“I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.“
- Robert E. Lee, 1866
That sounds fine but the fact remains that Lee had just spent four years fighting for the greatest tyranny the nation had ever seen, the Slave Power. There was no fighting for freedom or states rights or any of the high-sounding rhetoric that has been raised to defend the RAT Rebellion. Slavers frankly stated that they were fighting for slavery. The right to hold slaves was their principal concern.