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Thank you for reinforcing my point.

RE Lee made these statements in a private letter, not in public discourse.

While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day.

Doesn't sound as if RE envisioned abolition in coming years or even decades. More likely centuries.

Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?

The liberty Lee here refers to is the freedom of some men to hold other men as property. This is the great "spiritual liberty" the CSA was founded to defend.

Is it not even more strange that the son of one of the great heroes of a war for human liberty could pen such a disgusting defense of its negation?

From this quotation it is quite obvious that Lee had rejected the great ideal that "all men are created equal" for which his father fought.

Thank you for reinforcing my point. RE Lee made these statements in a private letter, not in public discourse.

So sorry, but you didn't specify 'public' discussion:

"In fact, I doubt there is much discussion of slavery as an evil by prominent southerners during the whole decade of the '50s."--Sherman Logan

From this quotation it is quite obvious that Lee had rejected the great ideal that "all men are created equal" for which his father fought.

You're cherry picking and misrepresenting at that. It's obvious that Lee is writing about the spiritual liberty of the blacks: "Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. "

Is it not even more strange that the son of one of the great heroes of a war for human liberty could pen such a disgusting defense of its negation?

Please.....