“I hope therefore that all Constitutional means will be
exhausted, before there is a resort to force.
Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of
our Constitution never exhausted so much labour,
wisdom & forbearance in its formation & surrounded
it with so many guards & securities, if it was
intended to be broken by every member of the
confederacy at will. It was intended for perpetual
[sic] union, so expressed in the preamble,4 & 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 & not a government, by
Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison & the
other patriots of the Revolution. In 1808 when the
New England States resisted Mr Jeffersons Imbargo
law & the Hartford Convention assembled secession
was termed treason by Virga statesmen. What can it
be now?” — Robert Lee, letter to his son Custis, January 1861.
Robert E. Lee