Reply #101: The idea that Robert E. Lee opposed slavery is ridiculous on its face. [View All]

[NNadir]

He owned slaves and was racist through and through, more racist than many of his contemporaries.

The idea that Lee hated slavery and that the American Civil War was not about slavery is part of the rather noxious "Lost Cause" myth, which was used, in part, by the South to lose the war and win the peace.

The subject of Lee's attitudes about slavery are, in fact, covered by people other than his most famous apologist, Douglas Freeman.

The best examination of Lee's attitudes toward slavery is Alan T. Nolan's "Lee Considered," which shatters Freeman's bull about Lee into about a billion little pieces.

Lee was not the moral, military, or political equal of his contemporaries on the Union side. He was not worthy, actually, to shine Frederick Douglass's boots, nor was he a General on the level of either Grant or Sherman or Sheridan. In fact, he was not on the level of George Thomas or even Meade.

He was, in short, a loser, a racist loser who, as Grant described it, "had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."

I especially like the "least excuse" part. General Robert E. Lee was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were poor people who fought for him under compulsion and threat of death.

If you read Lee's post war testimony before Congress, post war, what you find is a racist bigot who never even bothered to find out whether or not his slaves were human beings.