236 Southern Historical Society Papers.
disappeared, as did the differences between the advocates and oppo- nents of the measure in the border States.
In a word, the people of all the slave- holding States, or a vast majority of them, were united as one man to defend the principles which they considered to be endangered by the proclamation. I think I did not state the case too strongly when I said that the Con- federacy, which so long resisted the Federal arms, was brought into existence by the act of Mr. Lincoln. The cause of the South was now altogether different from that which was represented by the Montgomery Confederation.
LINCOLN'S RESPONSIBILITY.
I have shown that, in the opinion of the people of the border States, the secession of the States that formed that confederation was not warranted by the causes then existing.
But now Mr. Lincoln had given a new cause, which was worthy of the support of all men who preferred constitutional to arbitrary government.
The questions arising out of the slavery agitation had not united the Southern people. A great majority of them did not consider that anything affecting slavery had occurred to call for the extreme remedy of secession.
The desire to dissolve the Union for the purpose of forming a new Confederacy had not united them. On the contrary, a controlling majority of them had pronounced against secession for that purpose.
The election of Mr. Lincoln had not united them, for a like great majority had pronounced against secession for that reason.
But when the proclamation came, with its claim to arbitrary power on the part of the President, the people of the South, who were not prevented by force, united almost to a man to defend their free insti- tutions against what they regarded as an attempt to establish a despotic government.
Virginia, as I have said, promptly took her place in opposition to the proclamation.
In the eyes of the people, it was the same place she had taken when George IIL was king, and as in that struggle she placed her sword in the hands of her Washington, in the impending struggle she committed it to the no less worthy hands of her Lee.
Such was the actual cause of Virginia and her sister States, and such the cause in defense of which Robert Edward Lee drew his stainless sword and won his deathless fame.
