It is intriguing that Lord Acton took it upon himself to correspond with General Robert E. Lee about the South's efforts to resist the Union army.  Lord Acton is known in most circles as a thoughtful defender of liberty and of what is often called "classical liberalism"--in short, the notions of limited government and the centrality of economic and personal liberty. Acton was a Catholic thinker and historian from England.  Acton saw in Lee's (and the South's) resistance to the Union army a proper battle for constitutional liberty.  In a letter dated November 4, 1866 (after the end of the war, of course) to Lee, Acton writes the following:

I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

For the rest of the letter, click here.  It is these kinds of documents that often lead people to re-think the "received" version of history that we often have heard over the years.  Lord's Acton's are wise words for our day.

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