Therefore, any claim from non-sequitur is nothing more than another of his non-sequiturs.
Well that's fair enough, Pea. Kobrick gives his sources and provides the evidence he says supports his contention that Rawle's book was used for a single year 1826. What can you provide to dispute it?
Well, you have this quote, "William Rawle's Views on the Constitution, a textbook which was considered the last word on the Constitution, was taught at the U S Military Academy at West Point from 1827 until well into the 1860's. Attributed to John Mills Bigham Curator, South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Museum." Attributed to. Not a quote, but an atribution. Plus you criticize Kobrick's source, Dudley, saying his claim is unsourced. But neither is John Mills Bigham's. If Dudley is suspect then Bigham has to be as well, for the same reason. Or wouldn't you agree?
At this point, it is known that Rawle's book was popular among the instructors at West Point in the mid to late 1820's. Whether or not Lee read it, or was influenced by its reputation is unknown, although he is quoted as having read it.
Well do we actually know that? Or is that what you desperately would have us believe? It was used in a single course on Constitutional law. From that you expand it to 'popular among instructors' plural. You say mid to late 1820's, which is a far cry from a single year and for which you provide not a single documented source. As with so many other things connected with the War of Southern Rebellion, things seem to grow in the telling among the southron contingent.
Kobrich's article is pretty good for a college student's. He deals well with the Rawle question, but his article isn't all one-sided.
I'd disagree with his citation of Degler to the effect that US nationalism wasn't a major force in early 19th century America, but his assertion that fostering national feeling in cadets wasn't an important function at West Point is an intriguing one. Maybe the academy promoted an army esprit de corps that outsiders took for strong national feeling.
The civil war changed that as the prevailing attitude. And that is the lens many mistakenly use when forming an opinion on the civil war. Even if slavery were the root of the war, the underlying disagreement was not about slavery (that difference had been brewing for decades by 1861). Rather, the disagreement dealt with a state's right to 'opt out' of the federal compact.
I suggest that during the formative years of Lee's youth (1820-1830), contemporary scholars would have taken for granted a state's right to leave...and the notion that a state couldn't was 'new' and downright revolutionary in 1861. Heck, most northerners didn't agree with Lincoln at that time, when it came to going to war over it.
Lee is not without fault, but far from a villain. Some people forget that an abolitionist hell bent on starting a war, by the name of Brown, was defeated at Harper's Ferry...by a then federal officer named Robert E Lee. Both sides were itching for a fight, and Lee did his duty the best he could...with his underlying allegiance to his state (as was customary in his youth) and not to the union.
ps: I'm the son of Yankees, who grew up in the south, and now lives in the state where the seeds of the civil war were sown - Kansas. I have relatives who fought for the union army (and one who fought on both sides). I am also a graduate of West Point (I mention because that seems to have become a theme of this thread). I have no blind loyalty to the south or the confederacy...but I feel I have a deep understanding of the southern psyche, and bristle at northerners who reflexively paint southerners as racists.