War Has Settled Great Questions.
Every international dispute about rights, about principles, that could not be adjusted by diplomacy, has been settled by war. Allegiances of people, forms of government, boundaries of kingdoms and republics, all these time out of mind have been submitted to the arbitrament of the sword, and the results—treaties, not voluntary, but enforced at the cannon's mouth—have been upheld by diplomats and parliaments and courts, by every tribunal that has authority to speak for law and order and the peace of the world.
It does not lie in the mouth of him who believed in the right of a State in 1861 to secede, to deny now that the question was settled by the war, and no formal treaty was necessary as evidence of what all the world could see. We had the right as sovereign States to submit to the arbitrament of war. We did it, and, like others who have gone to war, we must abide the issue. So that now if a State should attempt to secede those who should cast their fortunes with it would be rebels.
But not so in 1861. Then the right of a State to withdraw from the Union was an open question. Nothing better illustrates the situation at that time than this incident in the life of General Lee: