BUY Rebel Flags For Sale“All that the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth.”
— General Robert E. Lee
Where the Quote Comes From
General Lee wrote these words after the war, while he was president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. They come from a letter thanking Mr. Burr, a Northern publisher, for sending him a copy of The Old Guard, a magazine that defended the original Constitution. The letter was later published by Lee’s son, Captain Robert E. Lee Jr., in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee.
What Lee Meant
To Lee and many Southerners of his generation, the war was not a rejection of the Founders. They believed they were defending the Union the Founders had created: a voluntary union of sovereign states, with a federal government of limited powers. In their view, it was the growing power of the central government that had departed from the original design.
Lee made the same point in other letters after the war. He warned that consolidating the states into one vast republic would threaten liberty, and he hoped the Constitution would be handed down to future generations in the form received from the Founders.
Lee After the War
After Appomattox, Lee urged Southerners to accept the outcome, rebuild their lives and become good citizens of a reunited country. He spent his last years educating young men at Washington College, which was later renamed Washington and Lee University in his honor. His words show a man who still believed in the ideals of 1776 and 1787.
Read more about General Lee in Did R.E. Lee Have Any Regrets? and General Eisenhower on Robert E. Lee, and browse our Confederate flag collection.
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He is correct