Lee An Antislavery R. E. Lee?

[cash]

No doubt about it. Lee thought the black race was inferior. I think cats are inferior, but I don't dislike all of them in general.

Do you advocate the forced removal of every cat from your state?

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Do you advocate the forced removal of every cat from your state?

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Whether there was one black person on the face of the earth that Robert E. Lee liked or not, he did support the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States. He actually purchased a life membership for his wife in 1855.

 

[cash]

Whether there was one black person on the face of the earth that Robert E. Lee liked or not, he did support the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States. He actually purchased a life membership for his wife in 1855.

It's more accurate that his wife supported it. He paid for what she wanted. Happy wife, happy life, even in the 19th century.

In an 1841 letter to his wife, Mary, Lee discussed her desire to rescue a slave on the Lewis plantation named Robert, either by purchasing him and then manumitting him or by arranging to bring him to Arlington. Lee himself was against the plan, but willing to pay if that's what she wanted:

"If the object is to raise the funds desired by Mrs. Lewis, you had better make a loan to the Major. Your plan of the purchase I think will bring you nothing but trouble & vexation & it is very problematical whether the condition of Robert will not be injured rather than bettered. In judging of results you must endeavor to lay aside your feelings & prejudices & examine the question as thus exposed. In this matter is everything to be yielded to the servant & nothing to the master? What will be the effect of the precedent upon the rest & the instruction of the example intended to be set as well as the comparisons likely to be made to the prejudice of your father & his authority. Others ought to be considered as well as Robert. If you determine to apply your money in this way I am ready to pay it. So consider well upon the matter & act for yourself." [Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, 18 Apr 1841]

"Mary Lee, wrestling as her mother did to find a way of inserting humanity into an unkind system, seems determined to change the situation of a slave named Robert. It appears this man was on a Lewis family estate, perhaps related to Aunt Nelly Custis Lewis. A plan was afoot to rescue him, either by purchasing and liberating him or bringing him to Arlington's more benign atmosphere. Robert Lee was skeptical about the idea. If the strategy was to help the Lewis family out of debt, he recommended floating them a loan. Any effort to buy the slave he thought ill-advised, however, since it interfered with the prerogatives of the owner. Mary's attitude was not only sympathetic to the slave's situation; it showed a willingness to believe that he had a right to be removed from his domineering master. Lee thought otherwise. He worried that it would set a bad precedent 'for the rest' if this slave was treated leniently, undercutting the 'instruction' the slave's punishment was supposed to impart. It was the master's privilege to manage his property and to exercise control over his labor force, and he was protected for the most part from questions about his judgment on these matters. This view was reflected in Lee's query--'is everything to be yielded to the servant and nothing to the master?' But it was Mary's money, after all, despite the nineteenth-century reality that if she determined to apply her funds in this way, he was 'willing' to pay it." [Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, p. 143]

 

[John Hartwell]

"At present I have a boy belonging to Major Martin for whom I pay $20 per month." That's a considerable expense, considering he also has to feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for the boy. Average wage for a laborer in 1860 was $5.88 a week: less than $25 a month. The peace of mind provided by a white servant might well have seemed a bargain to him.


https://outrunchange.com/2012/06/14/typical-wages-in-1860-through-1890/

 

[Drew]

"In 1856, and as late as July 1860, he expressed a willingness to buy slaves. Those blacks who were in his possession were frequently traded away for his own convenience, regardless of the destruction it caused to the bondsman's family. He ignores justice to the slaves and defends the rights of the slaveholder in both his 1841 and 1856 letters to his wife, and he continued to uphold laws that constrained blacks well after the war." [Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, p. 145]

"His disdain for peoples unlike himself certainly reflected the society he lived in, but does not rise above it. Whereas some of his fellow officers found the Indians to be fascinating and honorable, Lee simply dismissed them. 'They are not worth it' was Lee's disdainful phrase for interacting with anyone who was not white." [Ibid., p. 150]

"To manage such a complex world of peoples and cultures, Lee professed a simple and inflexible social order, as tidy as the mathematical laws that governed his engineering. 'Though climate, government and circumstance have produced changes in the character of the people,' he once wrote, 'yet in all essential qualities they resemble the races from which they are sprung; and to no race are we indebted for the virtues and qualifications which constitute a great people than the Anglo-Saxon.' Blacks were clearly at the bottom of this racial scale. Lee believed that they were innately inferior to whites and that destiny favored the ascendancy of the Anglo-Saxons." [Ibid.]

"[In 1867] Privately he appears to have advocated restrictions on franchise rights that would exclude a great number of blacks as well as some whites from the polls. Finally, in the election of 1868 he openly backed the rightist [and racist] policies of the Democratic Party, sponsoring a meeting of former generals and other conservative southern leaders at the White Sulphur Springs. The group wrote a manifesto that called for an end to 'oppressive misrule,' dismissed legitimate power-sharing with the blacks, and proposed a return to the 'kindness and humanity' of their former social system." [Ibid., p. 451]

"Like others of his region, he persisted in truly believing that blacks were incapable of functioning on their own, that they had no inclination to work, and aspired to nothing beyond daily comfort and amusement. ... From the end of the war he took care to distance himself from the ex-slaves as much as possible, maintaining his control by aloofness. He tried to employ white rather than black servants in his household, though in the end the family acquiesced to hiring three or four 'tolerable ... respectable, but not energetic' freedmen. As before the war, his expectations fulfilled long-honed stereotypes. He told Congress he thought the ex-slaves less able than whites to acquire knowledge and inclined only to work sporadically on 'very short jobs ... they like their ease and comfort, and I think, look more to their present than to their future condition.' He advised his planter friends to shun black labor, for he felt the freedmen would work against their former owners and destroy property values. 'I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him,' he told one cousin, 'and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.' Although he did not always state it so starkly, he continued to think, as he had told the _Herald,_ that the blacks had best be 'disposed of' and endorsed the idea of importing European workers to replace them. Lee particularly hoped that English immigration could be increased so that the South would benefit from 'good citizens whose interests & feelings would be in unison with our own.' " [Ibid., pp. 452-453]

"Lees vision did not include granting African-Americans the same option of productive citizenship that he wished to offer to immigrants. He explained to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that 'at this time, they cannot vote intelligently' and that he opposed black enfranchisement on the grounds that it would 'excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.' He was also concerned about the educational opportunities being provided to the blacks by the Freedmen's Bureau and private northern charities, preferring they be taught by white Southerners, who were 'acquainted with their characters and wants.' Most of all he feared that blacks might procure enough political leverage to offset white control. The blacks lacked the capacity 'necessary to make them safe depositories of political power,' stated Lee and his compatriots." [Ibid., p. 453]

This is a 21st century social activist's opinion and not Robert Lee's. That he was a creature of his time is not in doubt Edited.

 

[cash]

This is a 21st century social activist's opinion and not Robert Lee's. That he was a creature of his time is not in doubt Edited.

Wrong. It is a respected historian's report on the results of her reading every one of Lee's extant letters.

 

[WJC]

***Posted as Moderator***
A reminder: this thread is intended to discuss Robert E. Lee and his views. Please stay on topic and respect the opinions of your fellow members.

 

[gem]

Most men of the time in the United States were antislavery, unlike Lee.

If that were true wouldn't that make Lee dishonorable?

 

[cash]

If that were true wouldn't that make Lee dishonorable?

No.

 

[WJC]

If that were true wouldn't that make Lee dishonorable?

Or simply point out that honor was defined differently. Lee was a member of Virginia's elite. His social and ethical beliefs reflected that segment of society.

 

[Bee]

If that were true wouldn't that make Lee dishonorable?

By the standard of whom? I thought that the single positive takeaway of all of those "was so-and-so honorable" threads was that it proved how ridiculous it is to try in 21st century court, the honor of 19th century men.

 

[WJC]

This is a 21st century social activist's opinion and not Robert Lee's. That he was a creature of his time is not in doubt Edited.

I don't know the author. Nor do I know if she has a hidden agenda. I am by nature sceptical so that whatever I read I look for factual confirmation. So I can understand one's concern over her opinions.
However, from the excerpts presented, excerpts in Lee's own words, it is difficult to reject her conclusions.
Those of us who admire Lee would do well to accept his faults while we celebrate his many admirable qualities: he was no more perfect than we are.

 

[Eleanor Rose]

I haven't read, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, but I want to do so. Thanks for bringing it to my attention @cash. Does this book share his actual letters in their entirety?

 

[cash]

I haven't read, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, but I want to do so. Thanks for bringing it to my attention @cash.

We read and discussed the book this past winter at the Gettysburg Battlefield:

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/reading-the-man-chapters-1-5/

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/reading-the-man-chapters-6-10/

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/reading-the-man-chapters-11-15/

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2018/01/30/reading-the-man-chapters-16-20/

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/reading-the-man-chapters-21-26/

 

[Drew]

Wrong. It is a respected historian's report on the results of her reading every one of Lee's extant letters.

In other words, someone whose read Lee's letters and agrees with you.

This is by definition not a "respected historian," but just another internet spinner.

 

[cash]

In other words, someone whose read Lee's letters and agrees with you.

This is by definition not a "respected historian," but just another internet spinner.

Your ignorance of who Dr. Pryor was does not make her an "internet spinner."

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

If he and Mary felt the same, then she was proslavery as well

Then they did not feel the same. That would also be unsurprising because there were a few areas of dissent between them. Mary became embittered later in life, for some reason equating the loss of Arlington with the black population there but was her mother's daughter. All I said was it would have been unsurprising to find Lee lukewarm on the subject- if he wasn't, he wasn't.

And it's your thread title, ' An Anti-slavery Lee? '. Kinda thought it open for discussion.

 

[Waterloo50]

To be fair just because a society does not have slavery does not mean there is not massive discrimination I.e. the U.S. and for many years South Africa.
Leftyhunter

True, I'm using equal rights in its broadest sense, not equal rights as in legislation. Of course I understand that discrimination and racism exist, slavery is illegal because we hold the values of equal rights to be true and proper.

 

[leftyhunter]

True, I'm using equal rights in its broadest sense, not equal rights as in legislation. Of course I understand that discrimination and racism exist, slavery is illegal because we hold the values of equal rights to be true and proper.

I would argue not necessarily so based on each countries experience with slavery.
In the case of the United States slavery was abolished more has a war time measure . The commitment of the majority of American people for equal rights evolved rather slowly over many decades. In the case of the UK a stronger argument could be made of morality leading to abolition. In the case of Brazil abolition was due more to black armed resistance to slavery. In the case of Mauritania slavery was officially abolished only due to international pressure but it never really was enforced so they still have de facto slavery.
Leftyhunter