ROBERT EDMUND LEE 367 love to obey without doubt or hesitation. This belief was the main-spring that kept the Southern Confederacy going, as it was also the corner-stone of its con- stitution. In April, 1861, at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, the first shot was fired in a war that was only ended in April, 1865, by the surrender of General Lee's army at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. In duration it is the longest war waged since the great Napoleon's power was finally crushed at Waterloo. As the heroic struggle of a small population that was cut off from all outside help, against a great, populous, and very rich republic, with every market in the world open to it, and to whom all Europe was a recruiting ground, this secession war stands out prominently in the history of the world. When the vast num- bers of men put into the field by the Northern States, and the scale upon which their operations were carried on, are duly considered, it must be regarded as a war fully equal in magnitude to the successful invasion of France by Germany in 1870. If the mind be allowed to speculate on the course that events will take in centuries to come, as they flow surely on with varying swiftness to the ocean of the unknown future, the influence which the result of this Confederate war is bound to exercise upon man's future history will seem very great. Think of what a power the re-Uhited States will be in another century ! Of what it will be in the twenty-first century of the Christian era ! If, as many believe, China is destined to absorb all Asia and then to overrun Europe, may it not be in the possible future that Armageddon, the final contest between heathendom and Christianity, may be fought out between China and North America ? Had se- cession been victorious, it is tolerably certain that the United States would have broken up still further, and instead of the present magnificent and English- speaking empire, we should now see in its place a number of small powers with separate interests. Most certainly it was the existence of slavery in the South that gave rise to the bitter antagonism of feeling which led to secession. But it was not to secure emancipation that the North took up arms, although during the progress of the war Mr. Lincoln proclaimed it, for the purpose of striking his enemy a serious blow. Lee hated slavery, but, as he explained to me, he thought it wicked to give freedom suddenly to some millions of people who were incapable of using it with profit to themselves or the State. He assured me he had long intended to gradually give his slaves their liberty. He believed the institution to be a moral and political evil, and more hurtful to the white than to the black man. He had a strong affection for the negro ; but he deprecated any sudden or violent inter- ference on the part of the State between master and slave. Nothing would have induced him to fight for the continuance of slavery ; indeed, he declared that had, he owned every slave in the South he would willingly give them all up if by so doing he could preserve the Union. He was opposed to secession, and to pre- vent it he would willingly sacrifice everything except honor and duty, which for- bade him to desert his State. When in April, 1861, she formally and by an act of her Legislature left the Union, he resigned his commission in the United
