Removal of Confederate Monuments

[Darrell]

(09-11-2017 12:08 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I agree with you, Kate: "It's hard to imagine anyone preferring enslavement over freedom, no matter what the other contingent "benefits" of the enslavement may be."

Agreed, however, I think that begs the question of whether Lee's comment about blacks being better off here than in Africa was merely a hypocritical justification for slavery - or one based on a sincerely held religious belief.

Viewed from a mid-19th century Christian worldview, perhaps Lee believed the "mild & melting influence of Christianity" (as he put it) would result in everlasting salvation for the slaves - as opposed to their eternal damnation (had they remained in Africa). If that was indeed the case, one could conceivably argue that enslavement in America would be preferable to freedom in Africa - at least from the spiritual, if not the temporal, perspective.

Of course, we'll never know with absolute certainty whether Lee's comment was merely disingenuous or if it represented a real sentiment. However, I'm inclined to believe the latter is more likely based on the following:

1) The letter was a private one that Lee sent to his wife - not an argument made to the public at-large.

2) IMO, it's unlikely that Lee was trying to propagandize Mary Custis Lee with his view of slavery. She was from a slave-holding family and, as I understand it, held essentially the same opinion of the peculiar institution as her husband.

3) The letter was written in 1856, well before the start of the war and the even later abolishment of slavery. Therefore, it was not an "after the fact" justification for slavery.

At any rate - leaving the above issue aside - another part of Lee's 1856 letter to Mary struck me as particularly prescient. In speaking of the Northern abolitionists' plans "to interfere with & change the domestic institutions of the South," Lee said that their goals "can only be accomplished by them through the agency of a civil & servile war."