Vigorously? Make me laugh. Here's what he had to say a couple of lines later:
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 Saviour 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.So, Lee's idea of vigorous opposition was to consider that slavery was the best thing for blacks, that there was no sense in anyone trying to do anything about it, and that God would get around to it in a thousand years or so.
When his father-in-law died, Lee took over the management of the plantation his wife had inherited and immediately began freeing the slaves. By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, every slave in Lee’s charge had been freed.
Again, a laughable interpretation of the facts. Lee was made the executor of his father-in-law's estate. Included was a stipulation that he free the family slaves within five years. He didn't make it, blowing the deadline by several months. His final emancipation of the slaves took place a whole 3 days before the Emancipation Proclamation. Of course, by that time all the slaves affected had already freed themselves by walking away.
But, hey, nice job cutting and pasting most of your post from this site
Vigorously? Make me laugh. Here’s what he had to say a couple of lines later:
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 Saviour 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.
You idiot, he was responding to Lincoln and his savagery; of course he thought slavery was more humane than this;
“You and we are different races,” Lincoln observed. “We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races . . . . This physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both” and “affords a reason at least why we should be separated . . . . It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”
“The colony of Liberia has been in existence a long time. In a certain sense it is a success. The old President of Liberia, Roberts, has just been with me – the first time I ever saw him. He says they have within the bounds of that colony between 300,000 and 400,000 people . . . . They are not all American [black] colonists, or their descendants. Something less than 12,000 have been sent hither from this country. Many of the original settlers have died, yet, like people elsewhere, their offspring outnumber those deceased.”