Lee had made clear his dislike of slavery, which he described in 1856 as “a moral and political evil.” Until the day Virginia left the Union he had also spoken against secession. “The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation,” he wrote in January 1861, “if it was intended to be broken up by every member of the [Union] at will. . . . It is idle to talk of secession.”7
