That sounds like exactly the type of process that the Southern leaders tryed to follow and the results that they expected.

It also would seem to explain Lee's comments, who was a professional life long career soldier, that if forced to make a choice between the country and Virginia he would choose his state.

You see this is the thing. We have argued the right of secession on this board a number of times. But, if this text was being taught at the West Point Military Academy, as it evidently was, isn't it reasonable to assume that it, or a simular text book, was also being taught at Virginia Military Institute, The University of Virginia, or the Citadel, or any number of other such institutions throught the south?

These institutions were in fact concidered to be at the highest level of educational training at that time. Those young men who could attend those institutions were the cream of the crop of the young leadership of that time. A lot of the southern leadership throughout the south, were highly educated and mostly in Military academies as I have named.

If so we have a much wide scope of Rawle's philosophy being distributed. And with that we have the formalization of the educational system playing a much larger role in setting the stage for the Secession Crisis than has previously been given credit.