On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without warseeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
As a Southerner I’m glad the Union was preserved.
Two separate nations would have weakened us and showed the world that a nation dedicated to all men being equal was just a pipe dream.
Still, I humbly acknowledge and honor the bravery, dedication and devotion to duty of all and every Confederate soldier.
None of my “Piney Woods” people owned slaves nor supported slavery but were ardent in defending their country—meaning their State.
Had Lincoln lived, things would have been much better for the Southern people.
A deep, pervading sadness should affect us all to this day about those events...
Wow, even Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee would disagree with you on that one. They started repeatedly that Lincoln had conciliatory policies towards the south, and were alarmed when they learned he had been assassinated.
Things would have been quite different if a Radical Republican had been in the white house who wanted to punish the south and completely rebuild them from the ground up.
I respect the original confederates a lot more than their modern day neo-confederate counterparts. At least they were honest about Lincoln and the motivation for the war.