We had, I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in the endeavor.
General Robert E. Lee
We must forevermore consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross—not now as a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of an heroic epoch. The people that forgets its heroic dead is already dying at the heart, and we believe we shall be truer and better citizens of the United States if we are true to our past.
Randolph H. McKim
April Twelfth
From this time a clear-cut issue was formulated and presented to the States and the people. The “firing upon the flag of the nation” was made the immediate pretext for aggressive measures against the Lower South. As so heralded, it served to inflame the hearts of thousands who, it seems, had not noticed or who had forgotten, as it is forgotten to-day, that this was not the first firing upon the Stars and Stripes. The flag had been fired upon from the coast of South Carolina as early as January 9, 1861, for the same reason as that which provoked attack upon it on April 12.
[From introduction to “The Battle of Baltimore,” The Sun, April 9, 1911.]
Fort Sumter fired on by Beauregard, 1861
North Carolina instructs her delegates to the Continental Congress to declare for independence, 1776