Robert
E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given
this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have
honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence
to show _that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United
States Military Academy_.
Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the
Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his
published statements. He writes:
Secession was legal _theoretically_, but practically the conditions
on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little
strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not
possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which
these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.
"Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade
on the journey"--to paraphrase Goldsmith--and the only way in which
these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and
bayonet, which settled them right and finally.
Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will
be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being
over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any
circumstances, use the phrase "you-all" in the singular.
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