Respectfully.........and I don't mean to bump right into this thread, especially today, Gen. Lee's birthday
.........but it always seems to me that MY country did ALL of those things, and a lot more, and even survived a horrendous bloodbath almost like The Terror in France, between itself..brother to brother...just like in the Old world, from whence we came.
(The Constitution).."was 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 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, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution.
.....All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our Forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth."
I find these to be beautiful words, and I think he meant them. Together we helped rid the world of ghastly things overseas. Indians and freed slaves' offspring and determined immigrants here all worked on it together, and bled and suffered immeasureably. We did good.