Lee viewed this secession with horror. Until the month of April, when Virginia, his own dearly cherished State, joined the Confederacy, he clung fondly to the hope that the gulf which separated the North from the South might yet be bridged over. He believed the dissolution of the Union to be a dire calamity not only for his own country, but for civilization and all mankind. "Still," he said, "a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me." In common with all Southerners he firmly believed that each of the old States had a legal and indisputable right, by its individual constitution, and by its act of union, to leave at will the great Union into which each had separately entered as a sovereign State. This was with him an article of faith of which he was as sure as of any divine truths he found in the Bible. This fact must be kept always in mind by those who would rightly understand his character, or the course he pursued in 1861. He loved the Union for which his father and family in the previous century had fought so hard and done so much. But he loved his own State still more. She was the sovereign to whom in the first place he owed allegiance, and whose orders, as expressed through her legally constituted government, he was, he felt, bound in law, in honor, and in love to obey without doubt or hesitation. This belief was the mainspring that kept the Southern Confederacy going, as it was also the corner-stone of its constitution.