Robert E. Lee - Virginian First?

I have come to have great respect for the leadership and the man Robert E. Lee. So many Americans are quick to judge the man because he led the southern army during the War Between the States, but there is so much more to the General Lee. He was a God-fearing Christian who was apposed to slavery. He believed in a gradual emancipation, but emancipation none-the-less. So why did he fight for the south? He was loyal to his state or “country” of Virginia. Virginians all the way back to Washington and Jefferson were devoted to Virginia first. Our Virginian forefathers thought of her as a country, their mother country. Yes, other colonists thought of their particular states as individual countries as well, but like Massachusetts citizens, Virginians had a certain zest for being a born and bred member of their “country”. This carried on and when Lee was asked by Lincoln to lead the Union forces, Lee put Virginia before the United States. So let me now ask, if Virginia had not seceded and had stayed with the Union, would Robert E. Lee have still been loyal to his state? Since he was apposed to slavery and still fought for Virginia, was he so much for states rights, as was the Confederacy or would he have fought to preserve the Union as, in this instance, would have been the desire of his beloved Virginia?