Analysis of a Robert E Lee quote about slavery seems pertinent to today's conversation

[ProudLib72]

Last edited Sun May 14, 2017, 08:29 PM - Edit history (1)

By now, most of you should be aware of the protest in Charlottesville, VA against removing a statue of Robert E Lee. Of course, Spencer had to make an appearance and add his piece about how he is proud of his white heritage.

Link to WaPo article about protest: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/alt-rights-richard-spencer-leads-torch-bearing-protesters-defending-lee-statue/2017/05/14/766aaa56-38ac-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?utm_term=.b87f14d137f2

This got me thinking about what Robert E Lee represented and continues to represent for southerners. We know he detested slavery, but he seemed to tolerate it well enough. So how could someone like Robert E Lee hold such ambivalent feelings towards the institution of slavery and still be willing to fight to preserve it?

Here is the quote I want to analyze:

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. 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.

I find it interesting that an educated man would fall back on such a weak argument to defend his rationale for allowing slavery to continue. I call it "weak", but that is probably not a fair assessment of his reasoning skills. Rather, it is indicative of the pervasive southern ideology wrapped up in its familiar religious trappings.

There are three items int this quote that are worth taking note of.
1. The insistence on slaves being better off under their masters in American than they would have been if they had been left in Africa. This is the old justification for colonialism, the idea that the colonizer is more advanced (here it is morally, physically, and socially) than the colonized. It amounts to cultural superiority over a people who are (though never fully understood) deemed primitive. Some of this cultural superiority stems from an infusion of religious beliefs, but I want to treat that separately.

2. The refrain of the white man's burden should be obvious here. Again, we are dealing with a colonial concept, but the sentiment fits easily with a discussion of slavery. It boils down to the culturally superior "race" being tasked with the responsibility of guiding the inferior "race" so that that inferior "race" can (at some yet to be determined future date) finally stand on equal ground with the superior "race". Oh, the white man has it so tough!

3. Finally, there is the religious aspect to consider, the "Merciful Providence". I think it is interesting that he avoids stating outright that it was God who ordered slavery. He is careful to word it in more secular terms that still maintain a religious underpinning. From what little I have read about Lee, this religious aspect is what he struggled with most. (For example, Why did American slaves not have a Jubilee year?) In the end, he seems to give up the struggle and hand himself over to "providence". It's with a sigh that he relieves his embattled reason and relinquishes control to a higher force. I believe this to be the most significant part of the quote as it demonstrates how someone who was certainly very intelligent is able to convince himself that the subject of slavery rests in divine hands. In other words, he convinces himself that it is not his place to question.

[Yonnie3]

1. The protest was not in Richmond, it was in Charlottesville.

The WaPo report clearly states this. The story was perhaps filed from a Richmond office.

[trof]

6. Jefferson's University of Virginia

[Yonnie3]

7. Yes and rally leader, white supremacist Richard Spencer, got a BA at UVA in 2001. n/t

[ProudLib72]

8. Yeah, I think I just looked at where it was filed

Changed it.

[Yonnie3]

10. This is local, so it jumped out at me.

I was in the general area of it and was unaware of what was going on. People I know went there to counter, but they had dispersed already. I'm reading via Facebook that the police showed up very quickly after some sort of disturbance and the racists left with haste. I've worked and ran events in that park and permits were required, perhaps that is why they left so quickly.

I thought about your question about Lee and these racists and can't seem to get my head around it. I feel that Lee is long dead and what he thought and wrote so many years ago has little relevance today. I think that the statue and whether it stays, goes, or is modified is just a power game for all sides of the issue. The same goes for Lee himself in the dialog. There are just so many other things that could be worked on, but this debate is absorbing attention, resources and energies that could be more productive elsewhere. There is not enough affordable housing, there are drug overdoses every day, etc.

I despise these racist assholes. I'm hoping they get out of line and get some jail time. I don't think a Charlottesville jury would be easy on them.

[ProudLib72]

12. My point is the absurd rationalization of racism

At least the rationalization of racism on the part of Lee. Part of that rationalization is the dominance of the white race being bound up with religious values. It's very similar to Spencer's pride in his white heritage and all that the whites have done. It just completely ignores the reality of slavery (or racism in modern terms). These contemporary racists feel closely connected with the likes of Lee and Jackson through that white heritage/Christian white supremacy mess of an ideology they cling to. I think these beliefs stagnated a long, long time ago, and they have come to form the basis of this heroes of the Confederacy cult worship.

Like I was explaining in my post below, the Nat Geo article on southern economy shocked me with its claim that it took at least 100 years for the south to come close to economic parity with the north. If true, I can begin to understand the deep seated hatred for all things northern, including equality for blacks. BUT please do not take that to mean I, in any way, condone their behavior or system of beliefs!

[Yonnie3]

15. Ha! I was worried someone might think I was condoning them.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that you condoned them, nor did I get that impression.

There is a local person who I talked to years ago who claimed that his family were gentlemen farmers who lost it all in the Civil War. His hate for the north was palpable and seemed economic. It seemed as if he was reciting something he had heard many times in his life.

There is a group of locals who families lost land to the NPS. These people are descendants of British mercenaries who were abandoned after the revolutionary war. They settled in the mountains because that was what was not claimed. Their resentment is still voiced and is also economic in nature. They never owned slaves, but just scratched out a living. They also seem to have a low opinion of northerners.

I'm sure all of the folks in the above anecdotes ascribe to the Lee/Jackson worship and feel superior because of their race. I've never heard them rationalize their racism. I am amused to see their grandchildren in interracial marriages.

[Yupster]

17. The south truly was devastated by the war

Of all the adult white men in the south, 75 % of them served in the Confederate Army at some point during the war. Other than Native Americans, no group of Americans ever mobilized like that for a war.

By the end of the war. one fourth of the adult men of the south were dead and another fourth wounded. At Gettysburg, General Lee led one tenth of all the adult white men alive in the south. No American general has ever had a responsibility like that.

Devastating the Confederate economy was an important strategy of the north. Tearing up the transportation system, blockading the coastline, burning down the Shenandoah Valley and killing off or carting off draft animals were all devastating as was having so much of the labor force in uniform. The average family had all its money in Confederate currency which became worthless after the war, so simple things like paying taxes became a disaster. Then there were the carpetbaggers come down from the north to profit from the misery.

Is it any wonder it took so long for the south to recover?

Here's a fun fact. The largest city in the Confederacy was New Orleans with about 166,000 people. Of the 20 largest cities in the US in 1860, New Orleans was the only one in the Confederacy and it was captured early in the war. The second largest city in the Confederacy moved around a lot. It was wherever the Union Army of the Potomac camped that night. The main Union army was more than twice as big as any other city in the south. The capital of Richmond had just under 40,000 people when the war began. The important rail junction of Atlanta had just under 10,000 people in the 1860 census.

[Demsrule86]

22. Most of those there are from elsewhere...

Charlottesville is not redneck at all. It is the biggest city in the area...you are about an hour out of Washington...and some commute from Charlottesville to Washington. My family has lived in that part of Virginia for almost 400 hundred years.

[Yonnie3]

24. The city is not redneck but

there are tons of them in the surrounding counties.

[Demsrule86]

26. That is true...but Charlottesville area is becoming an extension of Northern Virginia.

Albermarle County went for Hillary by more than 20 points...59% to 34%. It is not a red area.

[Yonnie3]

27. Yes, but blue mostly near the city.

Moving more blue with time. The main reason is the deal made for Charlottesville to not annex the sprawl north of the city. My Albemarle precinct only went for Ms. Clinton by 0.7 %. 16 votes if my math is correct. I felt my canvassing made a difference.

The sprawl is starting to hit Greene county. Ms. Clinton lost by more than 30 points there. I expect it to shift more blue over time.

[Boomerproud]

2. I wonder if he died still rationalizing evil.

He also had no business using the phrase "in this enlightened age..."

[Yupster]

18. Isn't every age

more enlightened than long before and won't people 150 years from now chortle as us calling ourselves progressive or enlightened.

I can just imagine a guy 150 years from now swallowing a protein tablet and laughing at us barbarians of the past for thinking cheeseburgers were okay. In fact, this post might be damning just for using the word "guy".

[kentuck]

3. I think he was trying to rationalize something in a different time.

We like to think that if we had been living back then, we would have rationalized it just as we do today?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. By the end of his life Lincoln did. Thaddeus Stevens was always there.

[treestar]

5. We would have been

Abolitionists and the Deplorables and arephblicans would have been defending it.

[ProudLib72]

9. Today is not all that different

I started thinking about this after reading a an article years ago in Nat Geo about how depressed the economy of the south had been for at least 100 years after the war. It made me wonder why there hadn't been any smart antebellum southern economists who had warned of the unsustainable nature of slavery in an increasingly industrialized society. And maybe there were some who warned about it but were labelled as abolitionists. It seems so obvious to us now. It was through analyzing this quote that I realized how the south sought to preserve slavery, not for economic reasons, but because of a twisted morality couched in Christian beliefs.

If you read some of Spencer's quotes (if you can stomach reading them!), you start to recognize a similar mindset. Chiefly, he firmly believes that white people are dominant, that they created a strong culture, and that they built the south with their own hands. He is talking about the legacy that Lee was helping to formulate through the coded narrative evident in his quote.

[raccoon]

29. I like your posts, but disagree on this point:

I realized how the south sought to preserve slavery, not for economic reasons, but because of a twisted morality couched in Christian beliefs.

I think most of the slaveowners of the South sought to preserve slavery because slavery had made them well-off. And if slavery was abolished, they would lose a lot of their assets--that is, their slaves, and they wouldn't be reimbursed for the loss.

People usually believe things that suit their convenience, whatever country or century they live in.

[ProudLib72]

32. I didn't explain that correctly in the previous post

My analysis suggests that those people who might have taken exception to slavery found an excuse for it through the moral superiority theory. But I don't think that applied to everyone in the south. I was using someone like Lee as an example of an intelligent and educated person who could possibly have seen through the dominant ideology. He couldn't.

I'm sure the vast majority of southerners never bothered to question slavery.

[Yupster]

33. Just before the end of the Civil War,

President Lincoln met with the Vice-President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens on a ship off Hampton Roads. It's called the Hampton Roads Conference.

Lincoln offered his old friend a deal.

Lay down your arms and the US government will compensate southerners for the value of their freed slaves.

This was a big decision. If it's your slaves you want so bad, we'll buy them from you.

The Confederate government refused. They wouldn't accept any proposal that didn't include independence.

[raccoon]

35. Wow. Now that is interesting. nt

[Yupster]

37. It was a very interesting tid-bit of US history

US Grant is the hero of the story.

He and his old friend and best man at his wedding Confederate General James Longstreet kept in contact across the lines trying to organize a meeting that would lead to an end to the war. They kept coming up with reasons for a meeting, like prisoner exchanges. The Union government was adamant against a meeting without an agreement to rejoin the Union. Lincoln kept telling the other side that he would be incredibly generous. Everything was negotiable, but they must agree to rejoin the Union before any meeting could happen.

When the southern delegation of Stephens, the VP of the Confederacy who opposed secession in the first place and an old friend of Lincoln's from his Whig Party days. Confederate Senator Robert Hunter and former US Supreme Court Justice John Campbell arrived at Union lines, they were held and not let through. Lincoln was contacted and asked if they brought authority to end the war, and the answer was no, not at the expense of their country. They were then not let through.

That's when Grant pulled rank and pushed them through the lines and against all orders toward the President. They sat for a few days until Lincoln decided he would meet with them, but not on US soil, but on the steamer, "The River Queen."

In the February 3 conference Lincoln tried to assure the Confederate delegation that he couldn't make promises, but he would be good for his word that he would do everything he could to bring the country together peacefully if the Confederates would lay down their arms by April 1. The conference ended with the Confederates saying they would go back to brief President Davis and they asked if Lincoln could put his promises in writing.

Davis used the terms to rally what was left of southern war spirit noting that Lincoln would not compromise. Lincoln wanted the Confederacy crushed and Davis did not have the Constitutional authority to negotiate his own nation out of existence even if he wanted to. Lincoln was good for his word. He put his plans into writing. He offered amnesty to southern soldiers and leaders. He offered return of all property but slaves. He offered the south $ 200 million to pay for lost slaves if they laid down arms by April 1 and another $ 200 million if they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment by July 1. When Seward complained, Lincoln noted that the north was complicit in the slave trade too. Lincoln's proposal was unpopular in the cabinet and the congress and went no further.

It was a deal the south should have jumped on because as it turns out, Lee abandoned Richmond on April 2 and surrendered about a week later.

Quite the what if of history. A lot of things could have turned out differently in history if leaders were more flexible and wise.

[ProudLib72]

38. What did Lincoln (and congress) make of Grant pulling rank?

Grant was obviously aware that Lincoln would be amenable to discussing terms.

[Yupster]

39. Yes, Grant was pushing Lincoln to do what he thought he wanted to do anyway

Congress was completely radicalized at this point and wouldn't accept any compromise from anyone.

For Grant you have to look at the war situation. In February of 1865, the war had become trench warfare much like World War I. The Confederates were dug into the trenches around Petersburg and Richmond. War was blowing each other up with artillery. There wasn't any technique or art left. Grant could see how it would end. The south couldn't replace its losses and its men were being mangled and killed in handfulls while the north could replace its losses until the inevitable happened and the lines would snap. Grant wasn't at all a bloodthirsty man and he wanted to do everything in his power to avoid the horrible casualties coming in every day for no reason other than to run the south out of men. The top Confederate generals saw it just as well as Grant did.

Lee did everything he could to retain some freedom of movement for his army, but he was good at math. Lee's senior corps commander James Longstreet was good friends with Grant and they remained in contact throughout much of the siege. If it was up to the generals, the war would have ended earlier, but Lincoln wouldn't stop until unity was restored, and Davis didn't believe he had the Constitutional power to negotiate his nation out of existence even if he wanted to.

[Yupster]

20. Historians call it

"The sin of presentism."

That's judging people of the past by standards of today.

It's frowned upon.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

23. Why were there generals like Grant who truly believed in the cause they were fighting for?

[Buzz cook]

11. Lee was an unreconstructed racist.

There is more than enough evidence that he was more than just tolerant of slavery.
Robert Lee truly believed that Africans were inferior and thus suited for little else than slavery.

In that belief he was little different than many other Americans at the time both North and South.

Yet after the rebellion the South needed to rewrite history and Lee was an important part of that rewrite. The cause needed a "pure and perfect knight" as a symbol of the justice of their cause. Lee, fit that roll in part because of his many military victories.

So it didn't take much white wash to turn Lee into a symbol admired by just about every student of the war.

[ProudLib72]

13. I agree

They found a hero in Lee and created a hero's narrative around him. I guess I could have chosen a quote from any number of sources. Part of what I was attempting to do here was to detangle the myth that surrounds Lee from the reality. In more than a few modern depictions, he seems to have evolved into an anti-slavery general who fought only for states' rights. That simply isn't so. He succumbed to the dominant religious right wing rhetoric as so many others. There may have been a smidgen of doubt in the beginning of that quote, but the rhetoric caught up to him midway through.

[Buzz cook]

16. Revisionists keep trotting out the "arm the slaves" letter

As if that proved Lee and the Confederate leadership were just fine with freeing slaves, so it was all states rights after all.

That doesn't pass the smell test.

[Yupster]

19. Lee wanted to arm the slaves because

he had run out of white men to arm.

He was an engineer. He had lived much of his adult life in the north including the New York City area. He could do math. He was under no illusions about numbers. His thinking was pretty similar I think to another famous Lincoln quote.

I think Lee would have not armed the slaves if he could win independence without doing it. If it took arming the slaves to win independence, then he would do it.

To paraphrase Lincoln, it was something like "If I could preserve the union without freeing a single slave, I would do it. If I could preserve the Union by freeing every slave, I would do it."

[brush]

28. He was a traitor, plain and simple, and quite frankly, what we now call white priviledge is...

what saved him and all the rest of them from being hanged, as war-time traitors usually are.

If the Union had treated the traitors as what they were, there would never have been this whole present-day reverence of "the Confederacy" and it's flag and the statues of traitor generals though out the south.

[Scruffy1]

14. It was only fitting that his inherited estate became Arlinton Cemetary.

He was a lousy butcher of a general and a worse human being. The historical revisionist were active from the end of the war on creating a myth around this butcher.
His father in law had already freed his slaves when he came into the estate. Even though the slaves who still lived there were required to do no work for the estae by his father in law the date of their freedom hadn't yet arrived. lee, hoping to cash in, tried forcing them to work for him. When they refused he ordered whippings, but the overseer wouldn't do it. he finally hired someone else to do it. What an asshole.
The general who ordered Picket to charge should have been shot according to General Eisenauer.

[Yupster]

21. Which general do you think would have done significantly better than Lee

if put in his place?

Lee offered his resignation after Gettysburg and Davis rejected it saying he had no one better to put in his place. Do you think Davis was wrong?

If you are interested in history, you might want to read up on the Austrian - Prussian war of 1866, just one year after the Civil War ended. The comparisons are pretty interesting. The Prussians were armed with the new needle-guns, which were breech loading and could shoot about six times faster than the muzzle loaders. All the other armies of Europe had the breech loaders too, but had decided not to arm their regular infantry divisions with them. Field tests showed the men shot off all their ammunition during the first skirmishes, and had no ammunition when the real battle started. The answer was to keep the muzzle loaders and the officers could control the volume of fire better.

The Prussian answer was to train the average infantryman much more and much better than the other armies.

The result was a massacre. The Austrians used the Napoleanic tactic of the shock attack. A brigade of men (2,000) was formed into a wedge and without shooting attacked with bayonets. The flexible Prussians ripped them to shreds in skirmish lines enveloping their flanks and withdrawing before overwhelming numbers. It was this idea of the educated non-com and flexible tactics that made the German Army so effective all the way through World War II even while Hitler tried to shackle it.

On edit, Pickett's charge was inexplicable. The only excuses I could make were that Lee maybe had a health emergency at the time and was not at his best, or that with Vicksburg surrounded, a draw and retreat to Virginia was not enough. Lee went north to win the war. The problem with that excuse though is that even if Pickett's Charge was wildly successful, it still couldn't be decisive. By then the army had taken so many casualties, it would have had to retreat back to Virginia even after a won Battle of Gettysburg.

I don't know. Maybe you can make a what if scenario where Lee wins Gettysburg and then the draft riots spread throughout the whole north and peace is made.

[VOX]

25. My Confederate ancestor survived Pickett's charge...

Last edited Mon May 15, 2017, 11:35 PM - Edit history (1)

He was drafted into the 11th Mississippi Infantry, Company D, "Neshoba Rifles." Was part of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. They were involved in most of the major engagements in the East. He was specifically in Pettigrew's Division, Davis' Brigade. The 11th breached the Federal defense for a moment, but were shot to shreds. 386 men were present in the ten companies and regimental staff. Of these, 336 became casualties in this absolute folly (87% of the men went down). The 11th sustained the highest casualty percentage of any regiment at the battle of Gettysburg, Federal or Confederate, a dubious "honor."

My ancestor didn't enlist in the Confederate army, but was drafted and mustered-in in April 1862. He came in and went out as a private, was one lucky son-of-a-gun to survive all this and smallpox he caught as a prisoner at Point Lookout, Maryland. He was captured with his comrades at Hatcher's Run, only a week before Lee surrendered. It's a good thing he didn't get hit ticket punched during the conflict-- the linking ancestor he sired was born *after the war*; thus, if he'd caught a musket ball at Gettysburg like many of his buddies did, then I'm not here, I'm not typing these words.

This ancestor is troubling because, while his survival skills are admirable, the fact is, he fought for one of the most absolute WORST causes American history. While I have no idea what he actually believed about the world about him, he nevertheless was from part of the country that profited off of slavery.

Fortunately, I've got a Federal
army ancestor as well (a surgeon from Ohio)...they offset one another.

[raccoon]

30. Interesting post. That's good that you know so much about him.

while his survival skills are admirable, the fact is, he fought for one of the most absolute WORST causes American history.

Yeah, but he was drafted.

[VOX]

34. True. He wasn't on the muster sheet until April, 1862...

When conscription was enacted. Per Civil War historian James McPherson, conscription was “the most unpopular act of the Confederate government. Yeoman farmers who could not buy their way out of the army voted with their feet and escaped to the woods or swamps..."

My great-great-grandfather fit the above description, but he didn't "skeedaddle." Of course, the wealthier male residents of Dixie who owned at least 10 slaves didn't have to serve (at first, anyway). Like most conflicts, "rich man's war, poor man's fight."

[Caliman73]

31. Sadly, it wasn't only a Southern ideology.

The idea of the racial inferiority of the Black Man was widely held throughout the United States. Abraham Lincoln, though he came to realize the evil of slavery, still considered Black people to be not equal to Whites.

Granted, the South was willing to secede and commit treason to preserve the system of White Supremacy and for that, their leaders like Lee, or Davis, or Forrest, etc... should not be commemorated.

The legacy of racism is a national thing not just regional. We all have to deal with it.

[Orsino]

36. Lee was speaking from the ignorance engendered by his privilege. n/t