m was six years, and a president
could not be re-elected. This constitution, having been ratified by five
or more legislatures, was set in play by the provisional Congress.
Virginia on seceding was taken into the Confederacy, and the Confederate
capital changed from Montgomery to Richmond.

Lee was a Virginian, and Virginia, about to secede and at length
seceding, in most earnest tones besought her distinguished son to join
her. It seemed to him the call of duty, and that call, as he understood
it, was one which it was not in him to disobey. President Lincoln knew
the value of the man, and sent Frank Blair to him to say that if he
would abide by the Union he should soon command the whole active army.
That would probably have meant his election, in due time, to the
presidency of his country. "For God's sake, don't resign, Lee!" General
Scott--himself a Virginian--is said to have pleaded. He replied: "I am
compelled to; I cannot consult my own feelings in the matter."
Accordingly, on April 20, 1861, three days after Virginia passed its
ordinance of secession, Lee sent to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War,
his resignation as an officer in the United States army.

Few at the North were able to understand the Secession movement, most
denying that a man at once thoughtful and honorable could join in it. So
centralized had the North by 1861 become in all social and economic
particulars, that centrality in government was taken as a matter of
course. Representing this, the Nation was deemed paramount to any State.
Governmental sovereignty, like travel and trade, had come to ignore
State lines. The whole idea and feeling of State-sovereignty, once as
potent North as South, had vanished and been forgotten.

Far otherwise at the South, where, owing to the great size of States and
to the paucity of railways and telegraphs, interstate association was
not yet a force. Each State, being in square miles ample enough for an
empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent
nation. The State was near and palpable; the central government seemed a
vague and distant thing. Loyalty was conceived as binding one primarily
to one's own State.

It is a misconception to explain this feeling--for in most cases it was
feeling rather than reasoned conviction--by Calhoun's teaching. It
resulted from geography and history, and, these factors working as they
did, would have been what it was had Calhoun never lived.

With reflecti