The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-11-15

that the North understands the South
and its methods, principles, convictions.
ancestral faiths, prejudices and purposes,
he should read what is said from week to
week in Northern periodicals and newspa-
pers and by speakers. I have been in
terested in some ignorance and disingen-
uousness in the interior an influential
Northern Presbyterian paper. The reply
to the opinion of the Interior by Rev
DIT. McKelway, editor of the Charlotte
Presbyterian Standard, is full, fair and
crushing. l will give enough of the con-
est to show its import
Gen. Robert E. Lee is regarded by
Northern preachers of the Bishop Philips
Brooks type as Traitor. This, too. in
the face of indisputable facts and evil
dences. / recently said III one of my ar
ticles that DR.. Bledsoe's little book had
never been answered, and would never be
answered. Not a Northern writer has been
fool-hardy enough to attempt to answer
it. The proof is overwhelming that there
could not be possibly any traitorism in
the action of any Southern man in at
tempting to peaceably withdraw from the
Union that has been so abused, and when
attacked by the North, backed by Europe
as a great recruiting ground in defending
his home and meeting the invaders. a
man is simply ignorant. poorly read, or
dullard, If he has investigated, who would
charge Geeral Lee with doing wrong when
he refused the leadership rendered him IN
the aggressive overwhelming North. and
cast his fate and sword. with his native
State and the South, his own people.
General Lee wrote in January, 1851, as
follows:
II can anticipate no greater calamity
for the country than a dissolution of the
Union. 1t would be an accumulation OF
all the evils we complain of, and l am
willing TO sacrifice everything but honor
for its preservation"
The fools and enemies find in this
concession that justifies them with accus-
ing the noble Southron with an act OF
traitorism. Hear this bold, blatant In
terror thus commenting:
THAT is, General Lee knew secession to
be wrong. Yet he fought four years to
uphold that wrong thing. No heapine
together OF reasons that Influenced him
in his course can cover up the obliquity
OF his deliberate transgression of con-
science and judgment"
That means great deal. 1t seeks to
put d SInlEcn, Il StlSuid, d upOH
noblest of men, the highest expression in
our land Of lofty principle and a spotless
soul General Lee is charged with plain,
positive violation of his conscience, and
that charge is a bare-faced lie in fact and
in essence.
1 have had occasion in well-nigh forty
years discussion of the war, to meet this
cruel, dastardly accusation. Let us see
what the able, logical editor of another
Presbyterian paper-Southern-the Char
lotte Stndard, DR.. McKelway, writes IN
reply:
mot that this sticl1ler for rigid stand
ards of righteousness without warping or
twisting, proceeds to warp and twist Gen.
eral Lees language into a confession that
secession was wrong. He said that 1T
would be calamity than which he could
conceive of none greater. and he was
willing to sacrifice everything but honor
for the preservation of the Union. But a
calamity cannot sometimes be prevented.
If there had been modicum of General
Lees sense OF honor in the mind of this
scribbler there wsuld never have been
the attempt to confuse the prediction of
calamity with a confession of wrong, for
having pursued a certain course of action
after the calamity had COME"
If the reader wishes to pursue the de-
fence OF Lee, Davis and the other patriots
of the South tell him to read Bledsoe's
book on as jeff Davis Traitor" Dr.
Curry's recent admirable, clear
and able work ON the Civil
States Dr. Dabney's work published not
long after the war, Il do not recall the
title,) President Davis's work on the South
<
work and others that might be given. 1t
is with the very worst possible meanness
and morals as well as regard for consist
ency, justice and truth; for New Eng
land writer to assault the South or Gen
eral Lee, or President Davis, because OF
secession, in view of we'll known facts
patent and open to all If the sianderer
of the interior will get Massachusetts,
work published about 1874 or . entitled
"Sullivan's Men of the Revolution he
will. brazen-faced as he is, be ashamed to
expectorate venom at any Southern hero.
Between 1906 and 1920, New England was
literally hot for Secession Sullivan
gives correspondence favorlng this by men
of New England not long after the Gov
eminent was set up. DR.. Mckelway teils
his Yankee brother and ignoramus this:
Every one ought to know by this time
that the right to secede was left an open
question in the Constitution: that seces-
sion was threatened several times, mainly
by New England States, before the fact of
Southern Secession: that if this right vol
unfairly to withdraw from an association
voluntarily entered into by sovereign
States that had been independent colonies
had not been granted, the Union would
never have been formed in the first place.
All constitutional scholars of the present
era have given the right of secession to
the South
The entire reply of the Standard Is capt.
tai and smashing. 1 must advance little
farther ar the expense of my own space.
because of its fullness and conclusiveness.
1t saws:
'srhe Pharisaism of it is almost as bad
as the Philistinism. Counted for nothing
were the notifications of the Constitution,
by Northern States, even the denuncla-
ton of it as "a league with death and a
covenant with hell Reckoned for naught
the bootless descent upon the South OF a
murderous. fanatical anarchist from Kan
sas, with his hope of a negro uprising and
his slaughter of inoffensve citizens. For