed by all New England;" at least 
 after she felt its effects upon her commerce. 
 The Canadian campaign was denounced ''as 
 cruel, wanton, senseless and wicked" — as "so 
 fertile in calamities, and so threatening in its 
 consequences, as being waged with the worst 
 possible views, and carried on in the worst pos- 
 sible manner, forming a Union of wickedness 
 and weakness, which defies for a parallel the 
 annals of the world." Such sentiments would 
 now consign to infamy any Southern Legisla- 
 tive body, but this record is opened here only 
 because of some other sayings and doings 
 necessary to be noticed. 
 
Lee and His Cause 6i 
 
 The ''Hartford Convention" met, December 
 15th, 1 8 14, whilst Washington City was in 
 British hands, and our Executive Mansion and 
 Capitol lay in heaps of ashes. For three weeks 
 it brooded over disunion measures. It failed 
 to hatch out an ordinance of secession, but the 
 fault was not the Convention's. The failure 
 was due to Jackson's victory over the English 
 at New Orleans. These original secessionists 
 did however pass resolutions asserting a State's 
 right of interposition, and, as President Roose- 
 velt says, "So framed its action as to justify 
 seceding or not seceding, as events turned 
 out." On this point, the Convention itself 
 said — 'Tf secession should become necessary 
 by reason of the multiplied abuses of bad ad- 
 ministration, it should if possible, be the work 
 of peaceable times, and deliberate consent." 
 Another deliverance of this remarkable body is 
 noteworthy. The record reads — "It is as much 
 the duty of the State authorties to watch over 
 the rights reserved as it is of the United States 
 to exercise the powers delegated.'' And then, 
 to cap the climax, we have this — 'Tn case of 
 deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions 
 of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of 
 the State and liberties of the people, it is not 
 
62 Lee and His Cause 
 
 only the right, but the duty of each State to in- 
 terpose its authority for their protection." 
 We are favored with still another wholesome 
 utterance by the same high authority, namely, 
 — "When emergencies occur which are beyond 
 the reach of judicial tribunals, or too pressing 
 to admit of the delay incident to their forms. 
 States which have no common umpire must 
 be their own judges, and execute their own 
 decisions." 
 
 Among many interesting items, this ortho- 
 dox assembly handed down to coming genera- 
 tions this deliberate decision — "that Custom 
 duties collected in New England should be paid 
 to the States within whose borders they were 
 collected, and not to the United States." Mr. 
 John Fiske, M. A., LL. D., historian, graduate 
 of Harvard and native of Hartford, Connecti- 
 cut, says, "that this would have virtually dis- 
 solved the Union." 
 
 The temper and intention of these able and 
 honored leaders of public opinion may be 
 learned from the published testimony of Gov- 
 ernor Plumer of New Hampshire. He writes, 
 "I am certain that, upon retiring early one 
 evening from dining with Aaron Burr, Mr. 
 Hilhouse said in an animated tone, *The East- 
 
Lee and His Cause 63 
 
 ern States must and will dissolve the Union, 
 and form a separate Government of their own : 
 and the sooner they do this the better.' I 
 think that the first man who mentioned the sub- 
 ject of a dismemberment was Samuel Hunt, a 
 representative of New Hampshire. But there 
 was no man with whom I conversed so often, 
 so freely and fully as with Robert Griswold. 
 He was, without doubt, or hesitation, decidedly 
 in favor of dissolving the Union, and estab- 
 lishing a Northern Confederacy.'' 
 
 This "treasonable convention" — as John 
 Quincy Adams calls it — representing, by the 
 amplest Legislative authority, the Five New 
 England States (Maine was not a State then), 
 did not believe the times quite ripe for their 
 movement, and so adjourned to meet in Bos- 
 ton, on June, 181 5, to hear the report of its 
 commissioners who had been sent with com- 
 plaints to Washington. The expected report 
 didn't come. The re-assembling never hap- 
 pened. Peace put an end to the project. 
 Otherwise the first secession ordinance would 
 have been put to the credit of Massachusetts, 
 and not of South Carolina ! 
 
 This same spirit prevailed and showed itself 
 in the North, again and again without rebuke. 
 
64 Lee and His Cause 
 
 On January 24, 1842, John Quincy Adams and 
 Joshua R. Giddings presented petitions from 
 citizens of Massachusetts and Ohio, asking 
 Congress to take steps toward the peaceable 
 dissolution of the Union. These petitions 
 were stoutly opposed by Mr. Gilmore of Vir- 
 ginia, and Mr. Marshall of Kentucky, who 
 brought in resolutions censuring Mr. Adams 
 for presenting them; but after two long- 
 weeks of sharp discussion, the House by a 
 big majority laid on the table the resolutions, 
 thus showing that the movers had done no 
 wrong and the petitioners asked nothing 
 treasonable or unlawful. Mr. Adams was a 
 bold defender of the right of secession. In a 
 speech made in 1839, before the New York 
 Historical Society, among other such state- 
 ments is this — ''Under these limitations have 
 the people of each State in the Union a right to 
 secede from the Confederated Union itself." 
 Did Messrs. Davis, Toombs, Rhett or Yancey 
 ever say mioore? 
 
 The admission of Texas was claimed to fully 
 justify disunion. The acquisition of Florida 
 also, while less resisted, ''resulted in our get- 
 ting less territory from Spain than she was 
 
Lee and His Cause 65 
 
 ready to yield, just to avoid irritating New 
 England." The chronic trouble was a terri- 
 torial one — to put it in the words of George 
 Bancroft, a Massachusetts man, a graduate of 
 Harvard, the most laborious and elaborate his- 
 torian of our country, a man who spent fifty 
 years upon his ponderous volumes — the trouble 
 was — "An ineradicable dread of the coming 
 power of the Southwest lurked in New Eng- 
 land, especially in Massachusetts." Only the 
 treaty of peace with old England, signed at 
 Ghent by Henry Clay in 18 14, prevented the 
 formation of a New England Confederacy 
 Avith its Capital at Boston. Believe me, there 
 were men once who dqDlored the peace made 
 at Ghent ! 
 
 Again in 1844, Charles F. Adams intro- 
 duced in the Massachusetts Legislature a reso- 
 lution almost the same as that of Mr. Quincy 
 in 181 1, and said — "Massachusetts is deter- 
 mined to submit to undelegated powers in no 
 body of men on earth, and the project of 
 the annexation of Texas, unless arrested upon 
 the threshold, may tend to drive these States 
 into a dissolution of the Union." Adopted. 
 Of such utterances the half has ne'er been told ! 
 ne'er been told ! 
 
(^ Lee and His Cause 
 
 Four years before the Charleston Conven- 
 tion met to dissolve the bond that connected 
 South Carolina with the other States, a seces- 
 sion convention sat in Worcester, Massachu- 
 setts, and on January 15, 1857, ''Resolved, 
 That the sooner the separation takes place, the 
 more peaceable it will be ; but that peace or war 
 is a secondary consideration. Slavery must be 
 conquered; peaceably if we can, forcibly if we 
 must." Henry Ward Beecher is recorded as 
 saying — "It will be an advantage for the South 
 to go off." In celebrating the glorious Fourth, 
 July, 1854, William Lloyd Garrison "publicly 
 burned a copy of the United States Constitu- 
 tion with the words — the Union must be 
 
 DISSOLVED.''^ 
 
 Horace Greeley's great paper, the Nevo York 
 Tribune, in an editorial of November 9th, i860, 
 said — "If the Cotton States shall decide 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. Whenever a consider- 
 able section of our Union shall deliberately re- 
 solve to go out, we shall resist all coercive 
 measures designed to keep it in. We hope 
 
Lee and His Cause 67 
 
 never to live in a Republic where one section 
 is pinned to the residue by bayonets." 
 
 The next year in New Bedford, Massachu- 
 setts, the most rabid of politicians, — Wendel 
 Phillips, declared — ^The States that think their 
 peculiar institutions require a separate govern- 
 ment have a right to decide that question with- 
 out appealing to you or me." Alas! for his 
 logic. For long years after this, he supported 
 every bloody attempt of government to deny to 
 eleven sovereign States the very right that he 
 himself had allowed. The number and variety 
 of such sayings is about endless, and as I am 
 not making a book, but only a speech, I desist. 
 
 The right to secede, so freely asserted, and 
 so strongly held by the North, was not pro- 
 hibited by any word of the Constitution. In 
 the "Articles of Confederation" it had been 
 plainly denied. The last sentence in that docu- 
 ment is this — "That this Union be perpetual!'' 
 But the Constitution has no such declaration. 
 The duration of the Union was left by its au- 
 thors to the future free choice of the States that 
 had voluntarily entered it. The limitations of 
 the Constitution bear chiefly upon the powers of 
 the Federal Government. Consider the Tenth 
 Amendment — "The powers not delegated to 
 
68 Lee and His Cause 
 
 the United States by the Constitution, nor pro- 
 hibited by it to the States, are reserved to the 
 States, respectively, or to the people." Now, 
 since the power to secede isn't denied by the 
 Constitution to the States ; and since the power 
 to coerce a State is nowhere delegated to the 
 Federal Government; it follows that its exer- 
 cise was optional and perfectly lawful. The 
 Declaration of Independence had been made 
 and signed by the colonies acting separately 
 and as sovereign powers, not by the people as 
 a whole, nor by a majority of the whole 
 people." Their independence had been ac- 
 knowledged by Great Britain, not as the 
 independence of a new ''nation," but as the 
 freedom of separate and sovereign States, 
 each receiving recognition by her colonial 
 name; and the Constitution had been framed, 
 not by ''a mixed multitude," or a sectional 
 majority, or by a popular vote of citizens of all 
 the States, but by a vote of the States, as such, 
 each State casting one vote; and this action of 
 each State was later ratified in her own con- 
 vention of her own delegates, and of her own 
 free will. The freedom of the South came 
 not by the grace of Yankee Doodle, but by 
 the proclamation of King George, the Third, 
 
Lee and His Cause 69 
 
 and he granted it to Virginia — not to an 
 "entire nation," but severally, to each State — 
 to Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and the 
 others. 
 
 Knowing that these States, thus "united," 
 were free and sovereign when they were still 
 separate colonies, when they won their inde- 
 pendence, when they adopted severally and 
 separately the Constitution, our statesmen 
 supposed that they were still as legally and 
 morally free to go out, as they had been 
 to come in; and that it lay in their own 
 breasts to abide in, or depart from, the Union. 
 That they had enslaved themselves when they 
 ratified the Constitution, was not dreamed of; 
 that they had made unconsciously a great 
 governmental machine of higher power than 
 they themselves possessed, Avould have been 
 scouted as nonsense, since the creature cannot 
 be greater than its creator! If the power to 
 do doesn't imply the power to undo^ they 
 believed it did. That the Federal Govern- 
 ment, the servant of all, of only delegated 
 powers, for specific purposes, had become the 
 sole sovereign, with inherent rights, superior 
 to those of the States that gave it being, would 
 have seemed to them absurd and impossible! 
 
70 Lee and His Cause 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was not 
 made by a Nation, or by a Union, but by 
 thirteen separate and sovereign colonies. For- 
 eign powers — France, in 1778, Sweden in 
 1783, and the Netherlands, in 1782 — had 
 entered into treaties with them, not as one 
 "national government," but with each as a 
 sovereign State. And Great Britain did not 
 acknowledge their independence as a "united 
 people," but as politically distinct and sover- 
 eign States, designating each by her chosen 
 name. Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, said 
 in the Convention of 1787: "Foreign States 
 have made treaties with us as confederated 
 States, and not as a National Government." 
 Now, if these States, so united, had that 
 character when they declared their independ- 
 ence, when they won their freedom, when they 
 severally ratified their Constitution, pray when, 
 and how did they lose it? They not only had 
 this sovereignty, but were zealous to keep it. 
 When in their Conventions they agreed to 
 unite as States, they "reserved" to themselves 
 all rights and powers not delegated to the 
 Federal Government; and some asserted in 
 plain terms the right to resume them, when- 
 ever their welfare called for it. This was the 
 
Lee and His Cause 71 
 
 saving clause of the ratification of the Consti- 
 tution by Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, 
 Rhode Island, New Hampshire, North and 
 South Carolina and Massachusetts. 
 
 The last named, in her State Constitution, 
 has embalmed for coming ages a declaration of 
 her immutable faith in her own inviolable and 
 supreme sovereignty worthy of world-wide 
 fame. It runs as follows — "The people of 
 this Commonwealth have the sole and exclusive 
 right of governing themselves as a free, 
 sovereign and independent State; and do, and 
 shall forever hereafter exercise and enjoy every 
 power and jurisdiction and right which is not, 
 nor may not hereafter be, by them, expressly 
 delegated to the United States." "O ! Jew, 
 I thank thee for that word!" No clearer, 
 sounder political doctrine was ever sent forth 
 by man: and this was ordained and published 
 in Massachusetts, A. D. 1792, five years after 
 her ratification of our Federal compact. In 
 the Union she is still asserting sovereign and 
 independent statehood ! 
 
 The thought of an actual secession from the 
 Union by an aggrieved State may not have had 
 any large place in the minds of those who made 
 our Constitution, but the idea of failure in duty' 
 
y2 Lee and His Cause 
 
 and of nullification of law did occur to some 
 persons and a proposal to give Congress the 
 power '% call forth the force of the Union 
 against any member of it failing to fulfill its 
 duty" was actually made and voted dozmi. Mr. 
 Madison moved to postpone the question. This 
 was agreed to by a unanimous vote, and the 
 matter never came up again. George Mason, 
 (whom Thomas Jefferson said, was the wisest 
 man thac he ever knew), speaking of the use of 
 force, asked; — ''Will not the citizens of the 
 invaded State assist one another, until they rise 
 up as one man and shake off the Union alto- 
 gether?" In the Convention of New York, 
 Alexander Hamilton declared : ''To coerce the 
 State is one of the maddest projects that was 
 ever devised. What picture does this idea 
 present to our view? A complying State at 
 war with a non-complying State : Congress 
 marching the troops of one State into the 
 bosom of another ! Here is a nation at war 
 with itself! Can any reasonable man be well 
 disposed toward a government which makes 
 war and carnage the only means of supporting 
 itself? A government that can exist only by 
 the sword ? But can we believe that one State 
 will ever suffer itself to be used as an instru- 
 
Lee and His Cause 73 
 
 ment of coercion? The thing is a dream! It 
 is impossible!" Alas! In 1861, this dreadful 
 dream became an awful reality. 
 
 Long before May 14, 1787, the date of 
 the Convention that framed our Federal Con- 
 stitution, and in that Convention, as well, and 
 ever since it, there were, and there are still, 
 two governmental ideas and two opposing 
 political parties supporting them. At different 
 times, these have had different names, leaders, 
 motives, methods and ends to be gained, which 
 of course led to the adoption of different poli- 
 cies according to the different purposes to be 
 served. Alexander Hamilton was the gifted 
 leader of one of these parties, and Thomas 
 Jefferson was the sagacious statesman repre- 
 senting the other. The first party favored the 
 establishment of a strong, centralized, national. 
 Federal Government. The second as sincerely 
 contended for the sovereignty of the States, 
 which were soon to become politically united. 
 With the first, the Union was to have superior 
 strength and real supremacy. With the 
 second, the States were to retain and exercise 
 their free, independent and sovereign rights, 
 the power of local self-government. They 
 were to remain, as before, each one politically 
 
74 Lee and His Cause 
 
 unhampered in the control of her own domestic 
 concerns, as free within the league, as she had 
 been without it, except as to certain powers 
 specified and delegated in the compact to the 
 Federal Government for the common welfare. 
 From the earliest times there had existed 
 among the States a widespread distrust of 
 government and fear of oppression from it, 
 engendered, it may be, by colonial experience 
 of British tyranny. In the smaller States, this 
 grew later into a deep dread of interference by 
 the more powerful States, and great care- 
 fulness to guard against it is abundantly 
 manifest. The constitutional provision of 
 equal power in the Senate for every State is 
 evidently due to this natural feeling. This 
 fear increased as legislation and experience in 
 the Union developed diverse interests and sec- 
 tional antipathies. Conflict was natural and 
 seemed unavoidable. Geographical position, 
 soil, climate, pursuits, domestic habits and 
 environment, religious notions and political 
 institutions, social antecedents and racial 
 affinities, commercial interests and foreign 
 immigration — all these combined to bring 
 forth and foster the mutual dread, aversion 
 and jealousy which ended in our sectional 
 
Lee and His Cause 75 
 
 struggle — our fratricidal war. The North 
 was most dependent upon trade and commerce, 
 fisheries, mills, mines and manufactories. The 
 South was most interested in cattle, sheep, hogs, 
 horses, grain, rice, sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco 
 and other farm products. It was rural in taste, 
 habit, interest, ever}^hing. The North was 
 urban, given to trading and making things, to 
 moving and money getting. Our people loved 
 nature and cultivated the soil, raised horses, 
 followed the dogs, handled the guns, founded 
 families, and lived like lords, whether in cabins 
 or manor-houses, and called these abodes — 
 "home-sweet home." In the North, a mixed 
 multitude united in trades-union, guilds and 
 lodges; in the South, a native, homogeneous 
 people, widely separated, and personally, inde- 
 pendent, lived largely alone, and each as he 
 liked. One had negro slaves and cared kindly 
 for them : the other sold him those slaves, and 
 despised and denounced slavery! — having 
 found it quite unprofitable ! 
 
 These local and constitutional differences 
 produced diverse domestic, social and indus- 
 trial demands : and these led to legislation 
 intended to protect and promote the welfare of 
 each section. And so, a political struggle was 
 
"j^ Lee and His Cause 
 
 engendered. The questions of territorial ex- 
 pansion, protective tariffs, and African servi- 
 tude brought on at length the "irrepressible 
 conflict." Upon both sides it was a struggle 
 for power — 'The balance of power" — to be 
 wielded for local, material interests, to pre- 
 serve domestic peace and secure sectional 
 glory. The North fought for supremacy. The 
 South contended for the Constitution which 
 was her only hope of salvation. 
 
 Both sections claimed support in the Con- 
 stitution. The North contended that the 
 Federal Government was made by "the people 
 of the United States;" that the adoption of 
 our Constitution merged the States into a 
 "Nation/^ and gave to its Congress supreme 
 power. Daniel Webster said : "The Constitu- 
 tion itself, in its very front, declares, that it 
 was ordained and established by the people of 
 the United States in the aggregate." He 
 refers to the "Preamble," hut it declares no 
 such thing! He put in just what "the Fathers" 
 had carefully left out of it, viz. ''in the ag- 
 gregate/' True, it says. "We, the people of 
 the United States, in order to form a more 
 perfect union, etc." But this "people" is the 
 people composing the several States, and not 
 
Lee and His Cause yy 
 
 the whole mass of citizens Hving in all the 
 geographical extent of the Union. The South 
 holds that the Constitution is a compact made 
 by free and sovereign States, each one of whom 
 approved it by her own individual vote; that 
 this contract was ratified later by the people 
 of each State, in her Convention assembled, 
 and that in so doing no State surrendered her 
 rights or power of self-government, except 
 as to such powers as were specified in the docu- 
 ment, and which were granted by the framers 
 of it to the Federal Agent, for the defense, 
 welfare and happiness of all the States. 
 
 There arose, of course, the question of 
 origin and intention of the Constitution itself. 
 How, and by whom, was it made, and what is 
 its meaning? History alone can answer, and 
 it does answer, and its answer is an ample, 
 clear, complete vindication of the political ac- 
 tion of our people, and of their struggle to 
 maintain it on a thousand bloody fields. 
 
 When the great Convention at Philadelphia 
 had ended its immortal work, the original docu- 
 ment was entrusted to a ''Committee on Style," 
 that the is should be dotted, and the ^'^y crossed ; 
 that the grammar and rhetoric should be per- 
 fected, in order that the mind of the makers 
 
78 Lee and His Cause 
 
 should be exactly expressed. Now, in review- 
 ing the "Preamble/' a verbal difficulty came to 
 mind. As it was first drawn, the Preamble 
 contained the name of every State that had 
 engaged in its construction; but according to 
 its express terms, the Constitution needed the 
 consent of only nine States for its adoption, 
 and to give it legal operative force : and hence 
 the Committee naturally and rightly judged 
 that the Preamble should contain only the 
 names of those States which would sanction 
 and accept the paper. It seemed to the Com- 
 mittee grossly improper to insert in the com- 
 pact the names of parties that might not after- 
 wards agree to it. But which of the Thirteen 
 would agree to it? No human being could 
 foresee. So, rather than risk a guess, and prob- 
 ably miss some State which would ratify the 
 work, and rather than leave an ugly and unex- 
 plained blank in the head-piece of the instru- 
 ment, the Committee decided to substitute for 
 the several names of States the phrase — ''JVe^ 
 the people of the United States, &c.," leaving to 
 time and to the action of the States, to add the 
 proper signatures belonging thereto. If the 
 Fathers of the Republic had been prophets as 
 well as patriots, they would have surely said — 
 
Lee and His Cause 79 
 
 ''We, the States of America, do ordain, &c, 
 &c." Alas! they were not inspired. Having 
 done its work, the Committee laid it before the 
 House, on September the twelfth, 1787, and it 
 was adopted without dissent. The rough ori- 
 ginal of the Preamble, containing the name of 
 every State, had been already unanimously ap- 
 proved, on August the sixth, and for over a 
 month had remained unaltered ; now, is it at all 
 probable that the little verbal change made in 
 one phrase could have been accepted by the Con- 
 vention without dispute or division, if it was to 
 work the iMonstrous Machine imagined by Mr. 
 Webster? Had such an effect been even sus- 
 pected at the time it would have created con- 
 sternation, and the record of it would remain. 
 I can find in the account no resistance what- 
 ever. Nor can I believe that, at the last 
 moment, the wicked attempt was made to 
 destroy the liberty of the States by fusing into 
 one political mass Thirteen separate Sovereign- 
 ties which for four months had fought for 
 their inherent political rights. If such action 
 could have transformed these States into a 
 "Nation," and if that was done, pray how 
 came the trick to be turned without a word of 
 protest from the mighty men who from the first 
 
8o Lee and His Cause 
 
 had feared such a fate? How could so many 
 earnest, eloquent men sit in solemn silence and 
 witness and consent to the death of State 
 Sovereignty? Of course, they never did it. No 
 such attempt was ever allowed or thought of. 
 
 The reason for the use of the phrase — ''We, 
 the people of the United States" — was just this 
 — Nine States could form the compact, and put 
 into full force the Constitution; but no body 
 could tell w^hich nine would do so. The fram- 
 ers, therefore, could consistently name no 
 State : but rather than leave a suspicious blank 
 on the fair face of the immortal Document, 
 they met the demand by using the words — 
 ''We, the people of the United States'' the 
 sense being, — we, the people of such States as 
 shall hereafter ratify and ordain it. Nothing 
 else could have been done. How could the 
 Convention have left in the Preamble the name 
 of Rhode Island, for example, when she had no 
 representative in the Convention Hall, and 
 when its wonderful work did not find accept- 
 ance with that cautious little Commonwealth 
 for several anxious years, and only then by the 
 very slim majority of two votes out of sixty- 
 six that w!ere cast? Even New York, urged 
 on by the powerful influence of Alexander 
 
Lee and His Cause 8i 
 
 Hamilton, assented by a majority of only three 
 votes — thirty to twenty-seven. The phrase is 
 explained and justified by every circumstance 
 in the case, except to such men as are wilfully 
 blind. But Oh ! what things are zvords. "Out 
 of one foolish word may start a thousand dag- 
 g'ers," says Jeremy Bentham. Ah! these few 
 fateful words — what "woes unnumbered" 
 sprang from them ! 
 
 "But words are things and a small drop of ink, 
 
 Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces 
 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." 
 
 So Byron thought and wrote ! Should we not 
 think? It is claimed that the adoption of 
 the Constitution made of us a consolidated 
 "Nation." This is clearly disproved both by 
 the mode of its ratification and the specified 
 condition upon which it was to become opera- 
 tive. It must be ratified by the peoples of the 
 States, and it required nine such ratifications to 
 give it validity among them. If we are, or 
 ever were, "one people" en masse, then Ave 
 must have been made so by a majority vote 
 of the whole population. And that vote 
 must have overruled any minority, no matter 
 
82 Lee and His Cause 
 
 where cast or by whom counted. Did such 
 election ever occur? Where, when, how, and 
 by what means and authority was any such 
 vote ever taken? The only action ever had in 
 reference to the Constitution was the action of 
 the States^ each in her own time, and place, and 
 manner, and in words of her own choosing, 
 and by delegates of her own selection. If that 
 wasn't the modus operandi of our making as 
 these "United States," let those who know 
 some other declare it. If the majority of the 
 entire population might, and did, establish our 
 Federal Government over the whole land, why 
 was the assent of only "nine States" made nec- 
 essary to its ordination and operation? And 
 why did George Mason, William Grayson and 
 Patrick Henry resist so stoutly in the Virginia 
 Convention its ratification even after the nec- 
 essary "nine" had approved it? According to 
 the theory. of Webster, Story, Motley, Bancroft, 
 Everett and Curtis, the Constitution was even 
 then the law in Virginia, and it was treasonable 
 conduct to oppose it, for it had been already 
 ratified by Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jer- 
 sey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, 
 Maryland, South Carolina and New Hamp- 
 shire, while the Virginians were yet weighing 
 
Lee and His Cause 83 
 
 it in the balance of liberty. Who are to be 
 trusted as expounders of the Constitution, the 
 men who made it, or those who called them- 
 selves to the task of interpretation sixty years 
 afterwards? Mr. Madison made this reply to 
 Patrick Henry when he stood in opposition to 
 Virginia's adoption of it because of this 
 very Preamble: "Who are parties to the 
 Constitution? The people' — but not the 
 people as composing one great body, but the 
 people as composing thirteen sovereignties: 
 were it a consolidated government, the assent 
 of a majority of the people would be suffi- 
 cient for its establishment, and as a ma- 
 jority have adopted it already, the remain- 
 ing States would be bound by the acts of 
 the majority, even if they unanimously repro- 
 bated it: were it such a government, it would 
 be now binding upon the people of this State, 
 without their having had the privilege of delib- 
 erating upon it; but sir, no State is bound by 
 it, as it is, without its own consent." And 
 "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, in the same strain 
 replied, — "The Constitution is now submitted 
 to the people of Virginia. If we do not adopt 
 it, it will always be null and void as to us." 
 This is quite conclusive. This at once silenced 
 
84 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Henry and Mason and Grayson. It doesn't 
 leave a grain of sand for Webster or Motley or 
 Story or Everett or Bancroft or Curtis to stand 
 on. 
 
 Is our Government national, or is it a 
 co-partnership of equal and sovereign States? 
 ''That is the question/' Having heard Web- 
 ster, may v^e not nov^ listen to Washington? 
 General Washington, our own glorious Wash- 
 ington, the President of the Philadelphia Con- 
 vention and the First Chief Magistrate of our 
 Union should surely have known the nature of 
 the government that he was to administer and 
 that he had helped to make. In writing to 
 Count Rochambeau, on January 8, 1788, he 
 says: *The Constitution is to be submitted 
 to conventions chosen by the people in the sev- 
 eral States and by them approved or rejected." 
 Who knew, Washington or Webster? Gen- 
 eral Lafayette also' had fromi Washington 
 on April 28, 1788, this line— 'T/^^ people of 
 the several States (not of the entire country, 
 nor "in the aggregate") retain everything they 
 do not by express terms, give up." Did they 
 ever in express terms, or otherwise, give up 
 their sovereignty, or their right to rule and reg- 
 ulate their own internal affairs ? NEVER ! 
 
Lee and His Cause 85 
 
 A fact very significant of the nature of our 
 government is recorded by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, 
 to wit : "At one time in the progress of fram- 
 ing the Constitution, the words — 'National 
 Government' were used twenty-six times in a 
 committee report. Next day Mr. Ellsworth of 
 Connecticut moved to strike out the words, 
 'National Government' and to use the words 
 — 'Government of United States.' This was 
 unanimously agreed to, and the term 'National' 
 forever disappeared from our great Charter; 
 leaving us, beyond all doubt, a Government 
 that is Federal and not National." 
 
 The theory of the centralizationists was stub- 
 bornly advocated by Webster, and later by 
 Story, Everett, Bancroft, Motley and others, 
 but Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, a Boston poli- 
 tician and orator, a Harvard graduate, a Sen- 
 ator from Massachusetts, biographer of Alex- 
 ander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, editor of the 
 North American Review and historian-at- 
 large, confesses that — "It was probably neces- 
 sary, at all events Mr. Webster felt it to be so, 
 to argue that the Constitution, at the outset, 
 was not a contract between the States, but a 
 National instrument. Unfortunately the facts 
 were against him. When the Constitution was 
 
86 Lee and His Cause 
 
 adopted by the votes of the States at Philadel- 
 phia, and accepted by the votes of States in 
 popular conventions, it is safe to say that there 
 was not a man in the country from Washing- 
 ton and Hamilton on the one side, to George 
 Clinton and George Mason on the other, who 
 regarded the new system as anything but an 
 experiment entered upon by the States, and 
 from zvhich each and every State had the right 
 peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very 
 likely to be exercised." Certainly this conclu- 
 sion is one from which Mr. Lodge can never 
 be dislodged; for facts are more than "stub- 
 born" — they are eternal ! 
 
 Mr. Webster and Justice Joseph Story both 
 of the same loyal State virtually admit that if 
 our Constitution be a compact between the 
 States, the States would have the right to 
 withdraw from it at pleasure; "even" says 
 Webster (in his debate with Calhoun in 1833), 
 "Although it might be one of its stipulations 
 that it should be perpetual." To prove the 
 right of secession then according to this great 
 interpreter of the Constitution, it is only nec- 
 essary to establish the fact that the Constitu- 
 tion is a ''Compact.'' A single sentence from 
 the act of ratification by Massachusetts of the 
 
Lee and His Cause 87 
 
 Federal Constitution is quite conclusive. She 
 "acknowledges with grateful hearts the good- 
 ness of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, in 
 affording the people of the United States the 
 opportunity deliberately and peaceably, with- 
 out fraud or surprise, of entering into an 
 explicit and solemn compact with each other, 
 &c." This testimony of the Massachusetts 
 Senator, Lodge, and of the Bay State itself, 
 sitting in deliberate and peaceful counsel is 
 heavy evidence against Daniel, "the great 
 expounder;" but it is positively shocking to see 
 him refute himself! In 1819, December 15, he 
 presented in the United States Congress a 
 Memorial from citizens of Boston, endorsed by 
 himself as chairman of the Committee, in 
 which he speaks of the States as enjoying ''the 
 exclusive possession of sovereignty over their 
 own territory." He calls the United States — 
 "the American Confederacy." He says, "The 
 only parties to the Constitution, contemplated 
 by it originally, were the Thirteen Confeder- 
 ated States/' 
 
 In his famous speech at Capon Springs, 
 Virginia, delivered over thirty years later, 
 Webster declared: "I have not hesitated to 
 say, and I repeat, that, if the Northern States 
 
88 Lee and His Cause 
 
 refuse wilfully and deliberately, to carry into 
 effect that part of the Constitution which 
 respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and 
 Congress provide no remedy, the South zuould 
 be no longer hound to observe the Compact. A 
 bargain cannot be broken on one side and still 
 bind the other side." Had Webster lived but 
 ten years longer, he must have become a seces- 
 sionist, or shown himself very inconsistent 
 indeed. If he could rise from the dead, and 
 confront his Capon Springs speech, he would 
 scarcely deny, at any rate, ''the compact con- 
 tained in it. ''But neither will they be per- 
 suaded though one rose from the dead." 
 
 That Alexander Hamilton was a pretty good 
 believer in strong government was never ques- 
 tioned. Yet he clearly recognized the States 
 as sovereign parties to the contract. In the 
 ''Federalist," he writes — "Every Constitution 
 for the United States must inevitably consist 
 of a great variety of particulars, in which 
 thirteen independent States are to be accommo- 
 dated in their interests or opinions of interest. 
 Hence the necessity of moulding and arrang- 
 ing all the particulars, which are to compose 
 the whole, in such a manner as to satisfy all the 
 parties to the compact." Are not these parties, 
 
Lee and His Cause 89 
 
 *The Thirteen Independent States?" Again, 
 he calls the new Union, "The Confederacy" — 
 himself using capitals for emphasis. 
 
 But why record men's names to determine a 
 point that is plainly established by the Docu- 
 ment itself? The Vllth Article should end all 
 controvers}^ "The ratification of the conven- 
 tions of nine States shall be sufficient for the 
 establishment of this Constitution between the 
 States so ratifying the same." Not between 
 the inhabitants of all the territory — not be- 
 tween the various communities or municipali- 
 ties of this continent ; but ''between the States 
 so ratifying." The States are the parties, and 
 it is their ratification that ''establishes" the 
 compact. 
 
 To show that the true doctrine is absolutely 
 invulnerable, and positively indubitable, I add 
 just one more fact of record — in the Philadel- 
 phia Convention, on July 23, 1787, it was Gou- 
 verneur Morris, of Pennsylvania, who "moved 
 that the reference of the plan (of Constitution) 
 be made to one General Convention, chosen 
 and authorized by the people, to consider, 
 amend and establish the same." Oh ! what a 
 time that was for a Webster ! He might have 
 won immortality by seconding the motion. 
 
90 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Of all human history, that was the fateful hour 
 in which to advocate and ordain a government 
 for the mass, and by the mass. But — The 
 Convention didn't want that. They wouldn't 
 have it, and no man came to the rescue. Mr. 
 Morris' proposal did not reach a vote. The 
 record is, ''not seconded/' and "the Father of 
 the Constitution," Mr. Madison, makes the 
 record. And he too speaks of the New Union 
 as ''Confederated States." Madison! Think 
 of it ! and Morris of Pennsylvania ! 
 
 In view of these facts and declarations by 
 the authors of the Constitution, how strange 
 and absurd is Mr. Lincoln's theory of March 4, 
 1 86 1 that, ''The Union is older than any of the 
 States, and, in fact, it created them as States." 
 How could the adoption of the Constitution 
 create States, when according to the document 
 itself, nine States, acting as such, must first 
 accept it to give it any legal force? Consist- 
 ency here would require the "States" to enact 
 the Constitution, which must give them being, 
 before they themselves could have existence! ! 
 
 The question was once asked Mr. Lincoln — 
 "Why not let the South go?" He exclaimed — 
 "Let the South go ! Where then shall we get 
 our revenue?" The President knew far more 
 
Lee and His Cause 91 
 
 of the practical benefits of our tax and tariff 
 systems than of the fundamental principles of 
 the Federal government. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln should certainly have credit for 
 his clear understanding of one point, and for 
 his perfectly positive and distinct avowal that 
 he would not act contrary to his convictions in 
 regard to it. In passing, I wish to accord him 
 this honor. I refer to his statement in his first 
 inaugural address, concerning his position 
 upon the slave question. He said, "I have no 
 purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with 
 the institution of slavery in the States where it 
 exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do 
 so, and I have no inclination to do so." 
 Whether Lincoln was in this sincere, or simply 
 shrewd, can not, of course, be known until all 
 hearts are made manifest. The thing that we 
 do know is — within about eighteen months, he 
 emancipated by his own proclamation all the 
 slaves living in the seceded States ! As a "war 
 measure" it w^as not unwise; as regards the 
 Constitution, it was utterly without reason or 
 right. He himself said, 'T have no lawful 
 right to interfere with the institution of 
 slavery." Then how came he to be clothed 
 with the lawful right to do it, on or before 
 
92 Lee and His Cause 
 
 ''September 22nd, 1862;" and who gave it to 
 him ? Echo answers — Who ? Two bilHon of 
 dollars' worth of slaves were made free without 
 compensation or lawful right, according to the 
 ''Encyclopedia of the United States History," 
 by Harper Bros., 1902. 
 
 Slavery was not the cause of the war, "any 
 more than the tax on tea was the cause of the 
 American revolution;" but it was the occasion 
 of secession, for it was the matter that the 
 Abolitionists could never let alone. Some 
 seventy years ago, they presented through John 
 Ouincy Adams in Congress, in one day, five 
 hundred and eleven petitions for the abolition 
 of slavery. It had existed from the beginning 
 in every colony and was popular in Massachu- 
 setts a century before the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. Those pious people had bought 
 cargoes of slaves of the Dutch, and had sold 
 into bondage their Pequod Indian prisoners ; 
 but b3^e the bye, they found it more lucrative to 
 trade their gin and rum for black men in 
 Africa, and to sell these black cargoes to plant- 
 ers in the Carolinas and Georgia, and so it was 
 done. The Constitution expressly recognized 
 this property, which the Dutch in 1619, and 
 later the English and the Puritans, had sold us, 
 
Lee and His Cause 93 
 
 and provided for the safe return of all fugitives 
 to the State from which they had fled. (Arti- 
 cle IV, Section 2.) New England, moreover, 
 had a fugitive slave law in 1643; o^ ^45 y^a-i's 
 before the Federal Constitution was adopted. 
 But returning slaves to her soil is one thing; 
 and her returning them to iis is quite another 
 thing ! 
 
 Bad as Southern slavery may have been, it 
 was our inheritance. Mr. R. E. Lee, Jr., well 
 says — "Slavery was the South' s calamity and 
 not her crime." It descended upon us from 
 the Pilgrim Fathers and our old English an- 
 cestors, and in spite of its evils, it was the 
 mildest form of servitude ever found among 
 men. I shall not apologize for the dead insti- 
 tution. I cannot defend its Dutch promoters, 
 or New England dealers, but I will say that, it 
 did for the negro far more than any other 
 labor system had ever done for any other 
 savage since the world was ! It gave him soap 
 and made him wash. It redeemed him from 
 barbarism and idolatry, made him human, gave 
 him a home and told him of Heaven. It 
 clothed and fed him. It protected him in his 
 ignorance, fostered him in infancy, trained him 
 in youth, cared for him in sickness, sheltered 
 
94 Lee and His Cause 
 
 and comforted him in old age, and at death 
 gave him Christian burial. It restrained his 
 passions, reformed his indolent, indecent habits, 
 created his conscience, inspired his faith and 
 filled him with hope. It tolerated no idleness, 
 insolence, intemperance, disorder or lawless- 
 ness. It made no paupers, or beggars, or 
 tramps, or rapists of women and children, 
 turned out of home no widows, orphans, or 
 worn-out parents. It promoted peace, quiet- 
 ness and good government. It trained black 
 men and women for useful living as no indus- 
 trial schools have ever done before or since, 
 and did it without expense or demoralization of 
 master or servant ! State laws, with regard for 
 social standing and self-interest, all combined 
 to prevent cruel treatment of these bond serv- 
 ants, and, indeed, rendered it quite rare; the 
 idle, insolent and vicious alone feeling the lash. 
 The negro who did his work even moderately 
 well and behaved himself, did not lack food or 
 fire, or friends, or home, or clothes, or medi- 
 cine or the protection of law. He had baker 
 and butcher, tailor and shoemaker, doctor and 
 preacher, without money and without price. 
 The master was no monster. The servant was 
 no terror. And lighter labor seldom obtained 
 
Lee and His Cause 95 
 
 as great comforts. The spirit, and example, 
 and discipline of Mistress and Master — not to 
 mention their humanity, sympathy, kindness, 
 refinement and Christian conduct in the planta- 
 tion home — operated to create a bond of friend- 
 ship in the family — a measure of confidence in 
 the owner and a degree of trustworthiness in 
 the slave — that was the wonder and admiration 
 of all who had knowledge of it. During the 
 war, it stood the test of money and power — of 
 fire and sword — of offered freedom and 
 promised fortune ! 
 
 And it was not considered criminal to be a 
 slaveholder even in New England in those 
 brave old days. The Puritans both held and 
 sold slaves. Dr. Charles Hodge, Princeton 
 President, and great teacher of Theology, even 
 as late as the year i860, was constrained to 
 confess, at the risk of his place and popularity, 
 that— 
 
 "When Southern Christians are told that 
 they are guilty of a heinous crime, worse than 
 piracy, robbery, or murder, because they hold 
 slaves, when they know that Christ and his 
 Apostles never denounced slave-holding as a 
 crime, never called upon men to renounce it as 
 a condition of admission to the Church, they 
 
96 Lee and His Cause 
 
 are shocked and offended without being con- 
 vinced. The argument from the conduct of 
 Christ and his immediate followers seems to us 
 decisive upon the point that slave-holding in 
 itself considered is not a crime." 
 
 Rev. George Whitefield, the eloquent Wes- 
 leyan Evangelist, held in his orphanage and 
 on his farm in Georgia, in 1775, seventy- 
 five negroes, which he left by will to the 
 Countess of Huntington. Bishop Berkley, of 
 Rhode Island, was also a slave-owner. The 
 famous preacher and theologian, whose great 
 name is still good to conjure with, the mighty 
 Jonathan Edwards, with other property, left 
 a negro boy. (The "bill of sale" for him may 
 still be seen. ) Those pious people bought and 
 sold slaves without the least regard to ties of 
 blood. And one historian says — "The giving 
 away of little negroes as soon as weaned was 
 then a common civility, much as it now is for 
 one to present his friend with a puppy." A 
 Boston paper of that period has this advertise- 
 ment, "A likely negro woman about nineteen 
 years old and child about sixteen months, to be 
 sold together or apart." Such notices were 
 ^'ery co-mmon. The same author gives other 
 advertisements as illustrations of the fact 
 
Lee and His Cause 97 
 
 that the Puritans preferred to buy rather 
 than to rear their slaves. It was a cheaper 
 and, well — that is reason enough. This no- 
 tice is from the Continental Journal, March 
 ist, 1 78 1 — 'To be sold an extraordinary likely 
 Negro Wench, seventeen years old. She 
 can be warranted to be strong, healthy 
 and good natured, has no notion of Freedom, 
 has always been used to a Farmer's Kitchen 
 and Dairy, and is not known to have any 
 failings, but being with child which is the 
 only cause of her being sold." Child-slaves 
 were sold by the pound, in New England, as 
 pigs and other live stock are now. 
 
 A French refugee in ''the cradle of liberty," 
 writes home, "You may also here own negroes 
 and negresses, and there is not a house in Bos- 
 ton, however small may be its means, that has 
 not one or two." The State of Georgia gave 
 to General Anthony Wayne of the Quaker 
 State, a rice plantation in token of appreciation 
 of his heroic services during the war with Eng- 
 land, and this led the veteran to borrow 
 $20,000 "with which to stock his plantation 
 with negroes." Why not, if it was right to 
 sell Pequot Indian prisoners as slaves, and to 
 
98 Lee and His Cause 
 
 send them away to the Bermudas, and if the 
 Puritans had done that, one hundred and fifty 
 in a batch, with the orphan and widow of 
 PhiHp, their mighty Chief, how could it be 
 wrong for "Mad Anthony" to buy thirty or 
 forty negro field-hands to raise rice in Georgia, 
 seeing that they had all been reared as slaves, 
 and not like the Indians born freemen? Gen- 
 eral Wayne was no better man than General 
 Washington, and he had about 300 bond 
 slaves, born in his house and bought with his 
 money. 
 
 Massachusetts, always aggressive, had done 
 much more than send away her aboriginal 
 American freemen to be sold into slavery. 
 She was the pioneer for all who penetrated the 
 African jungle to capture and transport as 
 slaves to free America the native children of 
 the dark Continent. One of the first ships that 
 she ever launched and employed in this busi- 
 ness was christened, ''Desire" — a name ex- 
 pressing well the colonial feeling for the uplift 
 of a degraded race, and — for the revenue aris- 
 ing therefrom ! This philanthropic adventure, 
 this infant industry, required no protective 
 tariff or subsidy for its encouragement. It 
 flourished from the first, for it had the prayers 
 
Lee and His Cause 99 
 
 of the saints and "the Colony was the principal 
 in the business." At the start, the stolen 
 negroes were sold in the West Indies, but later 
 along all our Southern coast line. New York 
 shared honors and profits with New Eng- 
 land in thus doing good to the "brother 
 in black," and they (so says their his- 
 torian) "practically monopolized the traffic for 
 many years." A hundred years later, when 
 experience had shown slavery to be unprofita- 
 ble in the North, and that free negroes were a 
 "dead-weight" and nuisance among them, idle, 
 improvident and vicious, we can see a strong 
 antipathy developing for everything connected 
 with slavery. Legislation now turned against 
 it, and State by State, it was outlawed. The 
 poor negro became himself an object of dis- 
 gust, suspicion and petty persecution. There 
 was scant room for him. In Connecticut, Miss 
 Prudence Crandall's negro girls' school was 
 mobbed, and so damaged that she had to give 
 it up. The Legislature, on May 24, 1833, 
 passed a "black law" by which all such Chris- 
 tian efforts were "practically prohibited." The 
 ringing of bells and firing of cannons gave vent 
 to the public approbation. The godly lady- 
 teacher who had been locked up in prison was 
 
loo Lee and His Cause 
 
 released, but her house was set on fire, and the 
 opposition so strongly shown that she aban- 
 doned her educational efforts. Two years 
 earlier, a negro male school in New Haven had 
 encountered the same fate. In New Hamp- 
 shire, "Noyes Academy" for negroes was 
 closed out, because ''the respectable people of 
 the town were so incensed" that they pulled 
 down the house. No "common schools" would 
 admit colored children. All public conveyances 
 were closed against them. On steamers and 
 sail-boats they had to go as steerage or deck- 
 passengers, or not go at all. The '7^"^ Crow" 
 apartment was found even in God's house, 
 and Sambo and Dinah must take back-seats. 
 In Boston, 'The cradle of Liberty," an Ethio- 
 ])ian pew-holder had his own pew-door nailed 
 fast to keep him out for the awful crime of fail- 
 ing to "change his skin." In the great church 
 of Dr. Storrs, no pew-deed might be made ex- 
 cept "to respectable white persons." The color 
 line was drawn as distinctly in Boston as in 
 Neiw Orleans ! and drawn in His house with 
 whom there is "no respect of persons !" 
 
 But with this spreading and deepening aver- 
 sion for the person and presence of the negro, 
 
Lee and His Cause loi 
 
 strange as it certainly is, there began to come 
 a lot of legislation in favor of his freedom. 
 Whether this was due to sympathy with Sambo, 
 or to antipathy for his master, or both, "depo- 
 nent saith not." To free the other man's 
 slave may have seemed easier to the brother 
 who had sold his own, and also more obliga- 
 tory. In the year 1808, the American traffic 
 in slaves from foreign shores ceased by legal 
 limitation, and any person caught engaged in it 
 was to be deemed guilty of piracy. In 1820, 
 in the adoption of the Missouri compromise, 
 the geographical extension of slavery beyond 
 36° 30', north latitude, wias prohibited. In 
 Virginia's Convention of 1830, but few votes 
 were lacking to procure prospective emancipa- 
 tion. And many a philanthropist and Christian 
 had arranged to free his slaves whenever the 
 laws should allow him. Such was the tenor 
 of the will of Mrs. Lee's father concerning his 
 family servants, and five years after his death, 
 in 1863, his executor. General R. E. Lee, sent 
 all these dark-skinned dependents through his 
 military lines as freedmen and women, at lib- 
 erty to go wherever they liked. It is now cer- 
 tain, and never denied that slavery would in 
 
102 Lee and His Cause 
 
 the course of events have been peaceably 
 abolished, and with just legal compensation of 
 ov^ners, but for the rabid utterances and wicked 
 antagonisms excited by the abolition leaders 
 throughout the North. 
 
 Dr. Hunter McGuire, the Chief Surgeon of 
 General Jackson's Division, has published the 
 statement that both Lee and Jackson "were in 
 favor of freeing all the slaves in the South," 
 and of paying for them after our independence 
 had been achieved. He also makes this decla- 
 ration — "I know that I am within proper 
 bounds when I assert that, there was not one 
 soldier in thirty who owned, or ever expected to 
 own, a slave." A recent official report de- 
 clares that ''more than 80 per cent, of our Con- 
 federate soldiers owned no slaves." It is every- 
 where known that General Joe Johnston never 
 owned a slave, although something of a South- 
 ern soldier. And it might as well be known 
 that General U. S. Grant did own slaves until 
 they were made free by Mr. Lincoln's pro- 
 clamation. In the light of such facts how 
 supremely absurd does the saying of a North- 
 ern historian sound, namely, "Slavery was the 
 cause of the war, just as property is the cause 
 
Lee and His Cause 103 
 
 of robbery." Granting, however, that this 
 historian is correct in assigning the motive of 
 the robbery, it can scarcely be claimed that 
 the South fought so long and so hard for the 
 property held by only one in thirty of her gal- 
 lant defenders. The historian is clearly an 
 ignorant person or a worse character. 
 
 Mr. Webster said, March 7, 1850, "The 
 South in my judgment is right and the North 
 is wrong." In July, he declared, "The preju- 
 dice against the Southern labor system all 
 originates in misinformation, false represen- 
 tations, and misapprehensions, arising from 
 labored efforts made in the last twenty years 
 to pervert the public judgment and irritate the 
 public feeling." Mr. Webster was Senator 
 for Massachusetts. 
 
 In the year 1852, a book called — "Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin" — was published by Mrs. Har- 
 riett Beecher Stowe of New England. "De- 
 signed to illustrate the horrors of African 
 slavery," and skillfully constructed so as to 
 appeal strongly to the reader's imagination, 
 conscience and prejudice, this story had an 
 enormous run. In five years, its sales amounted 
 to a half million copies. It was "pushed" by 
 
I04 Lee and His Cause 
 
 every agency known to the trade, the church 
 and the Abohtion party. It found credulous 
 readers among all classes and in all countries. 
 There was in it as much money as morals, and 
 the money as well as the morals met in the 
 North a long-felt want. The novel later was 
 dramatized and made a "piteous spectacle" for 
 gaping crowds. Then, of course, actors, art- 
 ists, managers, lecturers, reviewers, publishers, 
 newspapers, bill-posters, and the like, began to 
 hear the cry of the downtrodden children of 
 Ham and to feel very keenly the awful crime of 
 slave-holding. Tender translators next took 
 up the tale of woe and soon its powerful 
 pathos was felt throughout Germany, France, 
 Italy, Austria, England, Ireland, Scotland — in 
 fact, all over Europe, and in Asia, as well as 
 throughout the American continents, by means 
 of some twenty-odd versions. 
 
 There are some beautiful characters, and 
 touching scenes, and wholesome truths in the 
 book, and it is aimed at the reader's very heart, 
 and that from an unsuspected vantage-ground ; 
 but it isn't fairly characteristic of the times or 
 the domestic institution of which it treats. Its 
 mistakes are due doubtless to ignorance and 
 
Lee and His Cause 105 
 
 passion and not to evil intention. It has mis- 
 statements of fact, law, character, condition 
 and sentiment. In general, the negroes were 
 not abused, but well treated and contented. 
 They cared little for freedom, and not a few of 
 them after their emancipation and some resi- 
 dence in the North, returned to live and die as 
 servants among their own Southern white 
 folks. Mr. George Lunt, an eminent Boston 
 lawyer, in his ''Origin of the Late War," con- 
 fesses that. — ''The negroes were perfectly con- 
 tented with their lot, and in general they were 
 not only happy in their condition, but proud 
 of it." Even Mrs. Stowe's anti-slavery slave- 
 owner and hero, Mr. Auguste St. Clair, whilst 
 he argues against the institution because of its 
 abuses, says, in answer to the question — "But 
 why didn't you free your own slaves?" ''They 
 zi^ere all zuell satisfied to he as they mere.'' Al- 
 ready some States had passed laws to restrain 
 and punish negligent and cruel masters. 
 Courts were given power to prevent harsh 
 treatment and the separation by sale of slave 
 families. Many eminent, eloquent and influen- 
 tial Churchmen were advocating the repeal of 
 such laws as forbade the teaching of slaves to 
 
io6 Lee and His Cause 
 
 read (which laws had been made in self- 
 defense only and to limit somewhat the effect 
 of abolition books, tracts and papers circulated 
 secretly among our servants.) The Gospel 
 was being everywhere freely preached to them : 
 hundreds of missions were established: multi- 
 plied thousands of humble, honest, happy con- 
 verts had been gathered into the Church of 
 Christ, many planters were building chapels 
 and supporting pastors to minister in spiritual 
 things to their faithful and beloved servants. 
 All these were notable facts, but they have no 
 mention in Mrs. Stowe's famous book: nor 
 has that other undeniable and stupendous fact, 
 that the poor, degraded Southern slave was 
 being so speedily, cheaply, thoroughly and gen- 
 erally trained and qualified for the active and 
 complete citizenship and rulership with which 
 he was to be so soon endowed by Northern 
 power and wisdom, and all this through the 
 conscientious care and personal example and 
 affection of his faithful master and mistress. 
 When the war was ended, the Northern people 
 endorsed most fully Sambo's fitness for the 
 ballot and for Gubernatorial honors and Sena- 
 torial seats, but Mrs. Stowe denies to his quon- 
 
Lee and His Cause 107 
 
 dam teachers their well-earned meed! Shock- 
 ing ! Shameful ! 
 
 This Connecticut saint, whilst wilfully igno- 
 rant of the Negro himself, and scarcely better 
 informed as to the domestic system which she 
 sets herself to depict, and as bitterly prejudiced 
 against the people among whom she had never 
 lived, but was resolved to represent to all man- 
 kind, this saint did invent a story of cruelty 
 and crime that so admirably suited the anti- 
 slavery periodical in which it was first pub- 
 lished and so successfully served the political 
 party and political purposes for which it was 
 conceived and issued as to obtain for her a 
 literary immortality. Some books of fiction 
 are said to be "founded upon fact." Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin hasn't much foundation of that 
 sort. It is a mean caricature. It slanders the 
 South. Its characters are angels and demons. 
 Its title should have been — "The Sins and Sor- 
 rows of Our Inter-State Slave Traffic, Duly 
 Exaggerated and Highly Colored for Political 
 Purposes." Its incidents are quite exceptional, 
 its actors are overdone, its situations well nigh 
 impossible, its theology is unscriptural, its con- 
 clusions erroneous, its consequences calamitous. 
 
io8 Lee and His Cause 
 
 I was born in the family of a slave-owner and 
 grew into manhood in a populous slave State, 
 and traveled over and resided in the farther 
 South, and yet I have never seen a slave chased 
 by bloodhounds or chained or handcuffed or 
 branded or starved or scourged or sold at auc- 
 tion. I suppose such sights did now and then 
 happen, but that they truly represent our do- 
 mestic life, I deliberately and positively deny. 
 
 The evil consequences of "Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin" can never be fully set forth. If its pur- 
 pose had been to inflame human and diabolical 
 passions until all regard for truth, justice, 
 order, law, love, unity, peace and good will 
 should be banished from American breasts — if 
 its object had been to bring into open con- 
 tempt the laws of the land, the decisions of its 
 highest courts, and the sacred compacts of the 
 Constitution itself — and all these to overthrow 
 the system of domestic servitude in the South — 
 Then it was a woeful and wondrous success ! 
 The Northern people were wrought into a 
 frenzy: The Southern, in feeling at least, bit- 
 terly resented the outrage, and all classes came 
 to realize that the dreaded end was drawing on 
 apace. 
 
Lee and His Cause 109 
 
 Mrs. Stowe spent much time in Florida dur- 
 ing her declining years and became more fully 
 accjuainted with her brother in black. She 
 found him less desirable than she once thought. 
 An intimate friend of 'hers is quoted as saying, 
 in her own words, and of her own great 
 book, — 'That story had its origin in the brain 
 of a romantic girl, fired by the stories told by 
 my father and my uncle. / did not knozu the 
 negro then^ or it zvould never have been zm'it- 
 ten." An able editor and devoted friend of the 
 black race, in commenting upon this declara- 
 tion, sagely remarks — "In the harsh attitude 
 of her old age, when she is said to have reached 
 a point where she would not allow a negro to 
 do anything for her, she was about as far from 
 really knowing the negro as in the romance of 
 her youth." And he is surely correct. 
 
 But books and songs and sermons and 
 prayers were all too tame and slow. The 
 popular craze demanded heroic deeds, an 
 inspiring example! This prolonged agita- 
 tion by abolition authors and orators caused, 
 several years subsequently, a strange and 
 savage attempt to free the negroes and lead 
 them in a concerted uprising against their 
 
no Lee and His Cause 
 
 unsuspecting masters. This crazy and wicked 
 effort was known as the "John Brown 
 Raid/'' Brown was a monomaniac and a 
 murderer from "Bloody Kansas." He gath- 
 ered a band of eighteen Northern ruffians 
 white and black, and a sum of money furnished 
 by sympathizers in the North amounting to 
 about $4,000; his store of arms consisted of 
 two hundred rifles, commonly called "Kansas 
 Bibles,'' and "Beecher Bibles" (because bought 
 by his church) ; two hundred revolvers, and 
 nine hundred and fifty long, strong, double- 
 edged blades, fastened on the end of hoe- 
 handles (made in Ohio) for the use of the 
 negroes who should join his crusade — they 
 being, of course, unfamiliar with fire-arms. 
 With this force and outfit. Brown imagined 
 that he could invade Virginia and overthrow 
 slavery! At midnight on Sunday, October 
 16, 1859, he captured Harper's Ferry, arrested 
 sixty of the chief citizens, seized the United 
 States Arsenal, and sent forth his conspirators 
 to liberate the poor down-trodden darkies. 
 Not a negro could be induced to join the band 
 of emancipation patriots ; and one poor servant 
 was shot for refusing to do so. But the citi- 
 zens and troops hastily called out, drove Brown 
 
Lee and His Cause iii 
 
 and his followers into the village engine-house. 
 At the command of the Federal War Office, 
 Colonel R. E. Lee, who was on furlough, came 
 from his home at Arlington, took charge of the 
 defense, and (as is related in his own memo- 
 randum) on "Tuesday about sunrise, with 
 twelve marines under command of Lieutenant 
 Green (accompanied by Lieutenant J. E. B. 
 Stuart) broke in the door of the engine-house, 
 secured the robbers and released the prisoners 
 unhurt. All the conspirators were killed or 
 mortally wounded but four, John Brown, 
 Aaron Stevens, Edwin Coppie and Green 
 Shields (black). Had the prisoners removed 
 to a place of safety and their wounds dressed." 
 These brutal and misguided fanatics were 
 given able counsel, a fair trial, a Review by the 
 Supreme Court, were convicted of the crime of 
 murder, and hanged — December 2nd, 1859. 
 In the treasonable and murderous assault, five 
 men had been slain and nine wounded, but the 
 legal execution of the felons occasioned a 
 storm of indignation throughout the North. 
 Brown was cannonized as ''St. John, the Just/' 
 and was placed next to our Lord in the cata- 
 logue of martyrs. In many Northern cities 
 eloquent eulogies were pronounced, funeral 
 
112 Lee and His Cause 
 
 dirges sung, church bells tolled, minute guns 
 fired, and houses and halls draped in deep 
 mourning to express the widespread sympathy 
 for the ''martyr who had yielded up his life on 
 the altar of human liberty." 
 
 Judge J. S. Black, the great Pennsylvanian, 
 says, "They applauded John Brown to the echo 
 for a series of the basest murders on record. 
 The)^ did not conceal their hostility to the Fed- 
 eral and State governments, nor deny their 
 enmity to all laws which protected white men. 
 The Constitution stood in their wiay, and they 
 cursed it bitterly. The Bible was quoted 
 against them, and they reviled God, the x\l- 
 mighty himself." 
 
 In its immediate, local, personal effects, 
 Brown's silly and futile assault upon the State 
 of Virginia was scarce worthy of record. No 
 servile war was started. No slave was set free. 
 No ''Provisional Government" was established. 
 No "War Department'' was organized. No 
 other armed expedition was sent into the field. 
 The red-handed assassin and "Commander-in- 
 Chief," John Brown, was quietly hanged by 
 the Commonwealth of Virginia, as he richly 
 deserved to be for the five murders that he had 
 committed in her borders and for several other 
 
Lee and His Cause 113 
 
 cold-blooded deeds done in Kansas. It was 
 the general and profound feeling excited in the 
 North by his execution that startled the South- 
 ern people like a fire bell at night. It was de- 
 clared in public prints and mass meeting ad- 
 dresses that the death of the ^'New Saint will 
 make the gallows glorious like the Cross.*' 
 Such language from Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
 applauded by the culture and conscience of a 
 multitude in Boston, admonished the South in 
 tones and terms unmistakable that "the irre- 
 pressible conflict" foretold the year before by 
 the leader and idol of the party, W. H. Seward 
 (later Lincoln's Secretary of State), was now 
 on. No man could doubt now that our ''House 
 was divided against itself." The whole world 
 was advertised that, "the Union could not 
 permanently endure half slave and half free." 
 And these public demonstrations and inflam- 
 matory speeches mightily aided in causing that 
 prediction of Lincoln to come to pass. As 
 evidence and illustration of the State of the 
 public mind at the North, at this time, take the 
 testimony of an intelligent and representative 
 man w^ho was then studying his profession in 
 their midst. He gives this short statement of 
 his experience. "I myself saw the demonstra- 
 
114 Lee and His Cause 
 
 tions of the Northern people on that occasion, 
 happening at that time to be living in Philadel- 
 phia. It was instantly plain to me that I was 
 in an enemy's country. The Southern students 
 around me saw it as plainly as I did. It took 
 but a dozen sentences to open the eyes of the 
 least intelligent. It was only to say — 'Come 
 on boys, let's go,' and three hundred of us 
 marched over on our own side of the line." It 
 must have been a clear case, and a very strong 
 feeling, that induced these three hundred 
 bright, best men from Dixie to abandon their 
 lecture-rooms and turn their backs on profes- 
 sional honors, and follow Dr. Hunter McGuire 
 to the Southland to escape fromi it. It was 
 that feeling — wide spread and ever deepen- 
 ing — that brought on the war, not "property" 
 in negroes. The seeds of abolitionism sown so 
 diligently for thirty years had ripened at last, 
 and the harvest must be reaped. It was evi- 
 dent that, — "In the North, there is a higher 
 law than the Constitution which regulates our 
 authority over the domain. Slavery must be 
 abolished and we must do it. The times de- 
 mand, and we must have, an anti-slavery Con- 
 stitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti- 
 slavery God!" — That was their slogan! 
 
Lee and His Cause 115 
 
 This declaration of principles and purposes 
 had been strikingly summarized and exempli- 
 fied as far back as 1844, by "The American 
 Anti-Slavery Society," which boldly cast aside 
 the Constitution and denounced it as "a cove- 
 nant with death, and an agreement with 
 hell." In full accord with this view, and 
 faithfully reflecting this feeling, many North- 
 ern governors refused to give up upon legal 
 requisition the fugitive slaves hidden in their 
 States' borders, and Federal marshals were 
 often mobbed for arresting runaways in 
 Northern cities, whilst fourteen State Legis- 
 latures "nullified" the Constitution by passing 
 "personal liberty laws." It availed noth- 
 ing that these "laws" were declared to be 
 unconstitutional again and again by the 
 highest Federal courts, and by the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. Passion ruled, 
 not law. The Supreme Court of the United 
 States also decided that under the Constitution, 
 we might move into the territories and be pro- 
 tected with our property, but Lincoln said, that 
 "he didn't care what the Supreme Court de- 
 cided he would turn us out anyhow" — and yet 
 in the Hampton-Roads Conference (1865), he 
 
ii6 Lee and His Cause 
 
 admitted that, "The people of the North were 
 as responsible for slavery as the people of the 
 South." In one single State (New York), in 
 one single year, 1850, one single Abolition 
 society aided to escape from their lawful 
 owners one hundred and fifty-one fugitives. 
 On May ist of that year, Chairman Garritt 
 Smith had this report of work done read in 
 open session in New York City, remarking — 
 'Tor that, you know, is our business." By 
 such means, from 1810 to 1861, it is estimated 
 by Chief Justice Taney of Maryland, that $28,- 
 500,000 worth of negroes were enticed to leave 
 their lawful owners. It was thus that my own 
 ''Black Mammy" was lured from the parsonage 
 in Covington, Kentucky, whilst I had yet much 
 need of her ! 
 
 There was another cause that contributed 
 powerfully to produce the discontent which at 
 last resulted in disunion — a cause as provoking 
 as any that has been named — a cause far older 
 than the Harriet Beecher Stowe book, and yet 
 as recent as the John Brown raid, and even 
 more costly to the South — a cause of more 
 widespread influence, if not of so sudden and 
 shocking effects, than of both those combined 
 — the enactment by Congress of Protective 
 
Lee and His Cause 117 
 
 Tariff Laws. For years unnumbered, these 
 had been the means of financial and commercial 
 disparagement and depletion of the South. 
 The Federal Constitution conferred upon 
 Congress the power ''to lay and collect Taxes, 
 Duties, Imposts and Excises to pay the Debts 
 and provide for the common Defense and gen- 
 eral Welfare of the United States." Under 
 this authority, in the year 181 6, duties unjust 
 and oppressive to the South, were first made 
 legal, and such are being still collected. The 
 system had its origin in a benevolent design to 
 provide for the debt left upon us by the War 
 of 1812, and also to indemnify certain North- 
 ern patriots for services rendered and losses 
 sustained during and after that successful 
 struggle. These Xew England mechanics and 
 merchants had invested capital in manufactur- 
 ing plants and war materials which the wel- 
 come but unexpected peace had rendered of 
 little further use and much diminished value. 
 The consequent fall in prices of such goods 
 threatened these citizens with heavy losses, and 
 it was to prevent greater depreciation of values 
 that the tariff of 181 6 was proposed and 
 enacted. At the outset, the motive was 
 sympathetic and patriotic; in the progress of 
 
ii8 Lee and His Cause 
 
 commerce and legislation, it became selfish and 
 sectional ; and in the end, the effort brought on 
 a bloody, wicked and fratricidal war. To this 
 day, it has operated to enrich immensely the 
 Northern States, and as steadily to reduce the 
 South. As President Davis says — "It pre- 
 sented the not uncommon occurrence of a good 
 case making a bad precedent." Well, the mis- 
 chievous precedent has been faithfully followed 
 and a blind man might now see in the ever- 
 increasing vigor of the system its destined im- 
 mortality. Why not? The North man loves 
 money and has the votes ! 
 
 The whole history of tariff legislation is a 
 striking illustration of that memorable saying 
 of the great Kansas jurist. Justice Miller — "Of 
 all the powers conferred upon Government, 
 that of taxation is the most liable to abuse." 
 A Southern man can scarcely help adding that, 
 of all the abuses of power ever exercised in 
 making law in our great Republic, the most 
 odious and hurtful to the South has been that 
 used to fasten upon us those duties which give 
 to individual business and sectional interests 
 high protection at the expense of the general 
 public and the general good. 
 
Lee and His Cause 119 
 
 In our early years — from 1789 to 181 6 — 
 import duties gave, of course, some incidental 
 protection, yet Mr. Clay, and even Mr. Calhoun, 
 did not refuse them their support, as measures 
 contributing to the country's defense, and made 
 necessary by the conditions and consequences 
 of the recent war, but not destined like the 
 "brook" to run on forever. The system is some- 
 times called "the American," and had for its 
 father Mr. Clay of Kentucky, but the Confed- 
 erate Admiral Raphael Semmes has, with far 
 finer descriptive discrimination and much 
 better perspective view, styled it "the System 
 of Spoliation." The underlying patriotic im- 
 pulse of the statesmen of that day was to 
 foster, for a time, certain "infant industries," 
 and not to inaugurate for centuries a scheme 
 of taxation that should rob one section of our 
 country to adorn, enrich and strengthen the 
 other. The sin and shame of the latter-day 
 politicians is, by it, to shut out all foreign 
 goods from our home markets and thus enable 
 the Northern manufacturer to sell us his own 
 wares at his own prices. Nobody can call him 
 unnatural, but his policy can hardly be 
 regarded as patriotic or tending to bind us 
 more closely to him. And the framers of the 
 
120 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Constitution never contemplated such a per- 
 version of its pov^ers. Had it been foreseen, 
 the Article allowing it would never have been 
 adopted. 
 
 The North had many and deep harbors, 
 fleets of boats and ships, capable and hungry 
 seamen, immense and cheap water-power, 
 much invested capital, thousands of skilled 
 workmen and inventive mechanics, she needed 
 only the Southern raw materials at the lowest 
 prices, and that we should buy her manufac- 
 tured goods at the highest figures, and she 
 would become rich and strong — no matter 
 what the South should say or do. The result 
 has not disappointed her. But the long lane 
 may have its ''turn !" "The mills of the gods 
 grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine." 
 
 The South, although always agricultural, 
 was always ready to favor tariffs for revenue, 
 and it was only when duties were so laid as to 
 pay bounties, subsidies, and promote private 
 gain and sectional glory, that she resisted, and 
 resisted in vain. The majority ruled. One 
 such bill was under consideration in 1828, 
 called "the Bill of Abominations," when Mr. 
 Drayton, of South Carolina, moved that the 
 title be amended to read — "An Act to increase 
 
Lee and His Cause 121 
 
 the duties upon certain imports for the purpose 
 of increasing the profits of certain manufactur- 
 ers;" his object being to bring, in this way, the 
 vaHdity of the law to the test of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. His motion was 
 defeated, of course. The tariff lords wanted 
 no judicial decision upon their scheme for 
 pecuniary gain and sectional aggrandizement. 
 The bill was so wisely worded as to pass for a 
 revenue measure, and thus to escape possible 
 legal examination, while it was in reality a 
 scheme for protection. Is it to be wondered at 
 that a sovereign State should bethink herself of 
 ''nullification" as a remedy, when no other 
 was left her? Isn't self-preservation a right 
 of Sovereignty as well as a law of Nature ? 
 
 It has been often asserted by Northern poli- 
 ticians that the South favored these tariff rates 
 until 1828, but the records of Congress show 
 the charge to be untrue. The memorials for 
 them came from the North ; the speeches made 
 against them were all from the South. The 
 votes for them were almost all from the North. 
 In 1 81 8, eight Northern States supported it. 
 The six Southern States were strongly against 
 it. In 1824, only Massachusetts and New 
 Hampshire voted against it. While the two 
 
122 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and 
 Louisiana were unanimously opposed to it. 
 So, too, "in 1842, the South was largely 
 against the protective act of that year." Had 
 the case been otherwise, the South would not 
 have cut out of the Confederate Constitution 
 the "General Welfare" clause, which had been 
 for fifty years the stronghold of the protec- 
 tionists; nor would she have prohibited all 
 "Bounties from her Treasury, and all Duties 
 on Importations from foreign nations, to pro- 
 mote or foster any branch of industry." Such 
 facts refute ten thousands of misrepresenta- 
 tions. Indeed, her whole history in the Union, 
 and her experience under the system disprove 
 the falsehood. 
 
 Senator Benton, of Missouri, although no 
 friend of slavery, gave in the United States 
 Senate, in 1828, this double reason for the per- 
 sistent opposition of the South to such ruinous 
 legislation — "I feel for the sad changes that 
 have taken place in the South during the last 
 fifty years. Before the Revolution, it was the 
 seat of wealth as well as of hospitality. Money, 
 and all it commanded, abounded there. But 
 how now? All this is reversed. Wealth has 
 fled from the South and settled in the regions 
 
Lee and His Cause 123 
 
 North of the Potomac. And this in the face of 
 the fact that the South, in four staples alone, 
 has exported produce since the revolution, to 
 the value of eight hundred millions of dollars ; 
 and the North has exported comparatively 
 nothing. Such an export would indicate un- 
 paralleled wealth, but what is the fact? In 
 the place of wealth, a universal pressure for 
 money was felt — not enough for current 
 expenses — the price of all property down — the 
 country drooping and languishing — towns and 
 cities decaying — and the frugal habits of the 
 people pushed to the verge of universal self- 
 denial for the preservation of their family 
 estates. Such a result is a strange and won- 
 derful phenomenon. It calls upon statesmen to 
 inquire into the cause. Under Federal legisla- 
 tion the exports of the South have been the 
 basis of the Federal revenue Vir- 
 ginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be 
 said to defray three- fourths of the annual ex- 
 penses of supporting the Federal Government; 
 and of this great sum, annually furnished by 
 them, nothing, or next to nothing, is returned 
 to them in the shape of Government expendi- 
 tures. That expenditure flows in an opposite 
 direction. It flows northwardly in one uniform, 
 
124 Lee and His Cause 
 
 uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is 
 the reason why wealth disappears from the 
 South, and rises up in the North. Federal 
 legislation does all this. It does it by the simple 
 process of taking eternally from the South and 
 returning nothing to it. If it returned to the 
 South the whole, or even a g-ood part of what it 
 exacted, the four States south of the Potomac 
 might stand the action of the system, but the 
 South must be exhausted of its money and 
 propert}^ by a course of legislation which is for- 
 ever taking away and never returning any- 
 thing. Every new tariff increases the force of 
 this action. No tariff has ever yet included 
 Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, 
 except to increase the burdens imposed upon 
 them." This double back-action principle for 
 keeping poor the South is, like the poor them- 
 selves, always with us, and there seems no help 
 for us. 
 
 Dr. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, referring to the 
 cjuestion raised by Senator Benton, says : 
 *'How did slavery produce this wonderful 
 transformation? How did slavery work all 
 this ruin? Slavery, it is well known, existed 
 before the Revolution as well as afterward; 
 and accompanied the South in the palmiest 
 
Lee and His Cause 125 
 
 days of her prosperity, as well as in the darkest 
 and most dismal hour of her adversity. Hence, 
 it was not, and could not have been, the one 
 cause of so great and so sudden a change. And 
 besides, instead of having ceased to produce, 
 the fair and fruitful South continued to pour 
 forth, in greater abundance than ever, the 
 broad streams of national prosperity and 
 wealth. Hence she was impoverished, not be- 
 cause the fountains of her former supply had 
 been dried up, or even diminished in volume, 
 but because the great streams flowing from 
 them did not return into her own bosom. Into 
 what region of the earth then, did these 
 streams empty themselves?" Let every land- 
 scape, harbor, sea coast, mountain side, lake 
 front, and city park, stately corner, and public 
 high way, decorated and protected by Federal 
 treasury funds answer it. And if any tourist 
 wonders at the startling contrast seen through- 
 out the Sunny South, let him be told in tones 
 of hypocritical pity, "Ah ! You behold here the 
 blight of slavery. The thrift that you saw in 
 the North was due to the invigorating, glori- 
 ous air of freedom! What a sad thing it is 
 that the South was so long cursed with 
 
126 Lee and His Cause 
 
 slavery!" Comrades, don't that make you 
 weary and feel the need of prayer ? 
 
 But it wasn't freedom alone, that adorned, 
 strengthened, enriched, peopled and glorified 
 the North. The almighty dollar played its 
 part. Yankee Doodle wanted many things — 
 wider roads, higher bridges, bigger tunnels, 
 deeper harbors, longer canals, additional light- 
 houses, more buoys, locks, docks, dams, forts, 
 arsenals, smoother highways, safer travel, 
 cheaper transportation, easier post-routes, 
 handsomer cities, parks, historical gates, 
 groups, arches, monuments, statues, and the 
 like ; and as votes make the laws, and the laws 
 make money, and money makes every improve- 
 ment, why should she not have all the improve- 
 ments that heart can wish, and money buy? 
 Have them, she will! The South — well — she 
 may have as Dr. Bledsoe says — "The crumbs 
 that fall from the rich man's table !" 
 
 The South took up arms not to extend slave 
 territory, not alone to keep the blacks in bond- 
 age, not for the balance of power, not for com- 
 mercial supremacy, not to destroy the Union, 
 but to maintain her political rights, especially 
 the original^ inherent, sovereign, blood-bought 
 right of local self-government — to escape the 
 
Lee and His Cause 127 
 
 centralization of power in the Federal Govern- 
 ment which was now determined to reduce the 
 Southern States to a condition of political help- 
 lessness. The North tried to load down the 
 South with the odium of slavery as the cause 
 of secession and war, but it was only the cir- 
 cumstance that brought on the explosion, the 
 fuse that fired the magazine ; the dynamite was 
 deep hidden in the political doctrines of the 
 sections which were diametrically opposed and 
 antagonistic. General Lee must have known 
 for what he fought, and he writes of the war 
 as ^'otir struggle for State rights and Constitu- 
 tional government/' Would Lee be ignorant 
 of it or lie about it? After the overthrow of 
 General McClellan in the "Seven Days Bat- 
 tles," in front of Richmond, the Confederate 
 Chief in an address of congratulation to his 
 victorious army, refers to their humane treat- 
 ment of their (ten thousand) prisoners, as 
 "the fit crowning glory to your valor," and 
 then in a single line, speaking for himself and 
 all Southern soldiers, says, ''you are fighting 
 for all that is dearest to man/' Did he mean 
 the negroes that the Yankees had unloaded on 
 us ? Who can think it ? 
 
128 Lee and His Cause 
 
 General Order No. i6. To the Army of 
 Northern Virginia, vvas issued July nth, 1863, 
 just a week after the fight at Gettysburg. I 
 suppose by that time General Lee had learned 
 for what he was fighting. It runs — ''Let every 
 soldier remember that on his courage and fidel- 
 ity depends all that makes life worth having, 
 the freedom of his country, the honor of his 
 people, and the security of his home. Sol- 
 diers, your old enemy is before you. Win 
 from him honor worthy of your cause, worthy 
 of your comrades dead on so many illustrious 
 fields." Was Lee ignorant of the objects of 
 the war, or was he unable to state them ? 
 
 The responsibility of the North for the war 
 is avouched by Abraham Lincoln himself. *Tt 
 is you, Medill, (of the Chicago Tribiuic), who 
 is largely responsible for making blood flow as 
 it has. You called for war until you had it. I 
 have given it to you. What you have asked 
 for you have had. Now you come begging to 
 be let ofT from the call for more men, which I 
 have made to carry on the war that you de- 
 manded. You ought to be ashamed of your- 
 self!" So says Miss Tarbell in "Lincoln's 
 Life." Query, If Medill is responsible, how 
 can Davis and Toombs be ? 
 
Lee and His Cause 129 
 
 The immediate cause of the war, the act that 
 brought on the trouble was an attempt by the 
 Federal administration to reinforce and pro- 
 vision Fort Sumter. This fort, commanding 
 the harbor, was within the domain of South 
 Carolina. The State had withdrawn from the 
 Union by the formal and unanimous actiion of 
 her people in Convention assembled. The fort 
 was held by soldiers of the United States. 
 These were expecting reinforcements. A fleet 
 with arms and provisions was waiting in the 
 nearby waters. Eleven ships carrying twenty- 
 six guns and two thousand four hundred men 
 from the North had gone to strengthen the 
 garrison "peaceably if permitted, forcibly if 
 they must." That "overt act" began the war! 
 The firing of Beauregard was merely the 
 natural consequence. The Southron fired first, 
 the Northman had drazvn first. Our shot was 
 in self defense, to prevent being taken in front 
 and rear. The only question arising is, was 
 Beauregard under obligation to wait for his 
 foe to strike him down — ^was not the armed 
 attitude and hostile intention of his enemy 
 ample provocation to justify "the shot that was 
 heard around the world?" The people of 
 
130 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Dixie think it was. But let us look more 
 closely into the question. 
 
 On February 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis and 
 Alexander H. Stevens were inaugurated Presi- 
 dent and Vice-President. Mr. Davis at once 
 named his cabinet and complied with the con- 
 vention's instructions, "to send duly accredited 
 commissioners to Washington to establish 
 friendly relations and to adjust all matters of 
 public property, public debt, etc., so as to 
 avoid war, and upon principles of right, justice, 
 equity and good faith" — so read their creden- 
 tials. Previously, and at once upon her seces- 
 sion. South Carolina had sent commissioners 
 for the same purpose. Their special mission 
 had been to treat for Forts Moultrie and Sum- 
 ter in Charleston Harbor, and which, ceded by 
 South Carolina to the Government, in trust, 
 and for the defense of Charleston, by law, re- 
 verted to the State upon her secession. Sum- 
 ter was then unoccupied and Major Robert 
 Anderson with sixty-three men, lay in Fort 
 Moultrie. Before these commissioners could 
 see President Buchanan, Major Anderson, act- 
 ing under orders, spiked his guns in Moultrie, 
 and by night moved his garrison to Sumter, 
 which with stronger walls and surrounded by 
 
Lee and His Cause 131 
 
 water was more easily held. (This was itself 
 a warlike act, in a time of peace, and done 
 by "night," too.) After one fruitless inter- 
 view with the President, who declined to 
 receive them or their communications, the 
 commissioners returned home, having effected 
 nothing. The appointment and instructions of 
 these two commissions clearly indicates the 
 peaceable intentions of the South. Further 
 proof is found also in the early and earnest 
 efforts of Virginia to promote "pacific settle- 
 ment" by inviting all the States to a Peace 
 Congress to meet in Washington, February 4, 
 1 86 1. Twenty-one States responded, but it all 
 ended, to quote Senator Chandler, of Michi- 
 gan — "In thin smoke." That gentleman was 
 strongly opposed to any compromise, had 
 urged his State "to send stiff-backed men or 
 none," and argued that "without a little blood- 
 letting, this Union will not be worth a rush." 
 
 That the South did not desire or expect war 
 is further apparent from her defenseless condi- 
 tion. She had no army and no weapons, nor 
 was there a powder mill, or rifle factory in all 
 the seceding States, so that afterwards, some 
 regiments were armed with pikes only, and 
 others with flint-locks and shot guns! Many 
 
132 Lee and His Cause 
 
 thought that sober and wiser counsels would 
 prevail in the North; so that the States might 
 soon return to the Union; others felt that the 
 separation was permanent, but would be peace- 
 able; only rabid extremists talked of war. In 
 the North as wiell, there was no thought of bat- 
 tle or bloodshed. From the platform, through 
 the press, in great centers, in Congress, and 
 even by the President, the opinion had been 
 widely and strongly expressed that a war of 
 coercion was unconstitutional, unjust and im- 
 possible. 
 
 The question of coercion had long ago been 
 incidentally passed upon and legally settled by 
 the hig^hest court known to our political system. 
 In the contest over rendition between Ohio 
 and Kentucky, being tried by the United States 
 Supreme Court, speaking of the powers held 
 respectively by State and Federal Governments, 
 Mr. Chief Justice Taney, in giving the Court's 
 decision said : ''While admitting that the Con- 
 stitution is mandatory on the Governors, there 
 is not a line in it which gives power to the Gen- 
 eral Government to compel a State to do any- 
 thing." This opinion was as widely accepted 
 as it was judicially well founded. 
 
Lee and His Cause 133 
 
 The fact is that, so far from possessing or 
 even claiming to possess, "The power to compel 
 a State" to remain in the Union, our General 
 Government had held all along, and had for 
 many years actually taught the doctrine of the 
 lawfulness of secession. This fact has been 
 clearly esftablished by many competent wit- 
 nesses. Large credit for the knowledge of it is 
 due to Col. Robert Bingham, superintendent of 
 Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina. 
 By recent painstaking, and persevering corre- 
 spondence, he has proven quite fully that, since 
 1825 and probably to 1840, ''Razde's Viezv of 
 the Constitution of the United States" was a 
 text-book in the Military Academy at West 
 Point, where the future commanders of the 
 armies of the Republic are thoroughly in- 
 structed in both the science and art of 
 warfare. This evidence I w'ill give in part 
 here, for the sake of the light it throws 
 upon the question of the right of peace- 
 ful secession, as well as on the matter of the 
 guilt or innocency of the crimes of treason 
 and rebellion in the conduct of the greatest 
 soldiers in the armies of the Southern Con- 
 federacy. Having Rawile's work in my own 
 
134 Lee and His Cause 
 
 library, I can certify to the correctness of the 
 quotations given below. But first of the author, 
 book, students, etc. Hear these witnesses. 
 
 (From the Superintendent of the United States 
 
 Military Academy.) 
 Headquarters United States Military 
 
 ACADEMY_, 
 
 West Point, N. Y., Nov. i8, 1904. 
 
 * * * In the forthcoming Memorial 
 Volume of the Military Academy now being 
 printed will appear the following note regard- 
 ing the book : 
 
 342, 731 R., 20 Rawle (William) : A 
 view of the Constitution of the United States 
 of America. Philadelphia, 1825, Iv., O. 
 
 The text-book, of the law department from 
 — to — . The copy of this book owned by 
 Library, United States Military Academy 
 makes it very probable that it was used as a 
 text book. 
 (Signed) A. L. Mills, Brig.-Gen., 
 
 U. S. A., Superintendent. 
 
Lee and His Cause 135 
 
 (From the Librarian of the United States 
 MiHtary Academy.) 
 Library^ United States Military 
 Academy, 
 West Point, N. Y., Nov. 23, 1904. 
 
 * * * The copy of Rawle (WilHam) : 
 "A View of the Constitution of the United 
 States of America;" Philadelphia, 1825; Iv., 
 O., owned by the Library, U. S. M. A., con- 
 tains Ms. notes which make it very probable 
 that this book was used as a text-book at the 
 Military Academy, inasmuch as there is a list 
 of sections and lessons marked. The book 
 contains no information as to just the period 
 during which it was used as a text-book, nor 
 have we been able to find this out up to the 
 present time. 
 
 (Signed) Edward S. Holden, 
 
 Librarian. 
 
 (From the Librarian of Congress). 
 Library of Congress, 
 
 Washington, Dec. 3, 1904. 
 
 * * * I find on examination of the An- 
 nual Catalogues of the West Point Military 
 
136 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Academy that no text-books appear to be 
 named until A. D., 1842. 
 
 (Signed) A. R. Spofford. 
 
 (From a Great-grandson of Wm. Rawle). 
 211 S. Sixth Street, 
 Philadelphia, Dec. 13, 1904. 
 
 * * * The book entitled, "A View of 
 the Constitution of the United States of Amer- 
 ica" was written by my great grandfather. 
 * * * The book was, I think, the first 
 author, after having studied law in New York 
 under the Royal Attorney General and later in 
 the Middle Temple in London, was admitted 
 to the Philadelphia bar, September 15, 1783. 
 He was therefore of an age to appreciate the 
 doings of the Constitutional Convention of 
 1787, which sat in this City where he resided. 
 Doubtless he attended its sittings, although I 
 do not find among his papers any statement 
 to that effect. The work, I have always 
 understood, was for many years used as a text- 
 book at the United States Military Academy 
 at West Point. 
 
 (Signed) Wm. Brooke Rawle. 
 
Lee and His Cause 137 
 
 (From John Rawle, Grandson of Wm. Rawle). 
 Natchez, Miss., Jan. 2y, 1905. 
 
 * * * In re, William Rawle, my grand- 
 father, I am aware that his view on the "Con- 
 stitution of the United States" was used as a 
 text-book at West Point, but I do not recollect 
 in what years it was. Gen. R. E. Lee, et al., 
 said that they were taught by that book while 
 at West Point. ^ ^ ^ General Lee told 
 Bishop Wilmer, of Louisiana, that if it had not 
 been for the instruction he got from Rawle's 
 text-book at West Point he would not have 
 left the Old Army and joined the South at the 
 breaking out of the late war between the States. 
 
 (Signed) John Rawle. 
 
 (From Joseph Wilmer, a Son of Bishop 
 Wilmer). 
 Rapidan, Va., Feb. 10, 1905. 
 
 * * * I have a distinct recollection of 
 my father's statement that General Lee told 
 him that "Rawle" was a text-book during his 
 cadetship at West Point. * * * 
 
138 Lee and His Cause 
 
 (From Mrs. M. J. Leeds, Granddaughter of 
 William Rawle). 
 New Orleans^ La.^ Jan. 19, 1905. 
 
 * * * I am positive that th'i work of my 
 grandfather, William Rawle, was used as a 
 text-book at West Point. I have heard this 
 from my own father. Judge Edward Rawle, 
 who died in 1880, a son of the author of the 
 book. 
 
 (Signed) Mrs. M. J. Leeds. 
 
 (From Judge G. L. Christian). 
 
 Christian & Christian Law Offices, 
 
 Chamber of Commerce Building,, 
 
 Richmond, Va., Dec., 1904. 
 
 * * * I have frequently heard Generals 
 D. H. Maury and Fitzhugh Lee state the fact 
 that "Rawle on the Constitution" was one of 
 the text-books used at West Point when they 
 were students there. I have also heard the 
 same statement iterated and reiterated time 
 and time again without any suggestion that 
 there was any question about it. I saw General 
 
Lee and His Cause 139 
 
 Lee last night, and he again told me that there 
 was no doubt about this being the fact. 
 
 (Signed) Geo. L. Christian. 
 
 (From General Fitzhugh Lee) 
 
 Norfolk, Va., Dec. 5, 1904. 
 
 * -'■ * My recollection is that Rawle's 
 View of the Constitution was the legal text- 
 book at West Point when Generals Lee, Joseph 
 E. Johnson and Stonewall Jackson were cadets 
 there, and later on was a text-book when I was 
 a cadet there. 
 
 (Signed) Fitzhugh Lee. 
 
 (From General Dabney H. Maury). 
 In Vol. 6, p. 249, So. Historical Papers : 
 
 * * * It (Rawle) remained as a text- 
 book at West Point till ; and Mr. Davis 
 
 and Sidney Johnston and General Joe John- 
 ston and General Lee and all the rest of us who 
 retired with Virginia from the Federal Union, 
 were not only obeying the plain instincts of 
 our nature and dictates of duty, but we were 
 obeying the very inculcations we had received 
 in the National Schools. It is not probable 
 
140 Lee and His Cause 
 
 that any of us ever read the Constitution or any 
 exposition of it except this work of Rawle, 
 which we studied in our Graduating year at 
 West Point. I know I did not. * * >k 
 (Signed) Dabney H. Maury. 
 
 (From Charles Francis Adams.) 
 Adams Building, 23 Court Street, 
 
 Boston, Dec. 8, 1904. 
 
 * * * Herewith, under another cover, I 
 send a copy of a pubHcation of mine (The 
 Constitutional Ethics of Secession), which 
 bears very directly upon the point made in your 
 letter. On page 16, in Note i, may be found 
 all I know on the subject of Rawle's View of 
 the Constitution, and the use of its as a text- 
 book at West Point. 
 
 You will note I there state as a fact that his 
 View was the text-book in use at West Point 
 prior to 1840. * * * j remember that, at 
 that time (two years ago) I looked the matter 
 up with the utmost care, corresponding with 
 the librarian and authorities at West Point, and 
 also with at least one legal authority in New 
 
Lee and His Cause 141 
 
 York. The result and my conclusion, are set 
 forth in the note. 
 
 (Signed) Chas. F. Adams. 
 
 From 'The Constitutional Ethics of Seces- 
 sion," by Chas. Francis Adams. Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1903, pages 16-17: 
 
 "(i) Much has been written and said, and 
 still more declaimed, as to the peculiar and ex- 
 ceptional allegiance due, in case of attempted 
 secession, to the National Government on the 
 part of the graduates of the Military Academy 
 at West Point. It is, however, a noticeable 
 fact that anterior to 1840 the doctrine of the 
 rig-ht of secession seems to have been incul- 
 cated at West Point as an admitted principle 
 of Constitutional Law. Story's Commentaries 
 was first published in 1833. Prior to its ap- 
 pearance the standard text-book on the subject 
 was Rawle's View of the Constitution. This 
 was published in Philadelphia in 1825. Wil- 
 liam Rawle, its author, was an eminent Phila- 
 delphia lawyer. A man of twenty-nine at the 
 time the Constitution was adopted, and already 
 in active professional life; in 1792 he was 
 offered a judicial position by Washington. 
 
142 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Subsequently he was for many years Chan- 
 cellor of the Law Association of Philadelphia, 
 and principal author of the revised code of 
 Pennsylvania. He stood in the foremost rank 
 of the legal luminaries of the first third of the 
 century. His instincts, sympathies and con- 
 nections were all national. Prior to 1840, his 
 'View' was the text-book in use at West 
 Point." 
 
 From "The Republic of Republics." Little, 
 Brown & Co., Boston, 4th Edition, 1878, 
 Preface, p. V : 
 
 "Another event of great historical interest 
 in which Judge Clifford participated, was a 
 solemn consultation of a small number of the 
 ablest lawyers of the North in Washington a 
 few months after the war upon the momen- 
 tous question as to whether the Federal Gov- 
 ernment should commence a criminal prosecu- 
 tion against Jefferson Davis for his participa- 
 tion and leadership in the war of secession. 
 In this council, which was surrounded at the 
 time with the utmost secrecy, were Attorney- 
 General Speed, Judge Clifford, Wm. Evarts, 
 and perhaps half a dozen others, who had been 
 selected from the whole Northern profession 
 
Lee and His Cause 143 
 
 for their legal ability and acumen, and the re- 
 sult of their deliberation was the sudden 
 abandonment (of the idea of a prosecution) 
 in view of the insurmountable difficulties in 
 the way of getting a final conviction." 
 
 Republic of Republics, page 44 : 
 
 "The above work (Rawle's View) was a 
 text-book at West Point when Lee and Davis 
 were cadets there." 
 
 Footnote i, p. 33 : 
 
 "They (Davis and Lee) were at West Point 
 during the administration of John Quincy 
 Adams, who, as late as 1839, essayed to teach 
 the whole American people that, 'the people 
 of each State have a right to secede from the 
 confederated Union.' These are his very 
 words." 
 
 ("The Republics of Republics" is under- 
 stood to have given some of the lines of de- 
 fense by Jefferson Davis' counsel if the case 
 had been brought to trial, and to have had the 
 approval of Mr. Davis himself. The book is 
 very highly spoken of by Charles O'Connor, 
 one of Mr. Davis' counsel, and one of the most 
 distinguished lawyers in the United States in 
 his day, who wrote to the author in 1865 (see 
 
144 Lee and His Cause 
 
 page IV), * * >i^ "wit'h so admirably pre- 
 pared and so overwhelmingly conclusive a brief 
 (as his book) my task (of defending Mr. 
 Davis) would be easy indeed." 
 
 If there were ''insurmountable difficulties in 
 the way of getting a final conviction," it stands 
 to reason that, the defense "would be easy, in- 
 deed." 
 
 The following letter explains itself: 
 ''41 17 Pine Street, 
 Philadelphia, March 25, 1884. 
 
 ''Dear Col. Bingham: While the question 
 of Jeff. Davis's trial for high treason was 
 pending, Mr. Wm. B. Reed, counsel for the 
 defense, was a member of my brother's con- 
 gregation at Orange Valley, N. J. He told 
 my brother, after it had been decided that the 
 trial was not to take place, that if the case had 
 come to trial the defense would have offered 
 in evidence the text-book on constitutional law 
 (Rawle's View of the Constitution) from 
 which Davis had been instructed at West 
 Point by the authority of the United States 
 Government, and in which the right of seces- 
 sion is maintained as one of the constitutional 
 rights of a State. You are quite at liberty to 
 
Lee and His Cause 145 
 
 refer to me for this statement, which is given 
 according to the best of my recollection. 
 
 L. W. Bacon. 
 
 (Rev. Dr. Bacon's present address is Asso- 
 net, Mass.) 
 
 This cloud of witnesses, living and dead, men 
 and women, Northern and Southern, military 
 and literary, establishes satisfactorily at least 
 nine points; namely: ist — That Wm. Rawle 
 did write and publish in 1825, in Philadelphia, 
 "A View of the Constitution." 2d — That he 
 was a very able man, thoroughly competent, 
 and favorably situated to execute his task. 
 3rd — That his book does teach the right of se- 
 cession. 4th — ^That it was an accepted authority 
 in that day. 5 th — That it was a text-book in 
 the course at West Point, where it remains 
 still, and yet showing the class-lesson marks. 
 6th — That General Lee was then, and for 
 years afterwards there as cadet and student. 
 7th — That in 1861, he defended the cause of 
 Virginia and the South rather than fight for 
 "the Union," and this because of the instruc- 
 tion given him at West Point. 8th — That the 
 Federal Government knowing these facts, and 
 that they would be brought out by counsel in 
 court if President Davis should be put upon 
 
146 Lee and His Cause 
 
 trial for treason, decided not to try him, thus 
 denying him the opportunity to vindicate him- 
 self and his co-patriots of the Southland. 9th 
 — That Lee himself said that he would not 
 have left the old Army and joined the South, 
 but for the instruction that he had received 
 from "Rawle's View of the Constitution." 
 
 In the face of these facts how monstrous 
 would have been the attempt to punish for 
 treason Mr. Davis or General Lee, who had 
 only put into practice the doctrine taught 
 them at West Point! And how cruel to 
 accuse President Davis of it, imprison and 
 indict him for it, and then deny him a hear- 
 ing in which he might prove himself innocent ! 
 How would such a record as this have looked on 
 the page of History? Cadet Jefferson Davis 
 taught at West Point in 1825 the lawfulness 
 of secession. The said Davis practices in 1861 
 the said doctrine with the people of Missis- 
 sippi. The United States Government charges 
 with treason the said Davis, and tries him at 
 Richmond, Virginia, in 1866 for doing what 
 it had taught him was lawful when he was at 
 West Point. And the said Davis was acquit- 
 ted for the sole reason that the jury could 
 ''find no fault in hint''? 
 
Lee and His Cause 147 
 
 The extracts from ''Rawle's View" need no 
 preface or explanation. He says: "If a fac- 
 tion should attempt to subvert the government 
 of a State for the purpose of destroying its 
 republican form, the national power of the 
 Union could be called forth to subdue it. Yet 
 it is not to be understood that its interposition 
 would be justifiable if a State should deter- 
 mine to retire from the Union." (p. 289). 
 "It depends on the State itself whether it will 
 continue a member of the Union. To deny 
 this right would be inconsistent with the prin- 
 ciple on which all our political systems are 
 founded, which is, that the people have in all 
 cases the right to determine how they shall be 
 governed." (p. 289).- "The States may then 
 wholly withdraw from the Union." (p. 290). 
 "We have associated as republics. Possess- 
 ing the power to form, monarchies, republics 
 were preferred and instituted." 
 
 "If a majority of the people of a State delib- 
 erately and peaceably resolve to relinquish the 
 republican form of government, they cease to 
 be members of the Union." (p. 292). "The 
 secession of a State from the Union depends 
 on the will of the people of such State." (p. 
 295)- "-'^^ ^^y nianner by which secession is 
 
148 Lee and His Cause 
 
 to take place, nothing is more certain than that 
 the act should be deliberate, clear and unequiv- 
 ocal." (p. 296). "The people of a State may 
 have reason to complain in respect to the acts 
 of the general government; they may, in such 
 cases, invest some of their own officers with 
 the power of negotiation, and may declare an 
 absolute secession in case of failure. The se- 
 cession in such cases must be distinctly and 
 peremptorily declared to take place, and in 
 such case, as the case of unconditional seces- 
 sion, the previous ligament with the Union 
 would be legitimately and fairly destroyed." 
 (p. 296). "It was foreseen that there would 
 be a natural tendency to increase the number 
 of the States. It was also known that a State 
 might withdraw itself." (p. 297). "Seces- 
 sions may reduce the number of the States to 
 the smallest integer admitting combination." 
 "To withdraw from the Union is a solemn, 
 serious act." "Whenever it may appear expe- 
 dient to the people of a State to withdraw 
 from the Union, it must be manifested in a di- 
 rect and unequivocal manner." (p. 298). 
 And also "this right (of secession) must 
 be considered an ingredient in the original 
 composition of the general government, and 
 
Lee and His Cause 149 
 
 the doctrine heretofore presented in regard to 
 the indefeasable nature of personal allegiance 
 is so far qualified in respect to allegiance to the 
 United States. It was observed that the reci- 
 procal relations of protection and allegiance 
 might cease in certain events, and it was 
 further observed that allegiance would neces- 
 sarily cease in case of the dissolution of the 
 society (the Union in that case) to which it 
 was due." (p. 289-290). 
 
 But I was speaking of the collision at Sum- 
 ter. This changed things and precipitated the 
 struggle. For this, the South has been uni- 
 versally blamed, but the facts are these : — The 
 fort belonged to the Federal Government, was 
 built and held in trust for the defense of 
 Charleston; the site belonged to South Caro- 
 lina and had been ceded in trust to the Govern- 
 ment on condition that it should be used for 
 that purpose. When the secession of the State 
 put that defense out of the question, commis- 
 sioners were sent, as we have seen, to treat for 
 the transfer of the fort. They were repulsed. 
 As soon as the Confederacy was established, 
 another commission was sent to adjust these 
 property rights and treat for the transfer of 
 Sumter, the only fort yet held by the United 
 
150 Lee and His Cause 
 
 States Government. Mr. Lincoln had been 
 inaugurated meanwhile and the commission- 
 ers had to deal with his Secretary of State, 
 Mr. W. H. Seward. Negotiations were con- 
 ducted through Justices Nelson and Campbell 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States, be- 
 cause Mr. Seward declined to see the commis- 
 sioners himself. Nelson urged Seward to 
 refrain from any policy of coercion, on the 
 ground that such "is serious violation of the 
 Constitution." On March 15, Mr. Seward 
 authorized Judge Campbell in writing to tell 
 Mr. Davis that "Before a letter could reach 
 him, he would learn by telegraph that the order 
 for evacuation of Sumter had been made." This 
 word was sent. March 20th, Campbell again 
 saw Seward, who told him that ''The delay in 
 the evacuation of the fort zvas accidental,'' and 
 repeated his assurance that the garrison would 
 be withdrawn. Campbell says, "I repeated 
 this assurance ir; writing to the commissioners, 
 and informed Mr. Seward in v^^riting, what I 
 had said to them." March 19th, the day 
 before this renewed assurance was given, a 
 special envoy had left Washington for 
 Charleston to obtain information and devise 
 means by which Sumter might be — not evacii- 
 
Lee and His Cause 151 
 
 ated, hut reinforced! And Mr. George Lunt 
 of Massachusetts says — *'It was intended to 
 draw the fire of the Confederates" — a silent ag- 
 gression to produce an active aggression. 
 
 Pledging "pacific purposes," Captain G. V. 
 Fox, sent from Washington by Lincoln, was 
 allowed by Governor Pickens to visit the fort, 
 where on the parapet, at night, of March 21st, 
 he had a private interview with Major Ander- 
 son, matured his plan, submitted, and had it 
 approved by President Lincoln, and was sent 
 to New York to arrange for its execution. 
 Anderson strongly opposed the attempt to rein- 
 force him: he "at once earnestly condemned 
 it" — so says Major General S. W. Crawford, 
 U. S. Army — said it was too late ; agreed with 
 his superior, General Scott, that an entrance 
 by sea was impossible, and said that the com- 
 ing of reinforcements would bring on a colli- 
 sion and inaugurate a civil war, and to this he 
 manifested the most earnest opposition." The 
 belief was now general on both sides that the 
 garrison would be withdrawn, and Major An- 
 derson had given his official instructions as to 
 the disposal of the property. ( See the "Genesis 
 of Civil War" by Crawford.) 
 
152 Lee and His Cause 
 
 On March 25th, Col. Ward H. Lamon, 
 another envoy, sent by Lincoln , "informed 
 me," says Governor Pickens, that he had come 
 as confidential agent of the President ^Ho 
 arrange for the removal of the garrison.'' 
 After a visit to the fort, and his return to 
 Washington, he wrote the Governor that he 
 *'hoped to return in a few days to withdraw 
 the command." This was on March 30th, 
 fifteen days after Mr. Seward's original assur- 
 ance of evacuation, and ten days after his ex- 
 planation that the delay in doing it was "acci- 
 dental." On April ist, Campbell again saw 
 Seward, who gave him the statement in writ- 
 ing for the Commissioners — "The Govern- 
 ment will not undertake to supply Sumter 
 without notice to Governor Pickens." As this 
 assurance was very different from the others, 
 Campbell asked him, "Whether I was to un- 
 derstand that there had been a change in his 
 former communications?" Seward answered, 
 ''None.'' On April 7th, in view of continued 
 rumors of hostile preparations of the Govern- 
 ment, Campbell again wrote Seward, asking 
 whether "the assurances given were well or ill 
 founded?" Seward wrote back — ''Faith as 
 to Sumter fully kept. Wait and see." Yet the 
 
Lee and His Cause 153 
 
 day before this, Mr. Lincoln had sent one of 
 Seward's officials, a Mr. Chew of the State 
 Department, to notify Governor Pickens that 
 ''An attempt will be made to supply Sum- 
 ter with provisions only, but no attempt will 
 be made to throw in men, arms or ammu- 
 nition." And yet, in spite of this promise, and 
 against the protest of several cabinet officers, 
 of the Commander-in-Chief of the army, and 
 of Major Anderson himself, a squadron of 
 eleven vessels with twenty-six guns and 2,400 
 men had been ordered by Lincoln to be ready to 
 sail on April the sixth and appeared off the 
 mouth of Charleston Harbor on April nth, but 
 was prevented from entering by a storm. The 
 news of the conning fleet having reached the 
 Confederate Government, it sought to obtain 
 possession of Sumter before the reinforce- 
 ments reached it, and April nth was spent 
 in dispatches between Major Anderson and 
 General Beauregard, in which the latter 
 asked the evacuation of the fort, and offered 
 every facility for the removal of men, and 
 arms and property. The former regretted 
 that "sense of honor, and of obligation to my 
 Government, prevents compliance," and sent 
 
154 Lee and His Cause 
 
 thanks for what he calls "the fair, manly, 
 courteous terms proposed and for the high 
 compliment to me." April 12th, expecting 
 the fleet any moment to enter the Harbor, 
 Beauregard sent word to Anderson that he 
 would open fire. Thus the South fired the first 
 gun. The student of the above facts will 
 judge for himself, who began the war, and 
 whether or not, it was treason and rebellion or 
 necessary self-defense. Hallam, the great 
 English Historian, says — ''The aggressor in 
 war, that is, he who begins it, is not the first 
 who uses force, but the first who renders force 
 necessary." 
 
 To aid my hearer's judgment, and to vindi- 
 cate my countrymen now gone to the bar of 
 God, I here recite one additional fact as evi- 
 dence, from the lips of a witness never 
 impeached, and upon authority that will not 
 be questioned. In his "Life of Lee," Dr. H. 
 A. White of the Washington and Lee Uni- 
 versity, notes the fact that, "an ordinance of 
 secession submitted to the Virginia Conven- 
 tion, March 17th, was rejected by a vote of 
 ninety to forty-five." Just two to one against 
 it. The new President, the successor in the 
 seat of Washington, requested at once an in- 
 
Lee and His Cause 155 
 
 terview with some representative of the Con- 
 vention. On April 4th, Mr. J. B. Baldwin, 
 President of the Convention, and who had voted 
 against the secession of Virginia, on March 
 I /th, was sent to Washington and had a confer- 
 ence with Lincoln. He was greeted by the 
 President with the assertion that he had come 
 too late. So he has stated under oath. Lin- 
 coln would not listen to his pleadings that he 
 should yield the Southern forts, and so pre- 
 serve peace. Now remember this — On April 
 4th, Lincoln declares — ''It is too late/' But 
 on April 7th, his Secretary of State, Seward 
 being urged in writing by Judge Campbell to 
 say whether the assurances so often given the 
 Commissioners were well or ill founded (as to 
 the removal of the garrison from Sumter), 
 replied in writing — 'Taith as to Sumter fully 
 kept. Wait and see." The question is who 
 told the truth? Light is thrown on it by other 
 undeniable statements and facts of record. The 
 next day, an official note, unsigned and un- 
 dated, was handed Governor Pickens in Char- 
 leston, South Carolina, by Mr. Chew, of the 
 State Department at Washington, who said 
 that it was from Lincoln, and had been given to 
 
156 Lee and His Cause 
 
 him by the President of the United States, on 
 April 6th, or only a day before the assurance of 
 Seward that, as to Sumter, "faith would be 
 fully kept." The paper said — "I am directed 
 by the President of the United States to 
 notify you to expect an attempt will be made 
 to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only: 
 and that, if such an attempt be not resisted, 
 no effort to throw in men, arms or ammunition 
 will be made without further notice, or in case 
 of an attack upon the fort." This shows 
 clearly that Lincoln told the truth to Mr. Bald- 
 win on April 4th in saying that "It is too late." 
 He had already ordered the invasion of Charles- 
 ton harbor by armed men and ships. 
 
 Here is disclosed a scheme to gain time by 
 misleading the Confederates until an armed 
 fleet fully provisioned could be sent into the 
 Charleston Harbor to supply and reinforce the 
 little garrison. The President played his part, 
 and the Secretary played his, and one seems 
 about as honest and honorable as the other. 
 But, my hearer, "wait and see!" On the 12th 
 of April, a second Committee was sent from 
 Richmond to see the President, and ascertain 
 definitely his policy. On the 14th day of April, 
 Mr. Lincoln's reply in writing to the Com- 
 
Lee and His Cause 157 
 
 mittee was "distinctly pacific and he expressly 
 disclaimed all purpose of war." The next 
 day, the Committee left for Richmond, and the 
 same train that bore them took also Lincoln's 
 requisition upon the Governors of the States 
 for an army of 75,000 men to subjugate the 
 South ! Now, here is Lincoln giving per- 
 sonal assurance of "pacific" intentions — dis- 
 claiming expressly all purpose of war, on April 
 14th — when on April 6th, he had sent Gov- 
 ernor Pickens word that an attempt to pro- 
 vision Sumter would be made, and on April 
 1 2th, the hostile Federal fleet of eleven vessels, 
 twenty-six guns, and 2,400 men were just out- 
 side the harbor and coming in ! Did it require 
 all those men and cannon to land the bread- 
 stuffs for sixty-three soldiers, or were they 
 sent to garrison and hold the fort against the 
 city and State for whose defense it had been 
 built and equipped ? 
 
IV. 
 
 A PEOPLE HAS BUT ONE DANGEROUS ENEMY, AND THAT IS 
 
 Government. — Saint Just, France, A. D., 1793. 
 
 ) 
 IT WAS A GREAT WAR. 
 
 Careful and competent judges (one a Cabi- 
 net member, Secretary Shaw, of the United 
 States Treasury) tell us that there were, during 
 the four years, three thousand, one hundred 
 and twenty, conflicts of arms! "The total 
 cost of the Civil War has been moderately es- 
 timated at $8,000,000,000. In addition to 
 which the Government spent $800,000,000, 
 mainly in war expenses, and large outlays 
 were made by States, whilst the property de- 
 stroyed is beyond computation." (Encyclo- 
 pedia of United States History). "This esti- 
 mate, Doctor Deering, is not heavy enough, 
 because it included an estimate of only $1,500,- 
 000,000 for pensions. The official figures, 
 which I furnish, show that the pensions 
 aggregated almost twice that sum." If, then, 
 
Lee and His Cause 159 
 
 we may trust this experienced and very pains- 
 taking official in Washington, and if we add 
 his pension figures, we have the justly esti- 
 mated cost of our ''late unpleasantness" — 
 
 NINE AND A HALF BILLIONS. Now, sinCC 
 
 nobody can comprehend such a sum — let it 
 pass ! The money is gone anyway ! 
 
 In the area that it overspread, in the popu- 
 lations it embraced, in the men it enlisted, in 
 the money it cost, in the battles that w^ere 
 fought, in the lives that it sacrificed, in the 
 questions that it settled, in the problems that it 
 created, in the burdens that it imposed upon 
 the black man, in the emancipation that it 
 brought to the Southern white people, in the 
 misery and poverty into which it plunged mil- 
 lions, in. the wealth that it bestowed upon a 
 favored few, in the antagonisms that it left 
 for us and our children, it has earned a title to 
 its greatness that will never be disputed while 
 sun and moon endure! A single item of its 
 expense remains and recurs, from year to year, 
 as a reminder of what no man can ever fully 
 understand, namely $145,937,000 — the pres- 
 ent yearly outlay for pensions, of one side 
 only, and that after forty-two years have 
 passed away. The total expenditure for pen- 
 
i6o Lee and His Cause 
 
 sions alone has reached the enormous sum 
 of $3,545,377,806.60, and no seer can see 
 the end ! This sum is more by $258,527,243.60 
 than was the cost of both the Army and 
 Navy during the whole conflict. Yet legis- 
 lation in this direction seems scarce be- 
 gun. There were added to the rolls of pen- 
 sioners last year — 34,974 names; and this 
 year, under the ''Service Pension Law," just 
 enacted, it is estimated that 100,000 more 
 people will be cared for by "the best Govern- 
 ment that the world ever saw." The Govern- 
 ment's estimate of this increase annually is 
 $10,414,400. 
 
 There are now, forty-two years after the 
 war's close, 666,345 soldier's names on the pen- 
 sion rolls. This is a longer line than the South 
 had in all the years of the war. If the United 
 States had bought and set free all the slaves on 
 the American continent, and in Africa, and the 
 islands of the sea, and had never shot a gun, or 
 dug a grave, or builded a prison, or broken a 
 heart, or pillaged a city, or burned a home, or 
 laid waste an acre, how tremendous the saving 
 would have been ! Think ! The estimated value, 
 at the outbreak of the war, of all the slaves held 
 in all our territory was only $2,000,000,000, 
 
Lee and His Cause i6i 
 
 and to free them, without law, we came out of 
 the struggle with a debt, on August 31st, 1865, 
 according to the Government bookkeeper's re- 
 port, of $2,845,907,626.56 — ^so that, it is clear, 
 we might have bought and freed every slave, 
 paid the bill in cash, and had left a balance of 
 $845,907,626.56. That would have been a 
 mountain of money, not to speak of the brains, 
 blood, hearts, homes, lives, labors, energies, 
 materials, and everything else saved! Verily, 
 the war wasn't a very economical transaction ! 
 One general, who commanded in one march, 
 through two or three States, confessed that, 
 his spoils and conflagrations "amounted to 
 $100,000,000. Of this, $20,000,000 inured 
 to our benefit, and the rest was mere waste and 
 destruction" — so said Sherman. That was in 
 Georgia and the Carolinas. Poor Virginia, 
 Mother of States and of Statesmen, no man 
 has ever had the courage to count up thy costs. 
 In one of thy valleys, seventy mills full of 
 grain, with 2,000 barns containing farming 
 implements, were fired to furnish light for the 
 retreating invaders ! It is no wonder that the 
 cruel commander could report to his superior, 
 ''The next crow that Hies over the Valley must 
 carry his own rations." The marvel is that, 
 
1 62 Lee and His Cause 
 
 any American commander could be so savage, 
 so utterly heartless, as to authorize such de- 
 struction ! That Sherman left a swath of 
 blight and fire, and ruins and bones, from forty 
 to sixty miles wide, and reaching through three 
 broad commonwealths makes us marvel at 
 man's inhumanity to man! In its wicked and 
 awful rage, Sherman's army was more cruel 
 than fire, or famine or plague — for fire spared 
 people; famine spared property; plague spared 
 both food and property ; that army spared noth- 
 ing; it left a desert without an oasis and almost 
 without life. And besides Sherman's, there 
 were Sheridan's and Hunter's ravages, as fear- 
 ful as fire could make them! Enough, the 
 story is unbearable! General Bradley John- 
 son says, 'The face of the country was so 
 changed that one born in it could scarcely 
 recognize it." 
 
 It was a wicked and cruel war, yet not 
 wholly bad or fought in vain. It had a 
 brighter side — the Southern side. Lee's ad- 
 dress to his advancing army at Chambersburg, 
 Pennsylvania, made the statement that "civili- 
 zation and Christianity would not allow re- 
 taliation upon enemies. It must be remem- 
 bered that we make war only upon armed men, 
 
Lee and His Cause 163 
 
 and that we cannot take vengeance for the 
 wrongs our people have suffered, without 
 lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose 
 abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of 
 our enemies, and offending against Him to 
 whom vengeance belongeth, without whose 
 favor and support, our efforts must all prove 
 in vain." We are given the effect of this 
 order by Mr. Charles F. Adams, of Boston, in 
 his New York address, January 26th, 1903. 
 "In scope and spirit Lee's order was observed, 
 and I doubt if a hostile force ever advanced in 
 an enemy's country, or fell back from it in re- 
 treat, leaving behind it less cause for hate and 
 bitterness than did the Army of Northern 
 Virginia." Remembering that this gentleman 
 was an officer in the army of General Grant, 
 we could hardly wish for a better witness. 
 But he speaks the bare truth, nothing more. 
 A Union citizen who lived in Danville, Ken- 
 tucky, when Bragg's army passed through it, 
 told me that his soldiers did not take the apples 
 ripe in his orchard. It is said that Bragg had 
 some soldiers shot for stealing chickens. My 
 captain made me return to a prisoner his old 
 hat; wouldn't allow the swap; and he once 
 ordered me to ride my horse "until he falls," 
 
164 Lee and His Cause 
 
 rather than "jDress" one on the march to risk 
 being captured rather than swap a tired horse 
 for a fresh one ! Such was the spirit and dis- 
 cipHne of the Southern soldiers. 
 
 And the war had its compensations. It 
 wrought in us, and for us, some things that 
 nothing else could. It made us a better and a 
 greater people; it brought men nearer to God, 
 and made women more like Christ; it showed 
 human nature at its best, and grace in her 
 divinest form. Faith worked by love, and the 
 faith we had in God, and Joe Johnston, and 
 the Army of Northern Virginia, knew no 
 bounds. Hope was never so heavenly. We 
 realized the truth — "A man's life consisteth 
 not in the abundance of the things which he 
 possesseth." We had little to eat, and less to 
 drink, and nearly nothing to wear, but what 
 we were going to have "when this cruel war 
 is over" would have satisfied King Croesus 
 himself! Charity never failed us, patience 
 had her perfect work; self-denial was glorified 
 before our very eyes. The spirit of sympathy 
 and helpfulness spread over the land. Every 
 man was his ''brother's keeper." Most things 
 were done or endured for the public good. 
 We "had all things common" — except tea and 
 
Lee and His Cause 165 
 
 coffee, of which there wasn't enough to be 
 divided. Tobacco and toilet soap were about 
 the only things a man might not beg, borrow 
 or steal. We were at our best and approxi- 
 mated the Christ life. We lived and moved 
 and had our being for Dixie and Independ- 
 ence. The fires of patriotism never burned 
 more intensely in Revolutionary times, or on 
 Grecian altars. We forgot the fashions, 
 threw away useless purses and grew rich in 
 noble examples and self-sacrificing deeds. 
 We came home worn and weary, hungry and 
 ragged, broken in health and bankrupt in 
 everything, but we gave the world our Lees 
 and Davis, and the mighty "Stonewall," with 
 the Hills, and Johnstones, and Helm, and 
 Hanson, and Stuart, and Forrest, and 
 Morgan, and Breckinridge, and Admiral 
 Semmes, and Private Sam Davis, the "Boy 
 Martyr" of Tennessee! No money could buy 
 these immortal names; no historic doubts can 
 blacken them or cause us to forget. The war 
 made us a solid South, a self-reliant, self-re- 
 specting people. We stand together, and will 
 stand in the face of creation, and we feel "the 
 satisfaction that proceeds from the conscious- 
 ness of duty faithfully performed." For my- 
 
1 66 Lee and His Cause 
 
 self, I would not barter that for all Kentucky ! 
 I have been ashamed of many things in my 
 life, but the recollection of my course as a Con- 
 federate soldier has been for forty years, my 
 chief joy and pride! If ever I was fit to live 
 or willing to die, if ever I was worthy of my 
 father's name or my mother's blood, if ever I 
 was pleased with my place, suited to my rank, 
 or satisfied with my sinful self — it must have 
 been whilst I was marching under that white- 
 starred cross upon that blood-red banner 
 against the invaders of my native Southland. 
 For that I want no forgiveness in this world 
 or the next. I can adopt the saying of my 
 great Commander, General Lee : "If all were 
 to be done over again, I should act in precisely 
 the same manner ; I could have taken no other 
 course without dishonor." 
 
V. 
 
 The greatest friend of Truth is Time : her greatest 
 ENEMY IS Prejudice, and her constant companion is 
 Humility. — Charles Caleb Colton, "Lacon," 1820, A. D. 
 
 IT WAS A HOPELESS WAR. 
 
 General Lee said to General Pendleton, a 
 day or two before the surrender, "I never be- 
 lieved that we could, against the gigantic com- 
 bination for our subjugation, make good in 
 the long run our Independence, unless foreign 
 powers should directly or indirectly assist us. 
 But such considerations really made with me 
 no difference. If all were to be done over 
 again, I should act in precisely the same man- 
 ner. I could have taken no other course 
 without dishonor." 
 
 Comrades, how could 650,000 town-men 
 and country boys contend successfully against 
 2,987,776 Federal soldiers and sailors — an 
 host containing 2,128,304 men more than 
 Dixie ever enlisted? Lacking only 12,224, it 
 was a mass of 3,000,000 men. Yet it took 
 
1 68 Lee and His Cause 
 
 more than four and a quarter Yankee soldiers 
 four full years to whip each Confederate! It 
 was 7,652,335 Southern people against 23, 785,- 
 722 Northern, with our 4,000,000 slaves in the 
 rear to plot and spy, to deceive, distract and 
 devour us. And this estimate must be reduced 
 by 3,000,000 Unionists of the Border States. 
 It was these things that made us desperate. 
 The war was hopeless also for lack of ships, 
 and by reason of the blockade that shut out 
 every resource from abroad. It was hopeless 
 for lack of rail transportation, which let our 
 food rot in piles in Georgia, while Lee's 
 legions were starving in the trenches in 
 Virginia. Our Commander-in-Chief allowed 
 himself "but two small rations of meat a 
 week." No bread or bacon at Amelia Court 
 House compelled the surrender at Appomat- 
 tox. It was hopeless for lack of arms. At 
 Manassas, a John Brown pike was handed out 
 instead of a Mauser rifle. When at McMinn- 
 ville, I asked General Morgan for arms, he 
 pointed to the Yankee camp and bade me help 
 myself. For horse, I rode a sore-back, 
 broken-down "plug;" for bridle, I had a halter; 
 for saddle, a naked "tree;" for stirrups, a loop 
 
Lee and His Cause 169 
 
 of rope; and I went into my first fight with a 
 single cartridge and some mental reservation. 
 
 It was hopeless through Grant's refusal to 
 exchange prisoners; a refusal made through 
 General B. F. Butler to General Lee's proposal 
 of exchange, 'Svith a view of alleviating the 
 sufferings of our soldiers" — made for General 
 Grant, to whom, of course, it was submitted — 
 a refusal made by the most offensive man and 
 in the most offensive form possible, in the 
 shape of an argument by Butler to obtain rec- 
 ognition of negro equality for some colored 
 soldiers captured and confined by the Confed- 
 erates. This subject was introduced and 
 shrewdly handled with the intention of insult- 
 ing the Southern Commander and his soldiers, 
 so as to preclude all possibility of an exchange 
 of white prisoners. That such was its design, 
 Butler confessed before a Congressional com- 
 mittee, in his official report, and he testifies 
 ''that it was for the purpose of carrying out the 
 wishes of the Lieutenant-General commanding 
 that no prisoners of war should be exchanged." 
 
 Commissioner Ould, after several conferen- 
 ces with Butler over the matter, says, "We 
 had reached what we both thought a tolerably 
 satisfactory basis." But when Grant came the 
 
170 Lee and His Cause 
 
 next day, he gave Butler "the most emphatic 
 verbal directions not to take any step by w^hich 
 another able-bodied man should be exchanged 
 until further orders from him." In his official 
 report, Butler says, "I wrote an argument 
 showing our right to our colored soldiers. 
 This argument set forth our claims in the most 
 offensive form possible, consistently with ordi- 
 nary courtesy of language." The scheme suc- 
 ceeded. Lee declined to exchange, except 
 "upon the basis established by the cartel." This 
 never had contained any recognition of runa- 
 way slaves as soldiers. 
 
 When afterwards General Lee called on 
 President Davis to tell him the result of his at- 
 tempt, and had, says Mr. Davis, listened to the 
 expression of my bitter disappointment, he 
 said — "We have done everything in our power 
 to mitigate the suffering of prisoners and there 
 is no just cause of further responsibility on our 
 part." 
 
 In a dispatch to Butler, Grant tries to justi- 
 fy his refusal by saying, "On the subject of 
 exchange, I differ from General Hitchcock. It 
 is hard on our men held in Southern prisons 
 not to exchange them, but it is humanity to 
 those left in the ranks, to fight our battles. 
 
Lee and His Cause 171 
 
 Every man, released on parole or otherwise, 
 becomes an active soldier against us at once, 
 either directly or indirectly. If we commence 
 a system of exchange, which liberates all pris- 
 oners taken, wie will have to fight on until the 
 whole South is exterminated. If we hold 
 those caught, they amount to no more than 
 dead men. At this particular time, to release 
 all prisoners North would insure Sherman's 
 defeat, and would compromise our safety 
 here." This humiliating official confession is 
 dated, "City Point, August 18, 1864." 
 
 Another effort made by the Confederate 
 Government was to obtain the exchange of 
 "officer for officer, and man for man," regard- 
 less of "the excess" which the cartel contem- 
 plated and comprehended. This offer was not 
 noticed at all, although it would have turned 
 loose every Yankee in our prisons ! The next 
 proposal made by the Southern side was to 
 send the United States authorities "their sick 
 and wounded without requiring any equiva- 
 lents." This was but partially carried out, 
 because, although attempted in the summer, 
 the enemy sent no transportation for their 
 poor diseased soldiers until November, when 
 our people, unable to move the sick and 
 
172 Lee and His Cause 
 
 wounded from distant places, "substituted 
 5,000 well men." In return, about 3,000 of our 
 wounded boys were sent to us, the other 500 
 who started having- died on the journey. For 
 sound men the enemy would willingly have 
 given us those dying ones. 
 
 It should be remembered also that in con- 
 sequence of the sickness and suffering among 
 the Yankee prisoners, owing to confine- 
 ment, climate, scarcity of good food, and 
 lack of proper medicines, our Commissioner, 
 Mr. Ould, offered to buy with gold, cotton or 
 tobacco, the needed drugs from the Federal 
 authorities, "at even two or three prices, if 
 required," and assured them, that the medicines 
 would be used exclusively for the treatment of 
 Union prisoners." He also agreed, if it were 
 desired, that such remedies might be brought 
 to, and distributed among the sufferers by 
 United States' surgeons. President Davis 
 says, — "Incredible as it may appear, it is nev- 
 ertheless, strictly true that no reply was ever 
 received to this offer." 
 
 Mercy might well have given up with such 
 a repulse, but one more heroic attempt Avias put 
 forth. Mr. Davis sent from the prisoners at 
 Andersonville a delegation of four men to 
 
Lee and His Cause 173 
 
 Washington to try if their personal presence 
 and pleading could soften the official heart, 
 and set the captives free. Mr. Lincoln wouldn't 
 even see them, and they returned, as they had 
 promised, to confinement. There is in Rich- 
 mond, on file, among the papers of the South- 
 ern Historical Society, a letter from the wife 
 of the chairman of that delegation (he is now 
 dead), in which she says that her husband al- 
 ways said that "he was more contemptuously 
 treated by Secretary of War Stanton, than he 
 ever was at Andersonville." 
 
 The refusal of the Federal Government to 
 exchange prisoners was at first based upon its 
 unwillingness to recognize as a belligerent 
 power the Confederate States. In 1861, Gen- 
 eral Grant wrote to General Leonidas Polk, 
 wiho sought of him an exchange^ — "I recognize 
 no 'Southern Confederacy' my self, but will 
 communicate with higher authorities for their 
 views." These 'Views" agreed with Grant's. 
 When on July 2, 1863, Mr. Alexander H. 
 Stephens was sent by President Davis on an 
 errand of mercy to Washington to treat for 
 the release of all prisoners, he was turned back 
 from Fortress Monroe, and his Government 
 scorned as "insurgent" his request was declared 
 
174 Lee and His Cause 
 
 "inadmissible." A "mission of simple human- 
 ity" inadmissible ! Tell it not in Gath ! 
 
 "When "the excess" of captives was in Con- 
 federate hands exchanges and paroles were 
 mutual and easy. The trouble began when the 
 tide turned, and the surrenders at Donaldson 
 and Vicksburg had given the excess to the 
 Northern side. To have exchanged them then 
 would have strengthened us the most. 
 
 Toward the end of the struggle, all excuses 
 and pretenses were boldly cast away and the 
 policy of destroying us by ''depletion'' (Grant's 
 word) openly admitted. All Southern prison- 
 ers must be held and starved and shot to death ; 
 this land must be laid waste, its stores and 
 crops consumed, its homes robbed and burned, 
 its people, old and young, driven into the 
 woods, its flocks and herds devoured or car- 
 ried off, and even its farming implements and 
 granaries given to the flames, so that the com- 
 ing years must be years of famine to such as 
 might outlive the battle and hospital and prison 
 and deportation! We had had "war to the 
 knife, and knife to the hilt," as among savages, 
 but it was too merciful! War must hence- 
 forth be waged against helpless captives, inno- 
 cent children and our defenseless women. 
 
Lee and His Cause 175 
 
 Their food and shelter and all that might make 
 life tolerable must be taken away! In three 
 pregnant sentences Major-General B. F. But- 
 ler avows the poHcy and fastens the responsi- 
 bility of it on the Federal Government. He 
 writes : 
 
 "I have felt it my duty to give an account 
 with this particular carefulness of my parti- 
 cipation in the business of exchange of pris- 
 oners, the orders under which I acted, and the 
 negotiations attempted, which comprise a 
 faithful narration of all that was done, so that 
 all may become a matter of history. The great 
 importance of the questions; the fearful re- 
 sponsibility for the many thousands of lives 
 which, by the refusal to exchange, were sac- 
 rificed by the most cruel forms of death, from 
 cold, starvation, and pestilence of the prison 
 pens in Raleigh and Andersonville, being more 
 than all the British soldiers killed in the 
 wars of Napoleon; the anxiety of fathers, 
 brothers, sisters, mothers, wives, to know the 
 exigency which caused this terrible, and per- 
 haps, as it may seem to them, useless and un- 
 necessary destruction of those dear to them, 
 by horrible deaths, each and all have com- 
 pelled me to this exposition, so that it may be 
 
176 Lee and His Cause 
 
 seen that those Hves were spent as a part of the 
 system of attack upon the rebelHon, devised by 
 the vv^isdom of the General-in-Chief of the 
 armies, to destroy it by depletion, depending 
 upon our superior numbers to win the victory 
 at last. The loyal mourners will doubtless de- 
 rive solace from this fact, and appreciate all 
 the more highly the genius which conceived 
 the plan, and the success won at so great a 
 cost." The "loyal mourners" will never for- 
 give General Grant, in my opinion. 
 
 No wonder that poor Wirz was hung! 
 Somebody had to die ! A scape-goat was never 
 needed more. Unhappy Soul ! to be the vica- 
 rious victim of one's friends would be hard 
 enough, but to have to die for the sins of one's 
 enemies — who can describe that anguish? Of 
 this judicial murder, Alexander H. Stephens, 
 Vice-President, says : — *'The efforts which 
 have been so industriously made to fix the 
 odium of cruelty and barbarity on Mr. Davis 
 and other high officials under the Confederate 
 Government, in the matter of prisoners, in the 
 face of all the facts, constitute one of the blood- 
 iest attempted outrages upon the truth of his- 
 tory which has been essayed; not less than the 
 infamous attempt to fix upon him and other 
 
Lee and His Cause 177 
 
 high officials on the Confederate side, the 
 guih of Mr. Lincoln's assassination. What- 
 ever unnecessary privations and sufferings 
 prisoners on both sides were subjected to, the 
 responsibility rested not upon Mr. Davis or 
 the Confederate authorities. It was the fault 
 of the Federal authorities in not agreeing to 
 and carrying out an immediate exchange, 
 which Mr. Davis was at all times anxious to 
 do. The men at the head of affairs at Wash- 
 ington were solely responsible for all these 
 sufferings. Neither Libby nor Belle Isle, nor 
 Salisbury nor Andersonville, would have had 
 a groaning prisoner of war but for the refusal 
 of the Federal authorities to comply with the 
 earnest desire of the Richmond Government for 
 an immediate exchange upon the most liberal 
 and humane principles." 
 
 As to the treatment of prisoners in our 
 hands, Mr. Stephens is just as clear and 
 strong. He declares that they shared equally 
 with the Confederate soldiers whatever there 
 was to be had. I myself happen to know that 
 in Georgia the produce of "the tax in kind" 
 stored in Government warehouses was divided 
 into equal parts, and one part sent to the Con- 
 federate soldiers and the other part to the 
 
178 Lee and His Cause 
 
 Yankee prisoner, at Andersonville. They had 
 what we had — share and share ahke. When 
 told by his Commissary General that the sup- 
 plies were so short that rations for either the 
 Confederate soldier or Yankee prisoners must 
 be reduced; Lee said, "While I have no au- 
 thority in the case, my desire is that the pris- 
 oners shall have equal rations with my men." 
 There is, however, no use to quote any man, 
 when we have official returns of the United 
 States Surgeon General Barnes showing that 
 a much greater number of Confederates died 
 in Northern prisons than of Federals in South- 
 ern stockades; and this in spite of the fact 
 that we held 50,000 more Federals in captivity 
 than the Yankee had of our soldiers. In 
 round numbers they had only 220,000 Confed- 
 erates; we held 270,000 Federals. Of these 
 only 22,^y6 died on our hands; whilst, of the 
 220,000 men held in Northern prisons, 26,436 
 died. In other words, with about 50,000 more 
 prisoners to feed and guard we had a loss of 
 nearly 4,000 less than the Union people lost 
 of our men." "The per cent, of Federal deaths 
 was under nine in Southern prisons : the per 
 cent, of Confederate deaths in Yankee prisons 
 was over twelve!' And that, too with the mar- 
 
Lee and His Cause 179 
 
 kets of the world open to them for all needed 
 supplies, and their bank-vaults full to overflow- 
 ing with gold and greenbacks with which to 
 purchase! Query; If in our poverty, we 
 saved three per cent, more lives than they, what 
 per cent, might they have saved through their 
 wealth, if they had been willing? 
 
 Repeated efforts have been made to disprove, 
 or somehow dispose of, these official figures of 
 Surgeon General Barnes. They are so con- 
 vincing and cruelly condemnatory that they can- 
 not be endured. Unfortunately for our friends, 
 the enemy, their shame and the attempt to hide 
 it came all too late. The report of Dr. Barnes 
 is quoted by Vice-President A. H. Stevens, in 
 his great volume — '^The War Between the 
 States." And it has editorial mention in ''The 
 National Intelligencer" of Washington, June 2, 
 1869. No such report can now be found! 
 Nor is any knowledge of its existence admitted 
 by any Department of the Government. Its 
 disappearance is a mystery, but one not so hard 
 to explain as the frequent reference to it by 
 Southern orators who couldn't have seen what 
 never existed. And the failure of Northern 
 speakers and writers to deny its damaging 
 
i8o Lee and His Cause 
 
 showing" for many years is even more a mys- 
 tery. When Ben Hill quoted it in 1876 in 
 U. S. Senate, why was it not questioned? 
 Whyf 
 
 The war was hopeless for want of revenue, 
 credit and a sound currency ; for want of mines 
 and manufactories ; for lack of sailors and ships 
 of war with which to keep open our ports and 
 closed our river-g-ates, and for lack of almost 
 all that enters intO' the business of aggressive 
 warfare. It was hopeless for want of ma- 
 terials, of skilled mechanics, suitable shops, 
 blankets, clothing, shoes, medicines, salt, lead, 
 iron, copper, leather, sulphur, saltpetre and 
 anesthetics. I have seen trains loaded with 
 ammunition and soldiers stopped for want of 
 axle grease. We fought hunger and sickness, 
 cold and nakedness. On the Rapidan, Lee had 
 a thousand men without a blanket and 3,000 
 hatless, barefooted fellows in the snow at one 
 time; but we tightened our belts, gritted our 
 teeth, and held on to hope. The last charge 
 at Appomattox was as gallant as the first at 
 Manastsas. We had pride and patriotism to 
 spare, but we couldn't feed the living, or raise 
 again our dead ! — And so, -cc;^ failed! We sank 
 in sorrow and sheer exhaustion, but not in 
 
Lee and His Cause i8i 
 
 shame. General Stephen D. Lee says: "We 
 fought until about half of our enlisted strength 
 was under the sod." And this enlisted strength 
 was not near so great as many have imagined. 
 Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of 
 War, says, in the American Cyclopedia (1875) 
 "The Adjutant-General S. Cooper of C. S. 
 Army estimates the entire available Confeder- 
 ate forces capable of active services in the field 
 Was 600,000 men, and not more than 400,000 
 were enrolled at any one time. The Confed- 
 erate States never had in the field at once more 
 than 200,000 men." (See Volume V, page 
 232. ) Here we rest our Cause ! 
 
 Boys, you loved it well, and stood by it to 
 the end ! God bless you for it ! You will re- 
 ceive to-night, from the fair hands of Our 
 Confederate Women, the bronze CROSS OF 
 HONOR. It will perish, but not the sweet sat- 
 isfaction of having done your duty, nor the 
 blessed consciousness of having been in the 
 right! Good-night, Comrades, Good-night! 
 
 "Heroic deeds are deathless ; and they live 
 Unmarked whilst Empires crumble into dust, 
 
 They master fame, and life and glory give 
 To storied urn and animated bust." 
 
SOURCES 
 
 "General Lee, by Fitzhngh Lee," his nephew 
 and cavalry commander. 
 
 "Robert E. Lee and the Southern Confed- 
 eracy, by Henry A. White, M. A., D. D., 
 Ph. D." 
 
 "Recollections and Letters of R. E. Lee, by 
 Robert E. Lee, Jr." 
 
 "Personal Reminiscences of General R. E. 
 Lee, by Rev. Dr. J. Wm. Jones, Chaplain A. 
 N. Va." 
 
 "Genesis of the Civil War, by Major-General 
 S. W. Crawford, U. S. A." 
 
 "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govern- 
 ment, by Jefferson Davis." 
 
 "Is Davis a Traitor? by Albert Taylor Bled- 
 soe, A. M., LL. D., late a Professor of the 
 University of Virginia." 
 
 "The Southern States of the American 
 Union, by J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., etc." 
 
 "A View of the Constitution of the United 
 States of America, by Wm. Rawle, LL. D., 
 Philadelphia, 1825." 
 
Lee and His Cause 183 
 
 "The True History of the Civil War, by Guy 
 Carleton Lee, Ph. D., of the Johns Hopkins 
 University.-' 
 
 "Service Afloat, by Admiral Raphael 
 Semmes, of the Confederate States Navy." 
 
 "A School History of the United States, by 
 Susan Pendleton Lee." 
 
 ''Confederate Veteran, Official Organ of the 
 U. C. V. ; Sons of U. C. V. ; Daughters of the 
 Confederacy; by S. A. Cunningham, late of 
 Army of Tennessee," Nashville, Tenn., A. D. 
 1 892- 1 907. This able, beautiful and invaluable 
 magazine may be seen in ten thousand Southern 
 homes, where it enjoys the preference and 
 deserves the honor of all Dixie's defenders over 
 its periodical rivals. The first of its class, and 
 the best! 
 
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