...O terrible drums — so loud you bugles blow. Colonel Robert E. Lee, United States Army, April 1861 "With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling...my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the army, and save in defense of my native state, with the...

...struggle, has been drawn; I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native State. With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling...my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State (with...

...worded one he gave to his cousin Roger Jones and repeated nearly verbatim to each person who asked: "With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling...hand against my relatives, my children, my home." 84 Yet even his formulaic language gives an impression quite the opposite from banal inevitability....

...the army he had served most of his life. "With all my devotion to the Union," he wrote his sister, "I have not been able to make up my mind to raise...hand against my relatives, my children, my home." Undoubtedly, this was the advice he gave Hardin: Don't be on the side opposite your people. But Hardin...

...the Union and also his reported opposition to slavery. "With all my devotion to the Union," he wrote, "I have not been able to make up my mind to raise...my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. ... If the Union is dissolved, and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and...

...head Turner smashed against a stone fireplace. Such violent imagery stuck in the minds of "With all of my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty as an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives,...