Even if you authenticate such a quote as being from Gen. Lee, what make that statement any more important that the hundreds of thousands of others who have said it?

The War was not about slavery. That is a fact, Even Lincoln and Grant were slave owners and ex slave owners.

The war was about the usurptation of governmental powers. Under a Republic form of Government each state was a seperate political unit ONLY bound together by common agreement for their common interest. Under a Republic form of Government no State, or group of States, nor the federal Government, had the right to dictate to any other State, or States, what the practises, morals or policies of that States should be, outside that conduct already agreed to, or prohibited, under the Constitution of the Republic.

The Constitution of 1787 was written because the United States under the Articles of Confederation of 1776 had failed because the then 13 states wanted more independence from an authoritarian government, which had bound them together during the Revolution. Why do we now only count our Presidents from George Washington and not the 14 Presidents of the United States from 1776 to 1787 prior to Washingtons election??

April 9th 1865 was the death of the Constitutional Republic of the United States. We are now an autocratic bureaucray, where agency, and not even our elected officials, dictate policy to the States backed by the power of the federal Government, which it does not Constitutional have except by the point of a bayonet.

That is what our Southern forefathers fought against. That is what the war was about.