Removal of Confederate Monuments

[JMadonna]

(09-09-2017 06:37 PM)Darrell Wrote:  

(09-09-2017 02:03 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856 reads (in pertinent part) as follows:

"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."

I'm curious as to why you consider Lee's view of slavery as bizarre. Overall, his comments don't strike me as particularly unusual for an upper-class Virginian in the antebellum era. My understanding is that viewing slavery as a "positive good" and part of God's plan was not uncommon among Lee's social class. (Therefore, I'd agree with your other two descriptors of Lee's view, i.e., paternalistic and religious.)

It goes to show you the power of political propaganda.

Calhoun came up with the "positive good" cliche to hold his political base in the South. Slavery was the least common denominator holding it together and at the time the South was losing the moral argument. Virginia was one state where the majority didn't give a wit about slavery and was close to outlawing it. They did not secede over the slavery issue but ended up fighting for it.

Calhoun's "positive good" argument turned slave owners into the sisters of mercy overnight.