Lee on secession.
It is of this secession that
General Lee wrote from
Fort Mason, Texas, on the 23d of January, 1861.
He says:
‘The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the
North, as you say. I feel the aggression, and am willing to take every proper step for redress.
It is the principle I contend for, not individual or private benefit.
As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and her institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded.
But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the
Union.
It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation.
I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force.
Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it were intended to be broken by every member of the
Confederacy at will. It is intended for perpetual union, so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government (not a compact) which can only be dissolved by revolution, or by the consent of all the people in convention assembled.
It is idle to talk of secession.
Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by
Washington,
Hamilton,
Madison, and all the other patriots of the Revolution.
Still an Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charms for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind.
If the
Union is dissolved and the government
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disrupted I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense, will draw my sword no more.’
This letter was written with reference to the secession of some of the cotton States on account of the election of
Mr. Lincoln, and it expresses the views of the great majority of the people of
Virginia at that time on that subject—views which were concurred in by large majorities in all the border slave States, and, as we shall see, by large minorities in the cotton States themselves.
The opinion expressed in the letter, that secession should only be resorted to as a revolutionary measure, after every pacific and constitutional means of composing the difficulties that beset the country had been exhausted, and the feeling of attachment to the
Union itself as preferable to any other government that could be established, provided the government of the
Union itself should be placed upon the foundation of justice and equity, expressed the almost unanimous sentiment of the people of the border slave States and of a very large minority of those of the cotton States.
