Fascinating book on R.E. Lee

[TerryB]

Reading the Man by Elizabeth Brown Pryor (Viking, 2007). Pryor has a great deal of insight into Lee's attitudes toward slavery. He was put off by the institution, wanted nothing to do with it, and was so annoyed by having to deal with it that he often hired out his slaves just to get them out of sight and out of mind. The myth is that he freed them all long before the war, but Pryor shows that to be false. She also deals ( 269-273) with the controversy about three escaped slaves who were captured and whipped. Pryor's conclusion is that Lee was too distanced from the institution to do any whipping himself, but that the accounts that he hired someone (a constable) to do it are credible. She doubts the part about him personally whipping a half naked girl. From what I learned in history classes in college, this is consistent with slave holders who never did their own whipping, but rather had drivers do that. That allowed the master to make a great show of intervening on behalf of a punished slave and thereby earn his or her affection. Lee was different in that he really didn't care for slaves at all and seemed to think all of his were lazy and worthless. (They never appreciate anything we do for them.) A real eye-opener of a book.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Reading the Man by Elizabeth Brown Pryor (Viking, 2007). Lee was different in that he really didn't care for slaves at all and seemed to think all of his were lazy and worthless. (They never appreciate anything we do for them.) A real eye-opener of a book.

Lee's attitude was not that untypical. I strongly believe the majority of Confederate soldiers felt much the same way, particularly the hundreds of thousands who owned no slaves at all. This is the mindset that was prevalent wherever slaves were held. Racial prejudice and white superiority as a general notion were rampant across the land, yes, even up north. This was not a pretty time. Those who loved their slaves and respected them did not have the nads to set them free. That's the part that really can't be forgiven. In most cases death from old age was the only way out.

 

[K Hale]

That is a great book, and there's a page or two in there dealing with things other than Lee's thoughts on slavery, although that seems to garner all the attention.

Unappreciative =/= lazy and worthless, by the way. It's certainly possible to be one without the other. I don't recall that particular quote, but I assume he was talking about the Custis slaves? If so, then I can see how, in his view, they would be considered both lazy and unappreciative.

There was a huge, interesting thread about Lee and the Custis slaves last fall, I think.

 

[captainrlm]

I also enjoyed the book. I thought it was going to be only about his letters, but it was more of a biography than I expected.

 

[ole]

Shades of Christmas past.

Almost nobody in the U.S. thought the black an equal man. It's just that, in the South, you could own one (or several). An interesting dichotomy in the slave-owners society is in the methods of obtaining productivity. This one ruled benevolently and that one used fear. So what is really different?

Of course, in today's perspective, the practice was wrong, wrong, wrong. But it wasn't then. So I have to transport myself back into that mindset and look at it from their perspective. In Mississippi and South Carolina, more than half the population was black. Presumably, enslaved. Scary? The control problem had to have been immense. And the edginess about an uprising? Talk about being hoist on your own petard.

But I digress. Am anxious to read to book. It is #32 in the "to read" stack. Hear good things about it.

Ole

 

[TerryB]

That is a great book, and there's a page or two in there dealing with things other than Lee's thoughts on slavery, although that seems to garner all the attention.

Unappreciative =/= lazy and worthless, by the way. It's certainly possible to be one without the other. I don't recall that particular quote, but I assume he was talking about the Custis slaves? If so, then I can see how, in his view, they would be considered both lazy and unappreciative.

There was a huge, interesting thread about Lee and the Custis slaves last fall, I think.

I'm only paraphrasing, but a very similar quote or two from Lee's wife is in there. I grew up accepting the myth of Lee. Now I don't condemn people for being products of their times, and while Lee certainly didn't want blacks to have full equality, Larry is right to put that into its proper historical context. Otherwise we are guilty of "presentism," which McPherson says is like looking through a telescope from the wrong end.

Another thing the book did was strongly reinforce my belief that Lee said one thing in public and quite another in private. It was the equivalent of being very politically correct in speech without really believing in it. The much-discussed quote here that he whispered an aside to someone that had he known what the victors would do to Southern society he would never have surrendered may not be something he actually said, but he seems to have had that attitude.

 

[TerryB]

Shades of Christmas past.

Almost nobody in the U.S. thought the black an equal man. It's just that, in the South, you could own one (or several). An interesting dichotomy in the slave-owners society is in the methods of obtaining productivity. This one ruled benevolently and that one used fear. So what is really different?

Of course, in today's perspective, the practice was wrong, wrong, wrong. But it wasn't then. So I have to transport myself back into that mindset and look at it from their perspective. In Mississippi and South Carolina, more than half the population was black. Presumably, enslaved. Scary? The control problem had to have been immense. And the edginess about an uprising? Talk about being hoist on your own petard.

But I digress. Am anxious to read to book. It is #32 in the "to read" stack. Hear good things about it.

Ole

She also makes the point that after the Nat Turner Rebellion, all talk of some way toward emancipation ceased, especially in Virginia. One author we had a short selection from in one of my college texts said the South became an armed camp after Nat Turner. A very paranoid armed camp.

Also very telling in the book was the attitudes of the slaves of the Custis plantation (Mary's) that they had been freed, something Lee disputed, saying there was nothing in the will about it. Lee thought they had all "copped an attitude," and he apparently totally lost control of that situation.

 

[K Hale]

The much-discussed quote here that he whispered an aside to someone that had he known what the victors would do to Southern society he would never have surrendered may not be something he actually said, but he seems to have had that attitude.

But he still didn't really say it. Or, if he did, no evidence has ever surfaced. Someone else thinking he ought to have said it, or should have said it, doesn't count.

 

[K Hale]

Also very telling in the book was the attitudes of the slaves of the Custis plantation (Mary's) that they had been freed, something Lee disputed, saying there was nothing in the will about it.

He was right.

Lee thought they had all "copped an attitude," and he apparently totally lost control of that situation.

You should look up that old thread. The title was something like "R.E. Lee and beaten slaves," I think.

 

[TerryB]

He was right.

You should look up that old thread. The title was something like "R.E. Lee and beaten slaves," I think.

Yeah, this is in some part a response to that thread. You could say that all Lee had to do to solve the attitude problem the Custis slaves had was free them. I guess that never occurred to him.

As to how he felt about surrender being a mistake, that quote isn't in the book. I'm sure if he'd actually said it, the author would have used it. However, she does quote him both verbally and in writing as saying part A of that (I had no idea how bad those people would mess with us after the war and boy am I steamed about it), but nothing really close to part B (I would have died with my sword in my hand). I don't think it's that far a leap to extrapolate such an attitude from his quotes, but anyone taking that leap has to warn the reader with a very up front caveat that this is just their opinion.

 

[K Hale]

Yeah, this is in some part a response to that thread. You could say that all Lee had to do to solve the attitude problem the Custis slaves had was free them. I guess that never occurred to him.

That would be violating the terms of the will, which Lee was legally bound as executor to carry out. You may want to revisit that old thread, because this was covered ad nauseam.

As to how he felt about surrender being a mistake, that quote isn't in the book. I'm sure if he'd actually said it, the author would have used it. However, she does quote him both verbally and in writing as saying part A of that (I had no idea how bad those people would mess with us after the war and boy am I steamed about it), but nothing really close to part B (I would have died with my sword in my hand). I don't think it's that far a leap to extrapolate such an attitude from his quotes, but anyone taking that leap has to warn the reader with a very up front caveat that this is just their opinion.

I disagree, that's a tremendous leap. "I'm unhappy with the way things are" is a very long way from "I wish I'd died and sacrificed tens of thousands of my men so I wouldn't have to be here experiencing the way things are."

 

[TerryB]

If for no other reason than his pride, I'm sure Lee never had a day go by that he didn't regret the surrender. In the last year of the war, the fight was over how or on what terms we are going to reconstruct the Union. The better the fight we put up, the better the terms we'll get. I think Lee correctly understood that all the sacrifices that he, his army and the Southern people had made were held in light regard by the victors, especially when it came to respecting their right to hold their head high.

If the Custis will tied Lee's hands, so be it. George Washington, on the other hand, found loopholes and was able to free many of Martha's slaves. Pryor doesn't even give him credit for doing that much. I saw her on C-SPAN recently, and she seemed the perfect Utopian, in that Lee must be seen warts and all to the point that the warts are all we see, rather than take the kinder gentler approach of accepting him for what he was--a product of his times. I'd definitely accuse Pryor of engaging in presentism.

 

[K Hale]

If for no other reason than his pride, I'm sure Lee never had a day go by that he didn't regret the surrender. In the last year of the war, the fight was over how or on what terms we are going to reconstruct the Union. The better the fight we put up, the better the terms we'll get. I think Lee correctly understood that all the sacrifices that he, his army and the Southern people had made were held in light regard by the victors, especially when it came to respecting their right to hold their head high.

OK.... and, that has what to do with thinking Lee would rather have died?

If the Custis will tied Lee's hands, so be it. George Washington, on the other hand, found loopholes and was able to free many of Martha's slaves.

What loopholes are in the Custis will that you believe Lee should have found and utilized?

 

[larry_cockerham]

Fiction's nice, it just ain't worth much.

 

[TerryB]

Washington didn't look for loopholes in any will in order to free Martha's slaves. He could send one to Philadelphia, which he did, then not send him the money to come home on. The law was that if you were a slave and managed to stay in that city for 30 days, you were free. Washington knew things like that and took advantage of that knowledge.

As I said earlier I grew up with the Lee myth. Once the myth busters went after him, we could no longer say, as we once did, that he belonged to the whole country. Now if you admire him you're accused of being a Lost Causer or worse. I don't want to put him on a pedestal, but he does fall short of Washington in some respects. Washington is still my hero and always will be. But in order to "get" Lee I really have to read between the lines and understand his penchant for 19th century verbiage that could be characterized as understatement. (General Jackson, I'm so very glad to see you. I only wish you had been here earlier. =Why, I oughta!)

PS, I believe Washington said exactly what was on his mind, not what he thought people wanted to hear.

 

[K Hale]

Washington didn't look for loopholes in any will in order to free Martha's slaves. He could send one to Philadelphia, which he did, then not send him the money to come home on. The law was that if you were a slave and managed to stay in that city for 30 days, you were free. Washington knew things like that and took advantage of that knowledge.

Again... doing this would have violated the terms of the will.

Not Martha Custis Washington's will, with which Lee had nothing to do. George Washington Parke Custis' will, of which Lee, and not the Father of Our Country[tm], was the executor.

 

[TerryB]

Again... doing this would have violated the terms of the will.

Not Martha Custis Washington's will, with which Lee had nothing to do. George Washington Parke Custis' will, of which Lee, and not the Father of Our Country[tm], was the executor.

Okay, but here's my point. You seem to want to confine this dispute to technicalities, whereas I am trying to understand Lee the man in light of the myth that he freed all his slaves, when the reality was that he regarded the Custis slaves as uppity, and doesn't seem to have tried to do the sort of creative things that Washington did in order to free slaves that he had no legal right to free because they belonged to his wife.

I grew up with the Lost Cause myth, which is an even larger issue than what type of man was Lee really? My mother's name is Virginia Lee, and my middle name is Lee, so you can imagine. But by saying Lee often said one thing in public and another in private is in no way to accuse him of hypocrisy. I believe he simply carried the virtue of politeness to a fault. To him I think to be blunt or totally up front was to be rude, and Lee was in no way a rude person. So if you are in the room with him when he says something, and you know the "code," the body language, tone of voice, expression of the eyes, you may "get" that he knows he has to say the politically correct thing in order not to give offense. Pryor's book is full of examples of this say one thing in public and something else in private. I'm the one making the leap as to why he would do that (didn't want to seem rude). That's where the dispute is for me, not over the particulars of the wills or of whether he so deeply regretted the surrender that he wished he could have died fighting. But I do believe he thought that honor was worth dying for and that just to say, "well, I saved lives by the surrender," would not be the way he justified it. He justified it by saying that to break out in small groups and continue a guerrilla war would have brought a holocaust on the Southern people. Far different than the loss of lives in a gallant but doomed last stand.

 

[K Hale]

Okay, but here's my point. You seem to want to confine this dispute to technicalities, whereas I am trying to understand Lee the man in light of the myth that he freed all his slaves, when the reality was that he regarded the Custis slaves as uppity, and doesn't seem to have tried to do the sort of creative things that Washington did in order to free slaves that he had no legal right to free because they belonged to his wife.

And here's my point. You are looking for reasons to be critical of what you see as Lee's failure to free the Custis slaves, because you grew up with other people's opinions of Lee clouding your judgment, while also seeking to compare him to another historical figure who has nothing whatever to do with Lee's situation in life other than marrying the woman who was the mother of Lee's father-in-law. In other words, what do George Washington and the Lost Cause have to do with the price o' beans? Robert E. Lee can't help it if people have made him into a myth since his death, and he can't help it if the will he was executor of prevented him from doing what you think he ought to have done. That's not technicality, that's reality.

As for the business of not saying what he really thought, you are right: Lee was just trying to be polite. We can't all be Rahm Emanuel.

But I do believe he thought that honor was worth dying for and that just to say, "well, I saved lives by the surrender," would not be the way he justified it. He justified it by saying that to break out in small groups and continue a guerrilla war would have brought a holocaust on the Southern people.

Which is another way of saying he saved lives by the surrender.

If you think the mythologizing of Lee is wrong and we should base our opinions on him as he really was, then why are you trying to attribute to him a statement he never made because you think it "fits his attitude"? You can't have it both ways. You either have to take the reality (or as you call it, the technicality) or you have to take the myth.

 

[TerryB]

We aren't going to settle the attitude Lee had toward slaves or blacks in general by saying he was bound by the terms of the will. And I think everyone in the South held Washington up as a role model, Lee included. I'm not holding Lee hostage to the myth, but in my estimation he's not as tall as he used to be, but then I'm not as short as I used to be either. I love Lee and have no wish to defame him. But I was really bummed to find out that he didn't free his slaves, for whatever reason, legal or just world view. I don't think he ever laid a glove on them, but it's sad that he saw blacks as uppity if they wanted their freedom. Why not just let the ones who managed to escape go and be done with it? Yet he had them pursued and put in jail and possibly had them whipped. That's not the Lee I grew up with, and I'm sorry for that. So instead of being ten feet tall, he's his true six foot one. That's still pretty durn tall, and I can't think of one person in the entire Union army who was half so tall.

 

[K Hale]

We aren't going to settle the attitude Lee had toward slaves or blacks in general by saying he was bound by the terms of the will.

I didn't realize that was in question. He thought slavery was unpleasant, and would hopefully someday be ended by God, but that God decreed that the slaves be in bondage now so they would improve as a race. Or something like that. However, you did say that Lee could have ended his difficulties with the Custis slaves by simply freeing them, which I'm afraid was just not the case.

I'm not holding Lee hostage to the myth, but in my estimation he's not as tall as he used to be, but then I'm not as short as I used to be either.

He is as tall or as short as he ever was, Terry. The only people whose height has changed are yourself and the folks who tried to build Lee into something he wasn't.