Posted on 07/11/2022 11:14:58 AM PDT by bitt
“You think Lee didn’t find blacks inferior...”
“There are various historical and newspaper hearsay accounts of Lee personally whipping a slave, but they are not direct eyewitness accounts.”
Before the Civil War, then Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee took an extended leave from the U. S. Army to attempt to settle the Custis estate, but without any great success. Lee saw his duty to emancipate the Custis slaves as a matter of honor-he had addressed it as the most important reason for requesting a leave of absence from the army-but he kept the slaves in bondage for the full period (five years) provided for in the Custis will in order to provide a source of income for the estate.
Doesn’t sound like he was in a real hurry to free the slaves in the Custis situation does it. Even to the point of trying to extend it through the courts which I previously mentioned.
I only mentioned two as they were the leadership in the confederacy. So, you mentioned Washington. A relative of mine through his wife Dandridge. Again, another revolutionary person that died right at 64 years before the civil war. So he was not around when the war started and had no opinion of slavery at the time. He did own slaves but released them in 1799 at his death.
Of the first twelve presidents only two didn’t own slaves, John and John Quincy Adams. But none of them were alive at the time of the civil war. It just seems a little questionable for Jefferson to be singled out at the plantation he owned with a special section of the tour on slavery. And he’s no relative of mine. But that’s not fair treatment for him.
wy69
Lee got the job as president of Washington College after a trustee overheard one of the general’s daughters complain at a party in Richmond that her father needed work. In September, Lee mounted his horse, Traveller, and headed to Lexington, where he found a college heavily in debt and struggling. It is true that Lee oversaw repairs, raised money, recruited students and injected the college with a practical streak of education by emphasizing chemistry, engineering and mining. He even is credited with spearheading an effort to educate printers to become better journalists.
But the most damning account of Lee the college president i s John M. McClure’s essay, “The Freedmen’s Bureau School of Lexington versus ‘General Lee’s Boys.’” In 1865, members of the town’s black community had pooled their money to rent space for use as a school. “Within a week of the school’s opening, more than three hundred students—ranging in age from very small children to grandparents in their sixties—nearly overwhelmed” the school’s teachers with their enthusiasm for education, wrote McClure...
Lee knew about his students’ harassment of the black school’s students and teachers. He also knew about two violent confrontations between his students and teachers and freedmen. “Lee had sent out advisories forbidding his students to take part in these activities,” Pryor wrote. But as one student told his parents, “It was reported that the Gen. had dismissed some of the boys, but I have not known of any leaving.” Pryor reached the only possible conclusion: “The number of accusations against Washington College boys indicates that he either punished the racial harassment more laxly than other misdemeanors or turned a blind eye to it.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/robert-lee-washington-statue/
None of Lee’s business and it has nothing to do with slavery, ownership, or treatment of slaves. And the information is all hearsay and not proven. All my information is from sites. At the time this happened, the war was over. Slavery was no longer an issue. Burt that’s what made it to Jefferson’s home tour.
wy69
Yes, history is written by the winners. There is hope that paper books written before the great marxist rewriting of history and kept in private hands will outlast the terabytes of hateful, revisionist blather against eternal Truth that exist largely online, subject to intercontinental electronic pulse attack by the Chinese, Iranians or Russians. It would be like the burning of the library of Alexandria all over again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.