John Brown Gordon Quotes
General Lee, this is no place for you. These men behind you are Georgians and Virginians. They have never failed you and will not fail you here. Will you boys?
This cry echoed throughout the North where the public wanted a full invasion of the capital of the Confederacy to put an end to the rebellion. However is was not clear what effect that would have on the Border States—Maryland and Kentuucky—and many politicians thought that the South would “come to its senses” once they realized what they had done. But the South would not change its course, and the Union Generals in Command were very reluctant to actually invade the South. It was only after the South attacked in the North that the Union Military began to realize that this was a Civil War that would not be resolved politically.
The Civil War produced more deaths than all other American wars put together. Lee’s skill and gentlemanly demeanor subdue the fact that his treasonous efforts caused more American soldiers to die than the entire Second World War—and yet some Americans regard him as a hero while others see him as a traitor.
As just one example of Southern States' reasons, see {583044}. Many of the Northern States had passed laws declaring everyone in the state was free and making it illegal to return or assist in the returning of escaped slaves. The Southerners got the Federal Fugitive Slave Act passed which required all Americans to assist in recapturing escaped slaves. It was the Northern States who claimed states' rights were being trampled. The South was vehemently opposed to States' Rights when it came to allowing individual states to decide who was free and who was not. The Southerners had only one fundamental reason for secession—the maintenance of the Negro slavery system on which much of their economy depended as did their sociology, culture, and way of life.
This was a decade before there was a Civil War. Secession and war had been advocated by many Southerners for years before. Most people are not aware that the move toward secession did not suddenly appear when Lincoln was elected President. It had been festering for over a decade. The other importance of the quotation is that the Southernors knew perfectly well that their actions would lead to a civil war. Some Southern apologists claim that the South never saw their actions as treason, rebellion or the cause of a civil war. This quote shows that they well knew what they were doing and the result was exactly as most Southern leaders expected.
John Brown Gordon (January 9, 1904) was an attorney, a slaveholding plantation owner, general in the Confederate States Army, and politician in the postwar years. By the end of the Civil War, he had become "one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted generals."(p241)
