[rockrr]

“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.”

Robert E. Lee

[Lee'sGhost]

Always love it when folks point out that Southern secession was nothing more than a second Revolutionary War...with Southern states trying to reclaim the balance of power originally afforded to states.

Good post. Thanks.

[central_va]

"The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers."

-- U. S. Grant