On another post, a commenter referred to Lee in the context of slavery and the Civil War. The person said,
Lee defended an evil slave empire, and was in rebellion against the legal government of the United States.
Well, I will in no way say that every single thing Lee said and did in his life was perfect. Though Lee was a Christian, he was still a sinner and as such had his flaws. But, let us here from Lee himself on the subject.
Robert E. Lee’s Opinion Regarding Slavery
This letter was written by Lee in response to a speech given by then President Pierce.Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856:
I was much pleased the with President’s message. His views of the systematic and progressive efforts of certain people at the North to interfere with and change the domestic institutions of the South are truthfully and faithfully expressed. The consequences of their plans and purposes are also clearly set forth. These people must be aware that their object is both unlawful and foreign to them and to their duty, and that this institution, for which they are irresponsible and non-accountable, can only be changed by them through the agency of a civil and servile war. There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Savior have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . .
Lee opposed slavery and had freed the slaves he had inherited from his wife’s estate long before the war. One of them, William Mac Lee, chose to stand by Robert E. Lee’s side throughout the war, serving as his cook and confidant. This former slave and friend described Lee with these words, “I was raised by one of the greatest men in the world. There was never one born of a woman greater than Gen. Robert E. Lee”.
Robert E. Lee could not, would not, fight against his native Virginia. When offered the opportunity, he rightly refused. Far from being in rebellion, Lee understood, better than many today, one of the primary issues in the great war–the right of the states to govern themselves. He believed that that the tragedy of slavery was diminishing and that it would ultimately be defeated by Christianity, not by war.
So, let us understand the man Robert E. Lee rightly.
December 19, 2007 at 9:11 am
Another man of interest is Jefferson Davis. One would assume that he wholeheartedly approved of slavery as the president of the CSA. However, his words and actions prove differently. Although he did not emancipate his slaves, he treated them much more fairly than most northern factory owners treated their “employees.” Davis hired a free, black overseer, and rather than having swift draconian punishment for any infraction, he had the accused slave stand trial before a jury of his peers. Davis would occasionally intervene….if he thought the punishment to harsh. Now, certainly I am not defending slavery as an institution, nor attempting to justify the actions anyone during those turbulent times. But, the actions of the president of the CSA seem a little less vilainous than some would suggest. However, there is a myth that the north was the just crusader, warring against an evil host of southern slaveholders. Both sides were guilty of immoral, criminal actions, just as there were commendable leaders on boths sides as well.
On a side note, Les and all, what is your opinion on the display of the confederate flag at state sites throughout the south?
Another great biography that captures the true essence and character of R. Lee, is Lee, The Last Years. The author relays a poignant tale in the beginning part of the book. After the war was over, a freed slave went to communion at St. Paul’s church in Richmond. The congregation refused to rise and take communion, because they found it disgraceful that a freed slave would dare enter this white church. However, as the man neared the front of the church, a solitary figure rose, and knelt with him to recieve communion–that man was R. E. Lee.
December 19, 2007 at 9:24 am
Tom, that last part about Lee and communion actually caused a chill to run up and down my spine as I thought of Lee kneeling beside the fellow believer–the black man. Wow!
As to the flag issue, I have to run (sorry for the hit and run here) now but will be back later today with some thoughts.
December 19, 2007 at 10:06 am
I can see a lot of GREAT discussion coming out of this…I, too, recommend the “Last Years” book; Dowdy’s is a bit long for most.
It is so sad to me how successful the post-war Radical Republican recasting of the War and its “causes” has been. What is worse, we have still to discover from the social and racial ravages wrought upon our nation by those who sought simply to punish the Southern States.
As for the flag…I’ll weigh in after Christmas…
December 19, 2007 at 10:50 am
I was a little confused what Lee meant when he said that he thought that the blacks were better off in America than in Africa morally, physically, and socially. Do you agree with that?
December 19, 2007 at 10:54 am
I am no expert on what life was like in the mid 1800s in Africa, or in US for that matter, but I suppose that what Lee meant was that there were far more opportunities for the slaves to hear the gospel, far better living conditions (even as slaves) and far more opportunities for social enrichment which might mean education, etc.
December 19, 2007 at 10:59 am
I think that the benefits of slaves being exposed to Christianity, and their descendents having a greater possibility for a better life is one way in which God may have providentially brought forth goodness from our wickedness. I think Lee may merely be recognizing that. However, if you think it’s a little disturbing that an enslaver is saying such things, what about similiar statements from the enslaved. Check out the account of Olaudah Equiano, an African prince, who made similiar statements to those of Lee.
December 19, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I would agree that the spiritual benefits of being brought to America were great indeed. After that, I would disagree about the other benefits. Now, I’m not as sharp on my history as Tom and others here, but I’m not sure I’d agree that they were better off physically and socially when they were brought here. There perhaps may have been war-torn African tribes riddled with disease and discomfort, and I suppose it is possible that for some, living conditions in America were an improvement. However, for even the poorest of Africans, they traded squalor for impoverished slavery. Not very many had a decent quality of life after they came here. Just because their masters grew fat on cotton does not mean that the slaves had decent living situations. Some did, I will grant – such as George Washington’s slaves – but there were so many slaves who were treated like cattle, beaten and whipped on a regular basis, and whose physical living conditions were in many cases worse than what they had left in Africa. Was it worth it for them to be subjected to torture, rape, dysentery (sp?) and death in order for them to hear the gospel? I think so, since many of them were truly adopted in Christ’s kingdom. I am glad that God was able to introduce grace in the midst of our the white man’s sins. I just think we should perhaps be careful to avoid making blanket statements about the “benefits” of slavery, when the injustices were so many. It’s not much further from that to say that slavery was acceptable in order for the Africans to hear the Gospel.
I’d still be interested to hear Equiano’s account. I remember his character from the film Amazing Grace.
December 19, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Matt and all, here’s an excerpt. Sorry for the rabbit trail away from Lee.
“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid for the Lord Jehovah is my Strength and my Song; He also is become my Salvation.
And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people. (Isaiah xii. 2, 4).
To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
PERMIT me, with the greatest deference and respect, to lay at your feet the following genuine Narrative; the Chief design of which is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave-Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen. By the horrors of that trade was I first torn away from all the tender connexions that were naturally dear to my heart; but these, through the mysterious ways of Providence, I ought to regard as infinitely more than compensated by the introduction I have thence obtained to the knowledge of the Christian religion, and of a nation which, by its liberal sentiments, its humanity, the glorious freedom of its government, and its proficiency in arts and sciences, has exalted the dignity of human nature.
I am sensible I ought to entreat your pardon for addressing to you a work so wholly devoid of literary merit; but, as the production of an unlettered African, who is actuated by the hope of becoming an instrument towards the relief of his suffering countrymen, I trust that such a man, pleading in such a cause, will be acquitted of boldness and presumption.
May the God of heaven inspire your hearts with peculiar benevolence on that important day when the question of Abolition is to be discussed, when thousands, in consequence of your Determination, are to look for Happiness or Misery!
I am, My Lords and Gentlemen, Your most obedient, And devoted humble Servant, OLAUDAH EQUIANO OR GUSTAVUS VASSA.
Union-Street, Mary-le-bone, March 24, 1789.”
Specifically, note the last sentence in the longest paragraph.
December 19, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Certainly it was only by God’s abundant grace that some African slaves became believers…and this only despite the terrible injustices committed against them by their captors. If the white people from the west really cared to share the gospel with the Africans, they would go live among them as missionaries, not rip them from their homelands. I too disagree that the Africans were better off socially and physically (as a whole group) in captivity in the U.S. The whites had completely different ideas and standards for what society should look like and what it meant to be educated. What Africans considered civilized, white people called barbaric and savage.
December 19, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Steph, you may be right. It is really hard for us to know what their situations were in 1856. By that I mean, Lee might have been speaking, at least partly, based on what blacks had told him about what life was like back in the Africa they had been forced to leave. Perhaps some had told Lee and others that even though they preferred not to be owned, life was better owned than free back in the conditions of their homeland.
Or, perhaps not. Like I said above, no way to really know.
By the way some did go there with the gospel. And not all slave holders committed terrible injustices (see Lee article above).
I suspect also that what Africans THEN considered civilized many today would call barbaric and savage.
Anyway, this surely makes for good discussion. Thanks for your thoughts.
December 19, 2007 at 5:53 pm
This is a long one…
Ends do not just justify means, that is true. The inhumane treatment of Africans cannot ever be justified. We must be careful, on the other hand, that we do not disdain the hand of providence. It is indeed right to condemn the slave trade (after all, the Scripture prohibits it in 1 Timothy 1) and at to praise God for his sovereign purpose in bringing many of his elect to himself. What about the indignities inflicted by the Assyrians on Israel or by the Babylonians on Judah? Even though God himself brought those horrors upon his people, never once is either nation vindicated in any way simply because it was God’s will. Far from it–they were punished for their evil actions. It is easy to draw attention to these atrocities; doing so, however, from the distance of several centuries does nothing more than make those who make the comparisons feel justified in making them. It is also the kind of thinking that leads to wrong-headed things like reparations.
It is also all too easy to condemn past cultures because they did not think as we do. Besides the fact that it may the case that we should be glad they did not think as we do (who knows how much farther toward–or even past–Gomorrah we would be), understanding the sins of past cultures requires the discipline of understanding not only their own contexts, but also of understanding how the culture in question stood on the shoulders of previous cultures. This is the whole shtick of “time-travel” movies in which people are transported centuries into the future and bewildered at every turn by modern practice and thinking.
One of the things that has surprised me in the study of the history is issue is how, of all people, it was the South who began to deal with the issue of emancipation as a moral issue long before the North seized upon it as a means of forcing the cotton barons to bow to their industrialized machine. Men like Lee were realized that emancipation by legal fiat would be far worse for slaves than a gradual emancipation. The result of the former would have been the sudden injection into society of a largely uneducated, meagerly-skilled and, above all, poor people who would have ultimately been, using our language, a welfare class that needed to be supported. It is more than well-documented that the majority of Northern “abolitionists” were really industrialists in bed with the radical Republicans whose intention was the double damage of stripping the Southern plantation of its workforce and then saddling its culture with the burden of a newly “freed” people who could not be reasonably cared for. The end would crush the South and make it completely submissive to the North.
It was common for these Northern “liberals” to try to incite slave revolts–some even advocated arming slaves so they could go on killing sprees and terrorize the South.
This is also where the idea that “so many slaves who were treated like cattle, beaten and whipped on a regular basis, and whose physical living conditions were in many cases worse than what they had left in Africa” found its way into the Northern armory of anti-Southern rhetoric. There is no question that such a thing did happen–in the North, by the way, as in the South–but hardly on the large-scale that it is purported.
Hearing that so many Northerners were “for them,” many slaves escaped to make their way to the Promised Land, only to find that abolition and emancipation were largely self-aggrandizing political views that made those who held them feel morally superior to Southerners. It is one thing to be an abolitionist; it is another thing to actually care for the slaves.
This is how the ghettos of the North were born; both runaway slaves during and former slaves after the war did not find the North to be nearly as welcome as they had been led to believe. Some tried to return to the South–but the work of the radical Republicans in “reconstruction” ensured that the South they returned was prohibited from returning to being a productive society in any way at all resembling its former richness.
It was men like Lee who, before the war, actually envisioned educating and equipping the slaves to enter society as freed men in such a way as to put as little strain on the people in particular and the culture in general. This, after all, was really the only Christian thing to do. Some, like Lee, began to do this very thing, freeing their slaves as they were able to support themselves.
In God’s providence, however, it was not to be on a grander scale. The current political, racial and cultural divide we face in our country today is the direct result of this tragedy. Only God truly knows how different things would be today had the war, truly speaking, of Northern aggression been avoided.
December 19, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Rob, thanks for the great summary of the situation. I look forward to some posts by you after Jan. 1.
December 20, 2007 at 9:20 am
Interesting thoughts Rob, you obviously know *way* more 29th-century history than yours truly.
“It was men like Lee who, before the war, actually envisioned educating and equipping the slaves to enter society as freed men in such a way as to put as little strain on the people in particular and the culture in general. This, after all, was really the only Christian thing to do.”
—This is certainly a noble idea, but do you really believe it was the ONLY Christian thing to do? What about the northern Christians who believed the sudden end of slavery was the correct solution?
What do you think of Lincoln? Was he manipulating the abolitionist agenda to suit his own political aims?
I find it interesting that I have never met a soul who was born and/or raised in the North that calls the Civil War the “war of northern aggression.” I myself was born in the south and raised there until age ten; my parents had both lived in the south their entire lives until we moved to Baltimore. I think I’ve seen fair amounts of both perspectives on the war, from one extreme to the other. You are a much wiser man than me, but with all due respect Rob, it alarms me that you say the slow-burning method of education and emancipation was the only Christian way.
How do you know that the cruelties against slaves was exaggerated by northern abolitionists? Do you have a source I can look at?
I certainly agree with you Rob, and with Tom, that the northern agenda has been cast in a grandiose light by some. I agree that the northen Industrial Revolution created working conditions that were sub-human. I agree that on the part of the north, there was great hypocrisy in this regard. I would respectfully disagree that Lee made the right decision in the side he chose to fight for. States rights and southern pride is not as important as human rights, in my humble opinion—and I have yet to be convinced that the abolition movement in the north was primarily fueled by greed and politics. It was certainly fueled by these things in part, but were there not many pious, orthodox Christians who firmly believed in immediate emancipation?
December 20, 2007 at 9:21 am
haha woops, I meant “…more about 19th century history than yours truly.”
December 20, 2007 at 9:51 am
I hope you don’t mind me interjecting a few thoughts, even if some of them are not my own.
A couple of the most high profile and respected scholars in the area of slavery, Eugene and the late Elizabeth Genovese note,
Until recently, people of every race and continent lived in a world in which slavery was an accepted part of the social order. Europeans did not outdo others in enslaving people or in treating slaves viciously. They outdid others by creating a civilization that eventually stirred moral condemnation of slavery and roused mass movements against it. Perception of slavery as morally unacceptable - as sinful - did not become widespread until the second half of the eighteenth century. Slavery, not merely serfdom, existed in Western and Central Europe as late as the Renaissance and in Russia until the mid-nineteenth century. . .
Today we ask: how could Christians or any civilized people have lived with themselves as slaveholders? But the historically appropriate question is: what, after millenia of general acceptance made Christians - and, subsequently, those of other faiths - judge slavery an enormity not to be endured? (The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders Worldview, Cambridge U Press, 2005, pp. 69-70)
Political correctness doesn’t like to remind people that much of Africa is a bloody awful place. Almost all of the slaves of the Atlantic slave trade came from what are now eighteen present-day African countries, listed in descending order of life expectancy in 2006, long after the introduction of American and European medicine and food supplies: Senegal (59), Ghana (58), Madagascar (57), Togo (57), Gambia (54), Gabon (54), Benin (53), Cameroon (51), the Democratic Republic of Congo (51), Equitorial Guinea (49), Guinea (49), Cote d’Ivoire (48), Nigeria (47), Guinea-Bissau (46), Sierra Leone (40), Liberia (39), Mozambique (39) and Angola (38).
Thanks to the slave trade there millions of people who have a life expectancy beyond their 30s or 40s. That doesn’t justify any abuses or ways in which people were treated improperly. It does however allow us to look back, like Equiano, with the eyes of the patriarch Joseph: And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. Gen. 45:5-7
December 20, 2007 at 10:19 am
Thanks for your elucidation sol. I think I agree with your thoughts (or rather the thoughts of others with which you agree).
December 20, 2007 at 2:10 pm
The ones not in italics were my thoughts. I don’t get all my ideas from others!
December 20, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I’m going to weigh back in–its been a long day of me again doing things “like ministry”–AFTER I get the kids in bed and spend a little catch-up time with my wife…
Quickly for now, though:
Thanks for you thoughts, Matt. I’d have to say, though, that I don’t know nearly as much about the 29th century as you might think. Also, I do think the desire of the southern emancipationists was indeed the only Christian thing to do; I think their assessment regarding sudden emancipation was dead-on, because what they feared is exactly what happened after the war. What was worse, most white Southern men found themselves in even a worse state than the freed blacks because they were denied the privilige of voting and, in most cases, of returning to their private property since it had been confiscated by the North.
I’ll roll on a bit more later…
January 3, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about what the best course of action was at that time. I know many devout believers (even a preacher or two) wiser than myself who would strongly disagree that Lee’s approach was the best way, the only Christian way.
Do you really think that Christian love and education would have eventually freed the slaves? Over the slave owner’s dead bodies! Their entire economy depended upon the slave trade. I think for the southern slave owners who came home to poverty, they got merely a taste of their own medicine! Serves them right for being so selfish, callous and lazy. It is unfortunate that southerners who did not own slaves came back to the same financial and cultural pickle, but unfortunately the sins of a part can often affect the plight of the whole.
I’m still interested in hearing your sources for some of the above purported facts you mention, about the politicized abolitionist agenda and the supposedly exaggerated stories of slave abuse. I’m curious because some of it is news to me and doesn’t ring a bell from any American history class I’ve ever sat in.
I get it that being brought to our country was for some slaves an improvement over living conditions in Africa. I get it that otherwise they would not have heard the gospel. I still maintain, however, that the northern abolitionists (many of whom were devout Christians) had the right idea about immediate emancipation. I imagine they understood at least to some degree that either the slow way (unlikely) or the fast way (too sudden, subsequent fallout) would provide difficulties for slaves. But I must ask, who would take comfortable slavery over impoverished freedom?
I also believe the only legitimate bone that the south had to pick with the north was over states rights. I believe the south was in the right on that regard. I still believe however that basic human rights are more important.
January 4, 2008 at 9:32 am
In other words I think it is a very bad and irresponsible idea to hold up a man such as Lee, devout Christian that he might have been, as an example of someone who did the right and best thing during the Civil War.
January 16, 2008 at 11:31 am
1. The idea that Africans were better off under a system that treated them as objects of ownership can only get its view of slavery from Shirley Temple movies.
2. Lee clearly, in letting the Lord decide about slavery, was no friend of emancipation.
3. As the historical documents show, i.e. their speeches, correspondence, etc., the 64 Ministers of Secession from the deep south all argued that secession was a case of “the superiority of the white race over the black race.” (Their words, not mine; see Charles Dew, Disciples of Disunion, University of Virginia Press).
4. Prior to the war, the south enlisted every federal power they could to promote slavery and quell abolitionism. The use of the postal service, the denial of the rights of northern states to exercise their rights to determine the free status of their citizens, the implementation of rules prohibiting the reading of all petitions (contrary to the First Amendment) on the floor of Congress to make sure that abolitionist petitions were silenced, are just some of the examples of the fact that the south always wanted federal authority to trump the rights of individuals and rights of northern states.
5. Lincoln’s first inaugural agreed to the coninuation of slavery in the South. But as Calhoun and others repeatedly argued, that wasn’t enough. They wanted the use of Federal authority to extend slavery into the western states.
The sooner the South comes to grips with the fact that the Civil War was fought over an immoral institution, that Jim Crow laws were a virtual extension of that institution, and that the Confederate flag has been used for the worst expressions of racism (a form of behavior I see very few southerners object to: if I thought the flag of the Green Mountain boys of the Revolution was being used for an racist reasons, I would object to the trashing of that symbol; but why do southerners not object to the racist use of the flag, as it was in the ’50’s by the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama?), the sooner we will finally be able to put the issue of race behind us. But maybe that is just what some people don’t want to do?
Finally, if loyalty is Lee’s strength, it seems to be he took an Oath of Loyalty to the Union. Apparently, that wasn’t terribly compelling to him.
January 16, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Mike, thanks for weighing in. See the quote below on the fact that most whites of the day believed in the superiority of their race.
“Simply put, Jefferson Davis treated blacks with respect and received their respect in return. Critics will reply that Davis believed in white supremacy, i.e., that he believed that whites were superior to blacks. But these critics almost never explain that nearly all Americans in that day believed the same thing. This was true of the average man on the street right up to the nation’s leaders in all parts of the country. For example, prominent Northern politicians like Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas repeatedly said they believed whites were superior to blacks. Douglas even said the Declaration of Independence’s statement about all men being created equal referred only to white men, and Lincoln referred to the declaration as “the white man’s charter of freedom.” Fortunately, we have come a long way since then. But I don’t think it’s fair to condemn Davis because he held racial views that were shared by nearly all white Americans in his day. Cooper does a good job of putting Davis’s racial views into proper perspective:
At the end of his life, Jefferson Davis believed unequivocally in the superiority of his race. He also had serious reservations about black people ever achieving any kind of equality with the superior race. Yet he was no race-baiter or racial demagogue. . . . His conviction about the innate supremacy of his race did not require hatred or viciousness. . . .
While not all Americans joined his embrace of slavery, few dissented from his belief in the superiority of the white race, an outlook shared by almost all white Americans as well as Western Europeans.”47″
I can provide the author info if needed.
January 17, 2008 at 11:20 am
Mike–
Just curious, what are your sources for your assessments of Lee? How much of Lee’s own correspondence have you read? I would respectfully suggest that, had you consulted the latter you would not have made the kind of careless, sweeping statement of Lee’s beliefs about emancipation that you did.
As I read your response I sense a bit of the very same condescension and disdain that drives most anti-Confederate attitudes. I could be wrong, but I feel as if your ultimate argument boils down to this: “As soon as you Southerners can grow up and get over the past everything will be okay.” It is far easier to argue this way, though, sitting in judgment form the high moral perch of our enlightened age, than it is to take the time to consider the real issues behind the conflict that eventually developed into war.
The assumption that the North was morally superior in all that it did and that the South was morally inferior is, frankly, pure self-righteous bigotry. It is the same bigotry that automatically assumes that any defense of the South is, by default, a defense of evil, that continues to feed the racial and social problems we continue to face today. We have lost and are continuing to lose freedoms in this country because the assessment of the Southern cause is continually boiled down to being only about slavery. That is not only historically inaccurate, it is intellectually inept and, I might add, personally offensive.
January 17, 2008 at 11:53 am
Looks like Jim Crow’s ideas reside in the north–to this day. See this Boston Daily Herald story.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/250777/
January 22, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I suppose no one will read this, so it could be a tree falling in an electronic forest without witnesses…
Rob, I’m not sure Mike was declaring that the North was morally superior per se. You of all people know the broadness of the term “North” in relation to the time of the Civil War…and you know that it comprehends many factions of varying moral strength.
I did not pick up any inflammatory statements in Mike’s post (besides perhaps the first line about Shirley Temple movies…which I agree with in sentiment, if not in delivery).
I have found that among most people who have spent their entire lives in either the South or the North, many have incomplete, if not outright fallacious and ignorant views of what goes on in other parts of the country. We stereotype each other because we do not know each other. The psychological term is out-group homogeneity, or the phenomenon where members of an outside group all look the same to members of another group. The metaphysical term is plain ol’ sinful nature.
I would humbly submit that Lee’s actions speak louder than whatever his words might have been, and his actions demonstrated to me an allegiance to Virginia above all others…perhaps even above the God by whom sinners are set free regardless of color, creed or cultural norms, however broadly held they might be.
I am appalled that anyone would say Jefferson Davis isn’t all that bad simply because his ideas on the value/humanity of the black race were reflective of the general consensus. That same logic would allow future historians to say of our time that they can’t judge us too harshly on the matter of abortion, because we do not fully understand the nuances and cultural influences at play in the early 21st century.
January 22, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Matt, I did not say, nor did the author of that quote about Davis say, that Davis isn’t all that bad. His point was, and my point in quoting him is, that the prevailing of whites toward blacks of the era were basically the same whether north or south. Davis’ view, as well as Lincoln’s and Douglas’, were wrong. Plain. As Rob has said above, there really other reasons behind the northern advocacy of freeing the slaves, political and financial.
January 23, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I see.
January 23, 2008 at 12:31 pm
“As Rob has said above, there really other reasons behind the northern advocacy of freeing the slaves, political and financial.”
Sure this was true in some circles, but no one has answered me on this yet: what about the devout believers who facilitated, to a great degree, the Underground Railroad, and who provided safe houses and jobs to runaway slaves? Were they acting sinfully in helping the pre-Civil War slaves escape?
I have read a number of accounts from abolitionists who were neither violent in their protest against slavery, nor were they politically nor financially motivated. They saw blacks as completely equal with whites. It’s been a while since I’ve read on the subject, otherwise I would gladly refer to specific texts…maybe I’ll try to find something this weekend when I’m not swamped at work.
By the way, I’d be interested to know where the above-quoted author got his information about Lincoln believing that whites were superior to blacks. Even if he did believe that at some point, didn’t his opinion change? Or was the Emancipation Proclamation a total farce, motivated only by political agenda? I find that pretty hard to believe. A cursory review of Lincoln’s life reveals a man of great character, even if we don’t all agree with every single decision he made. He did not strike me as a grasping, dishonest, conniving President, at any rate. I’m not saying I believe that to be your opinion, Les…I’m just making a point and raising a question.
January 23, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Matt, I am no expert, but a quick google came up with this on Lincoln and what to do with the freed slaves.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/14.2/vorenberg.html
January 23, 2008 at 12:49 pm
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races…I, as much as any man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
From Lincoln’s second debate with Stephen Douglas, on August 27, 1858.
January 23, 2008 at 12:54 pm
One more:
http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/features/2004Feb/lincoln.html