Removal of Confederate Monuments

[Darrell]

(09-09-2017 01:03 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Recently, I learned that Robert E. Lee had the most bizarre, paternalistic and religious, view of the southern institution of slavery of which I have ever learned in detail. Robert E. Lee's opinion regarding slavery was expressed in a letter to his wife written in response to a speech given by then President Pierce. In this letter, Lee predicted the probable outcome of civil war as a result of this divergence in opinion. Lee was 49 years old at the time and the letter was written less than five years before the American Civil War began.

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.)