WHY DID THEY FIGHT...

" My commrades, you and I were companions of the men who fought under this banner, we marched by their side, we were familiar with their thoughts, and we know the principles that animated them in the course which they took in that great crisis of 1861. And therefore we are able to repudiate with authority the assertion that these our brothers fought in that great conflict for four years for the perpetuation of slavery.

No. A thousand times no! These men did not fight for the perpetuation of slavery, but for the preservation of liberty. When they saw, or thought they saw, that the right of self-government was in danger through the usurpations of power, they sprang to arms with the same spirit, with the same patriotism, and animated by the same love of liberty as the men who fought at Lexington, and at Monmouth, at the Cowpens and at Yorktown." Randolph McKim in a post-war speech at the return of a Maryland Confederate battle flag