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There are a couple of matters that need to be touched on.
1. Robert E. Lee did not betray his oath as an officer. He resigned his commission and returned home. Only when President Lincoln called for 100,000 volunteer and it became obvious that federal troops would invade Virginia did Lee take up the sword, in defense of his state. You need to remember that the feeling of most Southerners (and the original intent of the Constitution) was for strong states and limited federal government.

2. Robert E. Lee, and many other Christian men in the South had no love for slavery. In fact, Lee freed his slaves and Stonewall Jackson was opposed to slavery.

3. The South fought a losing battle against encroaching federal power. I feel far more kinship with those men than Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.

We are soon reaching the point when there will have to be another stand taken again federal power. Let us pray that this one will be peaceful.

A truly EXCELLENT post, Sir! For years, I have been drawn into these exchanges on “the Late Unpleasantness,” and when you really slice through all the North vs. South issues and the issue of slavery that often (and rightfully) convoluted the other principles at stake, it ALL boils down to THIS:

The “Union” desired a STRONG Federal Government, which was in direct defiance of the Original Intent of the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution. The Southern States fought to PRESERVE the rights of the States to protect themselves from the Federal Tyranny. They lost — and what we see TODAY is the RESULT (directly and/or indirectly) of the Confederacy having LOST the “War Between the States.”

Without Abraham Lincoln, without the “Civil War,” NONE of the “Big Government advances that have KILLED our Constitutional Republic would have been possible. Not the terrible repression and unfulfilled promises of “Reconstruction,” nor the rural programs of “Populism,” not the dawn of “Progressivism,” nor FDR’s “New Deal,” not LBJ’s “Great Society” nor this out-of-control “ObamaCare” and the Nationalization of banks and industries. It can ALL be traced back to the destruction of those parts of the Constitution carried out by Lincoln, the “Radical Republicans” and the “Union” in the so-called “Civil War.”

You can CALL yourself a “conservative” if you like, but if you believe the Union was correct in destroying the Confederacy, you undercut your own philosophical and ideological foundation (and slavery had NOTHING to do with the ideological foundation of GOVERNMENT of the Confederacy). If the States exist at the pleasure of the Federal Government, we have an IMPERIAL Government no different than the Crown our Founders fought seeking to gain independence from. The Federal Government exists at the pleasure of the STATES, and THAT Constitutional reality must be RESTORED — or our “one nation under God,” will NEVER survive.