ed Mr. Lincoln's
Government to secure Lee at any price, alleging he "would be worth
fifty thousand men to them." His valuable services were duly
recognized at Washington by more than one step of brevet promotion: he
obtained the rank of colonel and was given command of a cavalry
regiment shortly afterward.

I must now pass to the most important epoch of his life, when the
Southern States left the Union and set up a government of their own.
Mr. Lincoln was in 1860 elected President of the United States in the
abolitionist interest. Both parties were so angry that thoughtful men
soon began to see that war alone could end this bitter dispute.
Shipwreck was before the vessel of state which General Washington had
built and guided with so much care during his long and hard-fought
contest. Civil war stared the American citizen in the face, and Lee's
heart was well-nigh broken at the prospect. Early in 1861 the seven
Cotton States passed acts declaring their withdrawal from the Union,
and their establishment of an independent republic, under the title of
"The Confederate States of America." This declaration of independence
was in reality a revolution; war alone could ever bring all the States
together.

Lee viewed this secession with horror. Until the month of April, when
Virginia, his own dearly cherished State, joined the Confederacy, he
clung fondly to the hope that the gulf which separated the North from
the South might yet be bridged over. He believed the dissolution of
the Union to be a dire calamity not only for his own country, but for
civilization and all mankind. "Still," he said, "a Union that can only
be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil
war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm
for me." In common with all Southerners he firmly believed that each
of the old States had a legal and indisputable right, by its
individual constitution, and by its act of union, to leave at will the
great Union into which each had separately entered as a sovereign
State. This was with him an article of faith of which he was as sure
as of any divine truths he found in the Bible. This fact must be kept
always in mind by those who would rightly understand his character, or
the course he pursued in 1861. He loved the Union for which his father
and family in the previous century had fought so hard and done so
much. But he loved his own State still more. She was the sovereign to
whom