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Show i A Book Not Worth Reading. j One Philip Alexander Bruce has written a life o! General Robert El. Lee to fill a place in ' a new series of lives (American Crisis Biog-j Biog-j rapliieS). He has not added to General Lee's 1 fan& by his work. He takes the old ground "as the southern view" that "the people were citi zens of tliolr respective states, the individual bore no relation to the United States; dissolution of the compact between the state and the United i States served instantly to release from the obli- gations of their oaths, all citizens of each state who were employed in the civil or military de- ' partments of the central government," the impli cation being that it was in that way that General ; Lee became a Confederate. That of course, is untrue, because General Loo i formally resigned his position in the army of the S United States and he stated that" "with all my feelings of loyalty and duty as an American cit- (Izon, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, chil-dren, my home." The fiction that the men of the J south owed their allegiance to the state they were I born in and none to the government of the United States, which has come down from the war days, ought to be abandoned. It would bo more manly and decidedly more honest tc claim that the right of revolution is Inherent, In-herent, and certain men of the south vory few at first booamo inconsod, and no longer willing to associate with the citizens of the northern states, thoy. appealed to this inherent right. An earlier generation tried the same experiment when a Southern man was President. He sent another southern man with an armed force to put them down, If they pressed the matter to a conflict. His sententious remark at the time was in effect tjhat they had made the tariff their excuse for tiheir treason, that next time it would bo slavery, rt is incredible to imagine that General Lee's sense of right, or his duties to country were more acute than were those of Farragut, or Thomas, or Scott, or Sykes, or Cooke. None of those Btates were countries. They had each made a compact "for a closer union," each had surrendered its right to make treaties, or coin money, or establish postal routes, or organize or-ganize an army or navy a hundred things. The claim that the fathers Intended the republic to be but a collection of states, independent of the sovereign sov-ereign federal government, on a plane with Central Cen-tral America, was from the first a miserable fiction fic-tion and an Impeachment of their wisdom. The truth is that certain fiery spirits of the south had determined to found a slave republic, and when men determine to do a mighty wrong, they can nearly always with a little study frame an excuse and justification for their acts. But there was no justification for those men of the south, and they were so conscious of the fact that they hastened to inaugurate war that thoy might inflame their section into rage. "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad," never had so apt an example as those fiery spirits of the south exhibited to the world. And the still perverted author of this book reveals how oblivious he Is to the real truth, when he treds the effort of the general government to maintain its integrity as "a conquest of the south." That is not worth discussing. That he is too narrow nar-row and prejudiced to assume to write history is shown in his references to General Longstreet. Ho admits that he was a brave man and good fighter, but tells him with sneers all the way through. Why? Solely because tho old soldier In age and poverty accepted an office from the hand of President Pres-ident Grant. That does not harm General Long-street Long-street who did more fighting than any other southern south-ern general. It only helps to fix the status of the man who thus writes about him. The book is not worth raarllner. |