About Lee: He was born in 1807 in Stratford, Virginia, the son Ann Hill Carter and a Revolutionary War cavalryman, Light Horse Harry Lee. Robert E. Lee graduated second in his class at West Point in 1829 and married a distant cousin, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, the great-granddaughter of George Washington’s wife. He was first asked to lead the Union Army in an effort to force seceded states back into the union, but turned down the appointment and resigned. Instead, Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia in a rebellion against the United States. The war ended in 1865 with Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Virginia. After the war, he took a job as president of Washington College (now Washington & Lee). He died in 1870 in Lexington, Virginia.
His tangled views regarding slavery: In 1856, Lee wrote this in a letter to his wife: “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.”
But then he also rationalizes slavery this way: “I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.”
His mixed emotions about going to war: He told a friend he was against secession but would fight for Virginia if it seceded, recounts Roy Blount Jr., in the biography, Robert E. Lee, A Life (Penguin Books; 2003), “If Virginia stands by the old Union,” Lee said, “so will I. But if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for revolution), then I will follow my native state with my sword, and, if need be, with my life.”
On the finality of his surrender: After the war was over, Lee resigned himself to surrendering and taking the consequences. He did not want his men to continue fighting as a guerrilla force. He told Col. Edward Porter Alexander that "the men would become mere bands of marauders, and the enemy’s cavalry would pursue them and overrun many wide sections they may never have occasion to visit. We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from.”
Attitude toward a memorial at Gettysburg: Would Lee have approved of those memorials? In his lifetime, he didn’t want to be part of an effort to build a memorial at Gettysburg.
In a letter dated Aug. 5, 1869, Lee wrote:
“Absence from Lexington has prevented my receiving until to-day your letter of the 26th ult., inclosing [sic] an invitation from the Gettysburg Battle-field Memorial Association, to attend a meeting of the officers engaged in that battle at Gettysburg, for the purpose of marking upon the ground by enduring memorials of granite the positions and movements of the armies on the field. My engagements will not permit me to be present. I believe if there, I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."
To know more:
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Mr. Lincoln's (diverse) neighborhood
Folklore shrouds writing of Gettysburg Address
Symbol of hate, oppression to fade from view
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