Why Did The Confederate Soldier Fight?

 

"It has not seemed the whole truth to me that the Confederate soldier went into battle to vindicate a constitutional argument. He went to war because he loved his people, because his country was invaded, because his heart was throbbing for his hearthstone. Here was the land which gave him birth; here was his childhood's home' here were the graves of his dead; here was the church spire where he had learned it was not all of life to live nor all of death to die. No hostile foot should ever tread this consecrated ground except over his dead body." 

~ Lieutenant General Stephen Dill Lee, from a speech at the annual reunion of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) held in Louisville, Kentucky in 1905. Lee was a native of South Carolina, born in Charleston and grew up in Abbeville.