“But the federal government was not trying to own the states when the secessions started. The secessionists just did not like the outcome of an election held according to the Constitution that their states had agreed to. Like Robert E, Lee and other good southern men, your war casualty ancestor was forced to make a bad choice by the unwise and unnecessary actions of the Dixie power grabbers.”
And just what idiotic revisionist history book did you read this in??
According to Douglas Southall Freeman's classic 1934 biography, Lee's reaction to Virginia's secession was negative:
"I must say," he remarked sadly, "that I am one of those dull creatures that cannot see the good of secession."
Too bad there were not more Lees and less secessionists because Abraham Lincoln would have then peacefully served out his term to the benefit of most Americans, North and South.