were slower about abolishing slavery than the north had
been. Their slaves were guaranteed to them by the Constitution. The
rising moral sentiment against slavery in the north, which seemed to
them to threaten the abolition of slavery in the south by violence
without regard to the Constitution and without compensation to owners
drove them into war. Their confederacy which they formed was a mere
make-shift to protect millions of dollars worth of slaves. There is no
evidence of any passion for independence among them, such as has
characterized the people already described, and as a matter of fact
there was nothing in their unseparated situation that would cause that
passion.

High strung, intelligent men such as the southerners are, will fight a
long time over millions of dollars worth of slaves, if they think they
are to be suddenly and unfairly deprived of them, but not as they would
fight for independence, for political existence. There was so little
moral righteousness in slavery and they had always known so well its
unrighteousness that when the point of scientific defeat was reached,
when their regularly organized armies were formally defeated they gave
up the game. The inspiration of the cause was not perennial. There was
none of the eternal justness in it which inspired the cause of
Washington and your ancestor, which has kept the Cubans struggling for
thirty years, and the Irish and the Armenians for seven hundred.

General Lee, who, as you say, set the example of giving up, was a man
of peculiar views on the civil war. He was not a believer in slavery. He
described it as a "moral and political evil" and "a greater evil to the
white than to the colored race." He did not even believe in the right of
secession. He spoke of it as an absurdity, and said that it was
impossible to suppose that the framers of the Constitution could have
contemplated anything of the sort. He had great misgivings and much
mental struggle when Virginia seceded and he finally decided to go with
his state because as he put it, "I have not been able to make up my mind
to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home." He cared
little or nothing for the confederacy. It was the invasion of Virginia
against which he fought and he always commanded the army in Virginia.
"Save in defence of my native state," he said, "I hope I may never be
called on to draw my sword."

Such a man easily dropped the contest for the confederacy when the