Appomattox was a triumph of the physically stronger in a conflict between the representatives of two essentially different civilizations and antagonistic ideas of government. On one side of the conflict was the South, led by the descendants of the Cavaliers, who, with all their faults, had inherited from a long line of ancestors a manly contempt for moral littleness, a high sense of honor, a lofty regard for plighted faith, a strong tendency to conservatism, a profound respect for law and order, and an unfaltering loyalty to constitutional government. Against the South was arrayed the power of the North, dominated by the spirit of Puritanism, which, with all its virtues, has ever been characterized by the pharisaism that worships itself and is unable to perceive any goodness apart from itself; which has ever arrogantly held its ideas, its interests, and its will to be higher than fundamental law and covenanted obligations; which has always "lived and moved and had its being" in rebellion against constituted authority; which, with the cry of freedom on its lips, has been one of the most cruel and pitiless tyrants that ever curse the world; which, while beheading an English king in the name of liberty, brought England under a reign of oppression whose little finger was heavier than the mailed hand of the Stuarts; and which, from the time of Oliver Cromwell to the time of Abraham Lincoln, has never hesitated to trample upon the rights of others in order to effect its own ends.
-Robert Catlett Cave
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