Thanks for that general. I hope, as it was the communion rail, Lee had 1 Corinthians in mind & was fellowshipping with his brother. Lee was a devout man.
If he was a devout man he would not taken a career in the Army nor would he have gone to war with his fellow man or kept his fellow man in chains.
Lee was hypocrite as were many wealthy men of power and still are nothing has changed.
The worship pf God while ordering the destruction of thousands of men is something I cant get my head around and never will.
I really don't understand the adulation for Lee maybe it stems from the fact that Lee was a close as you can get to American Aristocracy therefore is beyond reproach , It was never in doubt that Lee was going to fight for his state he was virtually a King within it unlike George Thomas.
Here is a quote from Robert E Lee written in 1856 in a letter.
"I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy".
End quote.
And yet Bobby Lee managed to split up slave family's to such and extent.
Pryor writes:
“Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”
End quote:
Like I said Lee is hard to judge in a previous post because he never really had anything to say after the War , However I cant understand people trying to turn Lee into some Godley angel who really cared , Fact is he didn't and while he was loved by his own army and put on this persona of a refined and kind Gentleman he was just another slave owning southern gentleman who thought the black-man was inferior.
He was basically a snob of the worst sort.
In my own opinion of course.