We were much disappointed, and many of the men very much disgruntled, at the prospects of going to war with those antiquated, cumbersome and inferior arms. Other companies were in the same predicament, and many of the men threatened to disband and go home. The companies had not yet been mustered into service. It was a very critical time in the military experience of all. The companies were formed in line and addressed by some of their officers. Captain Clement made a speech to his company, and I spoke briefly and earnestly to my comrades, telling them that the State of Virginia was doing the very best she could to arm and equip her soldiers, that they might go forth to meet the invaders of her sacred soil; that it was our duty to go to the front with the best arms available, even if armed with nothing but "rocks and sticks," and closed by calling on every man who was willing to go to war under the existing circumstances to follow. I marched out through the camp; the whole company following. THE CAUSE OF SECESSION I had fully determined if the company disbanded to join another immediately, as I knew it was the duty of every son of Virginia to enlist under her banner when called. I have never been of any other mind since, and if it were all to do over again I should act in the same manner. I never thought of deserting to the enemy during the war nor since. While I was not an original secessionist and voted for the Union candidates for the Convention, yet when the North determined to wage war on the South; when Lincoln called on Virginia for her quota of troops to coerce the seceding States, and when Virginia seceded, it did not take me two seconds to cast my lot with Virginia and the other Southern States. Here I took my stand then, now and forever, and will never give aid in any way to those who were enemies to my State and section, many of whom are still haters and traducers of the Southern people, the avowed purpose at the close of the war being to put the negro, the late slave, over the white people of the South, to rule and govern as brave and chivalrous a people as ever lived on God's green earth. To make the highest type of the Anglo-Saxon subject to the African! Ye gods! What a crime was attempted! And for a time the outrage was in force. This, if nothing else, justified the South in its attempt at separation from the North. The people of the South had gotten tired of the sectional and domineering, hectoring spirit of the North, especially the New England Yankees, manifested in many ways before the war, and determined to sever the bonds that bound them together; peacefully if they could, forcibly if they must. They did not want war, but the North forced the issue. The question of slavery in the Southern States was not an issue at the beginning of the war, as many believe.