”Every brave people who considered their rights attacked and their constitutional liberties invaded, would have done as we did. 

Our conduct was not caused by any insurrectional spirit, nor can it be termed a rebellion; for our construction of the Constitution under which we lived and acted was the same from its adoption, and for eighty years we had been taught and educated by the founders of the Republic, and their written declarations, which controlled our consciences and actions. 

The epithets that have been heaped upon us of “rebels” and “traitors” have no just meaning, nor are they believed in by those who understand the subject, even at the North…” ROBERT E. Lee, Explaining his actions in a postwar letter to R.S. McCulloch