Reflection- "Letters to His Family" Robert E. Lee

I thought it was interesting to read "Letter's to His Family" by Robert E. Lee because he is writing this during the Civil War period in our history, which is personally my favorite time in the United States' past.  There was one sentence in Robert E. Lee's letter that really jumped out at me: "As far as I can judge by the papers, we are between as state of anarchy and civil war."  This was the sentence that made me realize that Robert E. Lee has a similar thought process as that of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.  From what I can take from the sentence from Robert E. Lee's "Letter's to His Family," he is not a very big fan of the government, or he knows that a lot of people are not.  Anarchy means that there is absolutely no government control or influence in the lives of the people.  This can relate to the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau because neither of them really liked the government either.  It is not like they wanted anarchy--this is pretty extreme and I can not even think of a instance where this has happened--but they did not want the government sticking their nose in everyone's business when it was not necessary.  Robert E. Lee talks a lot about how he loves his country and he would do anything for it.  This does contradict with the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau though.  While they did not like their government, they did not like it because they did not like slavery.  I am going to assume that they were from the north because if you opposed slavery when you were in the south, you were basically done for.  Robert E. Lee was a general in the south and obviously fought for slavery.  His views on slavery were the exact opposite of that of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.