“Believing as we did that the war was a war of subjugation, and that it meant, if successful, the destruction of our liberties, the issue in our minds was clearly drawn as I have stated it,–The Union without Liberty, or Liberty without the Union. And if we are reminded that the success of the Federal armies did not involve, in fact, the destruction of liberty, I answer by traversing that statement, and pointing out that during all the long and bitter period of “Reconstruction,” the liberties of the Southern States were completely suppressed. Representative government existed only in name. In the end, by the blessing of God, the spirit of the martyred Lincoln prevailed over the spirit of despotism as incarnated in Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, and after long eclipse the sun of liberty and self-government again shone south of Mason and Dixon’s line.”

Randolph Harrison McKim, 1st Lieutenant, Army of Northern Virginia, CSA
A Soldier’s Recollections: Leaves From The Diary of a Young Confederate, with an Oration on the Motives and Aims of the Soldiers of the South.
Call number 973.78 M15s 1910 (Davis Library, UNC-CH)