Robert E. Lee Birthday Bump!
Posted on 01/18/2003 9:06:10 PM PST by stainlessbanner
You, sir, are not just a fool, but a d*mned fool. Lee opposed slavery completely--before, during, and after the Civil War, on moral grounds:
Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856:
"I was much pleased the with President's message. His views of the systematic and progressive efforts of certain people at the North to interfere with and change the domestic institutions of the South are truthfully and faithfully expressed. The consequences of their plans and purposes are also clearly set forth. These people must be aware that their object is both unlawful and foreign to them and to their duty, and that this institution, for which they are irresponsible and non-accountable, can only be changed by them through the agency of a civil and servile war. There are few, 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. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! 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. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . 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?"
Must have changed his mind, huh?
Robert E. Lee Birthday Bump!
Right, freedom is so horrible a cause.
There. Isn't the truth so much better?
Last year I started a very serious, many times a day every day series of prayers, asking Our Lord to bring all Americans to repent of their sins and ask His forgiveness. On the fifth day, I recieved a clear reply. His will is otherwise. Only a remnant will live.
Lee writes:
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. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! 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.
In other words, slavery is wrong, but we shouldn't take steps against it. We should leave the matter up to God and the work of time. And a thousand years of slavery would be as a day in the eyes of God. While this may be opposition to slavery "on moral grounds," it is not opposition to slavery by effective means. It amounts to an unlimited acceptance of slavery in practical terms and a renunciation of effective efforts to limit or end it. In practical and visible terms, it might be little different from the efforts of a kindly slave master to perpetuate the institution by making some of its abuses milder and less offensive.
He continues:
Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . .
If not "exciting angry feelings in the master" was to be the rule by which abolitionists proceded there was little that they could do. Revealing or dramatizing the evils of slavery or trying to limit its expansion would "excite angry feelings in the master." And who is more the "master," in all senses of the word, than a person one can't speak frankly to for fear of angering him?
Imagine if we applied Lee's counsel to other political questions or to politics in general. When you consider all of the rhetoric of "Southern rights" and liberty surrounding the the rebellion, you can consider how different his advice to slavery's critics was from the conduct of its defenders and promoters. Contrast all the touchy feelings and demands of the secessionists that their own rights be respected with the idea that the slaves had no rights that need be respected, and their interests could best be passively left up to God to administer.
The counsel that one ought to allow Providence to work Its way over the centuries was hardly to be applied when the interests of slaveholders or "Southern rights" were concerned. When one truly cares about something, even if one is supremely pious and reverent, one does more than advocate leaving the matter up to God.
The antebellum Lee was not wholly inconsistent in advocating patience and quietude for slaves. He also opposed secession:
“Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union" so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution. – Robert E. Lee, January 21, 1861
Later, he would break with his own advice, precisely because he cared about his native state more than he cared about his nation. And he chose an active path in this case because he cared about the matter more than he truly cared about ending slavery.
I can understand Lee's decision. It is always the case in Civil Wars, that when shooting starts, people go with emotion and side with the faction with which they have the strongest emotional ties.
Lee certainly had a difficult decision to make, and he undoubtedly showed many virtues. But the Lee myth, that glorifies him as a perfect "marble man," even to the point of making him an opponent of slavery in any real sense should be resisted, like other historically untrue myths.
The truth is great, billbears. But what you posted wasn't the truth. Texas v. White was a 5 to 3 decision.
free dixie,sw
Somehow, I doubt that. Not unless E.M. Bounds is in hell, too, despite being a born-again Christian, simply on the basis that they fought for the South in the War of Northern Aggression. (As you'll read elsewhere on this thread, Lee was born-again.)
What is your religious background? Your soteriology is obviously neither evangelical nor reformed.
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