Lincoln's responsibility.
I have shown that, in the opinion of the people of the border States, the secession of the States that formed that confederation was not warranted by the causes then existing.
But now
Mr. Lincoln had given a new cause, which was worthy of the support of all men who preferred constitutional to arbitrary government.
The questions arising out of the slavery agitation had not united the
Southern people.
A great majority of them did not consider that anything affecting slavery had occurred to call for the extreme remedy of secession.
The desire to dissolve the
Union for the purpose of forming a new Confederacy had not united them.
On the contrary, a controlling majority of them had pronounced against secession for that purpose.
The election of
Mr. Lincoln had not united them, for a like great majority had pronounced against secession for that reason.
But when the proclamation came, with its claim to arbitrary power on the part of the
President, the people of the
South, who were not prevented by force, united almost to a man to defend their free institutions against what they regarded as an attempt to establish a despotic government.
Virginia, as I have said, promptly took her place in opposition to the proclamation.
In the eyes of the people, it was the same place she had taken when George III.
was king, and as in that struggle she placed her sword in the hands of her
Washington, in the impending struggle she committed it to the no less worthy hands of her
Lee.
Such was the actual cause of
Virginia and her sister States, and such the cause in defense of which
Robert Edward Lee drew his stainless sword and won his deathless fame.
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It has been said that the cause of the
South was the worst that any people ever fought for. To those who measure national greatness by the acre, and know no national welfare that does not bear the stamp of the mint, the cause was bad, but not so in the eyes of the children of that holy covenant between the power of the
State and the liberty of the people, the first lines of which were written at
Runnymede, whose leaves are stained with the blood of countless martyrs, and to which the hand of
Washington set the blood-red seal at
Yorktown.
To them the cause was one for which it was an honor to fight and a glory to die.
