I cannot see how any Virginian can fail to stand with all his Southern brothers, front to front against the North on these vital questions." "I do not think the South would fight the North over slavery alone.

The South loves the flag, because she helped create it as much or more than the North.

She will not bear treason to the flag." Thus my father.
"It would be no treason," affirmed Orme, "but duty, if that flag became the flag of oppression.

The Anglo-Saxon has from King John down refused to be governed unjustly and oppressively." And so they went on, hour after hour, not bitterly, but hotly, as was the fashion all over the land at that time.

My father remained a Whig, which put him in line, sometimes, with the Northern men then coming into prominence, such as Morrill of New England, and young Sherman from across the mountains, who believed in the tariff in spite of what England might say to us.