Editing Robert E. Lee (section)

==Late 1850s: Arlington plantation and the Custis slaves==
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In 1857, his father-in-law [[George Washington Parke Custis]] died, creating a serious crisis when Lee took on the burden of [[Executor|executing]] the [[Will and testament|will]]. Custis's estate encompassed vast landholdings and hundreds of slaves but also  massive debts; the will required people formerly enslaved by Custis "to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease".<ref name="nathanielturner.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashingtonparkecustis.htm|title=Will of George Washington Parke Custis|publisher=ChickenBones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes}}</ref> The estate was in disarray, and the plantations had been poorly managed and were losing money.<ref name="McElya2016">{{cite book|author=Micki McElya|title=The Politics of Mourning|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iHbEDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT24|year= 2016|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-97406-7|pages=24–}}</ref>
Lee tried to hire an overseer to handle the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin, "I wish to get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty."<ref name=Fellman65>{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|p=65}}.</ref> But Lee failed to find a man for the job, and had to take a two-year leave of absence from the army to run the plantation himself.

Lee's more strict expectations and harsher punishments of the slaves on Arlington plantation nearly led to a revolt, since many of the enslaved people had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died, and protested angrily at the delay.<ref name=Blassingame467to468>Wesley Norris, [http://fair-use.org/national-anti-slavery-standard/1866/04/14/robert-e-lee-his-brutality-to-his-slaves interview] in ''National Anti-Slavery Standard'' (April 14, 1866) 4, reprinted in {{harvnb|Blassingame|1977|pp=467–468}}.</ref> In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority—refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.—I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them."<ref name=Fellman65 /> Less than two months after they were sent to the [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]] jail, Lee decided to remove these three men and three female house slaves from Arlington, and sent them under lock and key to the slave-trader William Overton Winston in [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]], who was instructed to keep them in jail until he could find "good & responsible" enslavers to work them until the end of the five-year period.<ref name=Fellman65 />

By 1860, only one family of slaves was left intact on the estate. Some of the families had been together since their time at Mount Vernon.<ref name="Elizabeth Brown Pryor">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8oLT37IFiIQC|title=Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0670038299|year=2007|page=264}}</ref>

===The Norris case===
In 1859, three slaves at Arlington—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for the North, but were captured a few miles from the [[Pennsylvania]] border and forced to return to the plantation. On June 24, 1859, the anti-slavery newspaper ''[[New York Tribune|New York Daily Tribune]]'' published two anonymous letters (dated June 19<ref>[http://fair-use.org/new-york-tribune/1859/06/24/letter-from-a-citizen Letter from "A Citizen"], ''New York Tribune'', June 24, 1859. {{harvnb|Freeman|1934|p=393}}.</ref> and June 21<ref>[http://fair-use.org/new-york-tribune/1859/06/24/some-facts-that-should-come-to-light "Some Facts That Should Come To Light"], ''New York Tribune'', June 24, 1859. {{harvnb|Freeman|1934|pp=390–393}}.</ref>), each claiming to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped, and that the overseer refused to whip the woman but that Lee took the whip and flogged her personally. Lee privately wrote to his son Custis that "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy."<ref>{{harvnb|Freeman|1934|pp=390–392}}.</ref>

Wesley Norris himself spoke out about the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview printed in an abolitionist newspaper, the ''[[National Anti-Slavery Standard]]''. Norris said that after they had been captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget". According to Norris, Lee had the overseer tie the three of them firmly to posts, and ordered them whipped: 50 lashes for the men and 20 for Mary Norris. Norris claimed that Lee encouraged the whipping, and that when the overseer refused to do it, called in the county constable to do it instead. Unlike the anonymous letter writers, he does not state that Lee himself whipped any of the enslaved people. According to Norris, Lee "frequently enjoined [Constable] Williams to 'lay it on well', an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with [[brine]], which was done."<ref name=Blassingame467to468 /><ref>Wesley Norris, [http://fair-use.org/wesley-norris/testimony-of-wesley-norris "Testimony of Wesley Norris"], ''National Anti-Slavery Standard'', April 14, 1866.</ref>

The Norris men were then sent by Lee's agent to work on the railroads in Virginia and [[Alabama]]. According to the interview, Norris was sent to Richmond in January 1863 "from which place I finally made my escape through the rebel lines to freedom". But Federal authorities reported that Norris came within their lines on September 5, 1863, and that he "left Richmond&nbsp;..with a pass from General Custis Lee."<ref>''War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies'', Series&nbsp;1, volume&nbsp;29, part&nbsp;2, pp.&nbsp;158–159 (Meade to Halleck, September 6, 1863, 4&nbsp;p.m.). [http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=wesley;q2=norris;op2=near;op3=near;rgn=full%20text;amt2=40;amt3=40;idno=waro0049;didno=waro0049;view=image;seq=160;page=root;size=100]</ref><ref>Monte Akers, ''Year of Desperate Struggle: Jeb Stuart and His Cavalry, from Gettysburg to Yellow Tavern, 1863–1864'', p.102 [https://books.google.com/books?id=ifuxBgAAQBAJ&dq=norris+pass+%22g.w.+custis+lee%22&pg=PA102]</ref> Lee freed the people enslaved by Custis, including Wesley Norris, after the end of the five-year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of [[manumission]] on December 29, 1862.<ref>{{harvnb|Freeman|1934|p=476}}.</ref><ref>List of Slaves Emancipated in the Will of George W. P. Custis, December 29, 1862 ("Sally Norris [and] Len Norris and their three children: Mary, Sally and Wesley") [http://www.ccharity.com/contents/transcriptions-wills-property-tax-rolls-inventory-lists-and-newspaper-clippings-contributed-website/list-slaves-emancipated-will-george-w-p-custis-december-29-1862/] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160801195433/http://www.ccharity.com/contents/transcriptions-wills-property-tax-rolls-inventory-lists-and-newspaper-clippings-contributed-website/list-slaves-emancipated-will-george-w-p-custis-december-29-1862/|date=August 1, 2016}}</ref>

Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the account of the punishment as described in the letters in the ''Tribune'' and in Norris's personal account. They broadly agree that Lee sought to recapture a group of slaves who had escaped, and that, after recapturing them, he hired them out off of the Arlington plantation as a punishment; however, they disagree over the likelihood that Lee flogged them, and over the charge that he personally whipped Mary Norris. In 1934, [[Douglas S. Freeman]] described the incident as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that "There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station forbade such a thing."<ref>{{harvnb|Freeman|1934|p=390}}.</ref>

In 2000, Michael Fellman, in ''[[The Making of Robert E. Lee]]'', found the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely", but found it not at all unlikely that Lee had ordered the runaways whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the euphemism "firmness") was [believed to be] an intrinsic and necessary part of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage."<ref>{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|p=67}}.</ref>

Lee biographer Elizabeth Brown Pryor concluded in 2008 that "the facts are verifiable", based on "the consistency of the five extant descriptions of the episode (the only element that is not repeatedly corroborated is the allegation that Lee gave the beatings himself), as well as the existence of an account book that indicates the constable received compensation from Lee on the date that this event occurred".<ref>Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (New York: Penguin, 2008), chapter&nbsp;16.</ref><ref>Ariel Burriss, [http://www.crossroadsofwar.org/wp-content/uploads/CWS_Robert-E.-Lees-Slaves.pdf "The Fugitive Slaves of Robert E. Lee: From Arlington to Westminster"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150630005809/http://www.crossroadsofwar.org/wp-content/uploads/CWS_Robert-E.-Lees-Slaves.pdf |date=June 30, 2015 }}.</ref>

In 2014, Michael Korda wrote that "Although these letters are dismissed by most of Lee's biographers as exaggerated, or simply as unfounded abolitionist propaganda, it is hard to ignore them [...] It seems incongruously out of character for Lee to have whipped a slave woman himself, particularly one stripped to the waist, and that charge may have been a flourish added by the two correspondents; it was not repeated by Wesley Norris when his account of the incident was published in 1866 [...] [A]lthough it seems unlikely that he would have done any of the whipping himself, he may not have flinched from observing it to make sure his orders were carried out exactly."<ref>{{harvnb|Korda|2014|p=208}}.</ref>

===Lee's views on race and slavery===
Several historians have noted what they consider the contradictory nature of Lee's beliefs and actions concerning race and slavery. While Lee protested he had sympathetic feelings for blacks, they were subordinate to his own racial identity.<ref name="Fellman73–74">{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|pp=73–74}}.</ref> While Lee held slavery to be an evil institution, he also saw some benefit to blacks held in slavery.<ref>Cox, R. David. ''The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee'' 2017, {{ISBN|978-0-8028-7482-5}}, p.&nbsp;157.</ref> While Lee helped assist individual slaves reach freedom in Liberia, and provided for their emancipation in his own will,<ref>{{harvnb|McCaslin|2001|pp=57–58}}.</ref> he believed slaves should be eventually freed in a general way only at some unspecified future date as a part of God's purpose.<ref name="Fellman73–74"/><ref name=":80">{{Cite web|url=http://www.eerdword.com/2017/05/18/robert-e-lee-slavery-and-the-problem-of-providence/|title=Robert E. Lee, Slavery, and the Problem of Providence|website=EerdWord (publisher blog)|date=May 18, 2017|access-date=May 15, 2019}}</ref> Slavery for Lee was a moral and religious issue, and not one that would yield to political solutions.<ref>{{harvnb|Korda|2014|p=196}}.</ref> Emancipation would sooner come from Christian impulse among slave masters before "storms and tempests of fiery controversy" such as was occurring in "[[Bleeding Kansas]]".<ref name="Fellman73–74"/> Countering Southerners who argued for [[Pro-slavery ideology in the United States|slavery as a positive good]], Lee in his well-known analysis of slavery from an 1856 letter (''see below'') called it a moral and political evil. While both Lee and his wife were disgusted with slavery, they also defended it against [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] demands for immediate emancipation for all enslaved.<ref>{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|pp=72–73}}.</ref>

Lee argued that slavery was bad for white people,<ref name=":2"/> claiming that he found slavery bothersome and time-consuming as an everyday institution to run. In an 1856 letter to his wife, he maintained that slavery was a great evil, but primarily due to adverse impact that it had on white people:<ref>{{Cite news |url= http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-washington-and-lee-20170817-htmlstory.html |title= Robert E. Lee was not the George Washington of his time. But a lot ties them together |work= Los Angeles Times |access-date=August 29, 2017 |issn= 0458-3035}}</ref>

{{blockquote|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. I think it however a greater evil to the white man 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Thomas|1997|p=173}}.</ref>}}

Before leaving to serve in Mexico, Lee had written a will providing for the [[manumission]] of the slaves he owned, "a woman and her children inherited from his mother and apparently leased to his father-in-law and later sold to him".<ref name="McCaslin 2001 66">{{harvnb|McCaslin|2001|p=PT 66}}.</ref> Lee's father-in-law, [[George Washington Parke Custis|G. W. Parke Custis]], was a member of the [[American Colonization Society]], which was formed to gradually end slavery by establishing a free republic in [[Liberia]] for African-Americans, and Lee assisted several formerly enslaved people to emigrate there. Also, according to historian Richard B. McCaslin, Lee was a gradual emancipationist, denouncing extremist proposals for the immediate abolition of slavery. Lee rejected what he called evilly motivated political passion, fearing a civil and servile war from precipitous emancipation.<ref>{{harvnb|McCaslin|2001|pp=58–59}}.</ref>

Historian [[Elizabeth Brown Pryor]] offered an alternative interpretation of Lee's voluntary manumission of slaves in his will, and assisting slaves to a life of freedom in Liberia, seeing Lee as conforming to a "primacy of slave law". She wrote that Lee's private views on race and slavery,
: "which today seem startling, were entirely unremarkable in Lee's world. No visionary, Lee nearly always tried to conform to accepted opinions. His assessment of black inferiority, of the necessity of racial stratification, the primacy of slave law, and even a divine sanction for it all, was in keeping with the prevailing views of other moderate slaveholders and a good many prominent Northerners."<ref>Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. [https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Man-Portrait-Through-Private/dp/0143113909 Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through his private letters] (2008), p.&nbsp;151.</ref>

In 1857, George Custis died, leaving Robert Lee as the executor of his estate, which included nearly 200 slaves.<ref name="acwm.org">{{Cite web|url=https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-lee-slaveholder/|title = Myths & Misunderstandings &#124; Lee as a slaveholder|date = October 4, 2017}}</ref>  In his will, Custis said the enslaved people were to be freed within five years of his death. On taking on the role of administrator for the Parke Custis will, Lee used a provision to retain them in slavery to produce income for the estate to retire debt.<ref name="McCaslin 2001 57">{{harvnb|McCaslin|2001|p=57}}.</ref> Lee did not welcome the role of planter while administering the Custis properties at Romancoke, another nearby the Pamunkey River and Arlington; he rented the estate's mill. While all the estates prospered under his administration, Lee was unhappy at direct participation in slavery as a hated institution.<ref name="McCaslin 2001 58">{{harvnb|McCaslin|2001|p=58}}.</ref>

Even before what Michael Fellman called a "sorry involvement in actual slave management", Lee judged the experience of white mastery to be a greater moral evil to the white man than blacks suffering under the "painful discipline" of slavery which introduced Christianity, literacy and a work ethic to the "heathen African".<ref>{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|p=73}}.</ref> Columbia University historian&nbsp;[[Eric Foner]] notes that:
: Lee "was not a pro-slavery ideologue. But I think equally important is that, unlike some white southerners, he never spoke out against slavery"<ref name=":3">{{Cite news |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/robert-e-lee-slaves.html |title= What Robert E. Lee Wrote to ''The Times'' about Slavery in 1858 |last=Fortin |first=Jacey |date=August 18, 2017 |work=The New York Times |access-date= November 2, 2017|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
By the time of Lee's career in the U.S. Army, the officers of West Point stood aloof from political-party and sectional strife on such issues as slavery, as a matter of principle, and Lee adhered to the precedent.<ref name="Skelton">Skelton, William B., [https://archive.org/details/americanprofessi00skel <!-- quote=sectional strife. --> An American Profession of Arms: the Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861], 1992, p.&nbsp;285. "Officers developed a conception of the army as an apolitical instrument of public policy. As servants of the nation, they should stand aloof from party and sectional strife" and avoid taking public positions on controversial issues such as slavery.</ref><ref>Davis, William. [https://www.amazon.com/Crucible-Command-Ulysses-Robert-Lee/dp/0306822458/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511772719&sr=1-1&keywords=Crucible+of+Command%3A+Ulysses+S.+Grant+and+Robert+E.+Lee Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee] (2015), p.&nbsp;46. "From early manhood Lee held a low opinion of politicians, and believed military men should stay out of politics."</ref> He considered it his patriotic duty to be apolitical while in active Army service,<ref>{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|p=137}}. In 1863, even before Chancellorsville, Lee began to advance, "for the first time, a political understanding of the war, quite unlike his previous apolitical belief in duty".</ref><ref>Taylor, John. [https://www.amazon.com/Duty-Faithfully-Performed-Robert-Critics/dp/157488297X Duty Faithfully Performed: Robert E. Lee and His Critics], 1999, p.&nbsp;223. "He epitomized the nonpolitical tradition in the U.S. military, and his lifelong attempt to remain aloof from the political turmoil about him would be emulated by twentieth-century soldiers&nbsp;..."</ref><ref>Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. [https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Man-Portrait-Through-Private/dp/0143113909 Reading the Man: A Portrait of Roberty E. Lee], 2008, p.&nbsp;284. Pryor notes in describing Lee's public silence on controversial sectional issues such as slavery, that the regular army "was an apolitical institution, which discouraged displays of partisan sentiment and muted any parochialism in its officers. At the military academy a cadet was 'taught that he belongs no longer to section or party but, in his life and all his faculties, to his country'."</ref> and Lee did not speak out publicly on the subject of slavery prior to the Civil War.<ref>Foner, Eric quoted in Fortin, Jacey. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/robert-e-lee-slaves.html "What Robert E. Lee Wrote to the Times About Slavery in 1858"], NYT Aug 18, "unlike some white southerners, [Lee] never spoke out against slavery".</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Fellman|2000|pp=76, 137}}. "Lee believed in God's time, not man's, and God's disposition, not human politics. So when it came to grappling with the issue of slavery, he could not comprehend why men could not leave well enough alone.&nbsp;... on major public conflicts, Lee had no active position."</ref> Before the outbreak of the War, in 1860, Lee voted for [[1860 Democratic National Conventions|Southern Democratic]] nominee and incumbent [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] [[John C. Breckinridge]], who was the pro-slavery candidate in the [[1860 United States presidential election|1860 presidential election]] and had supported the [[Lecompton Constitution]] for [[Bleeding Kansas|Kansas]], rather than [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]] nominee [[John Bell (Tennessee politician)|John Bell]], the [[Southern Unionist]] candidate who won [[1860 United States presidential election in Virginia|Virginia]] and voted against the [[Admission to the Union|admission]] of [[Constitutions of Kansas|Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution]] as the [[List of United States senators from Tennessee|United States Senator from Tennessee]].<ref name="Foner" >{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/books/review/eric-foner-robert-e-lee.html|title=The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee|last=Foner|first=Eric|author-link=Eric Foner|newspaper=The New York Times|date=August 28, 2017|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>{{efn|Bell would subsequently support the Confederacy after the [[Battle of Fort Sumter]].}}

Lee himself enslaved a small number of people in his lifetime and considered himself a paternalistic master.<ref name="Foner" /> There are various historical and newspaper hearsay accounts of Lee's personally whipping a slave, but they are not direct eyewitness accounts. He was definitely involved in administering the day-to-day operations of a plantation and was involved in the recapture of runaway slaves.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-washington-and-lee-20170817-htmlstory.html|title=Robert E. Lee was not the George Washington of his time. But a lot ties them together|work=Los Angeles Times|access-date=November 2, 2017|issn=0458-3035}}</ref> One historian noted that Lee separated families of enslaved people, something that prominent enslaving families in Virginia such as Washington and Custis did not do.<ref name=":2">{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/|title=The Myth of the Kindly General Lee|last=Serwer|first=Adam|work=The Atlantic|access-date=August 29, 2017}}</ref> On December 29, 1862, the last day he was allowed to legally retain them, Lee finally freed all the enslaved people his wife had inherited from George Custis (in accordance with the Custis will).<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-clouds-of-glory-the-life-and-legend-of-robert-e-lee-by-michael-korda/2014/05/30/cba1d004-c973-11e3-95f7-7ecdde72d2ea_story.html|title=Book review: 'Clouds of Glory: the Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee' by Michael Korda|last1=Foner|first1=Eric|date=May 30, 2014|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=August 29, 2017|last2=Foner|first2=Eric|issn=0190-8286}}</ref>  Before this, Lee had petitioned the courts to keep people enslaved by Custis longer than the five years allotted in Custis' will, since the estate was still in debt, but the courts rejected his appeals.<ref name="acwm.org"/>  In 1866, one of the people formerly enslaved by Lee, Wesley Norris, charged that Lee personally beat him and other slaves harshly after they had tried to run away from Arlington.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://fair-use.org/wesley-norris/testimony-of-wesley-norris | title=Testimony of Wesley Norris. In ''National Anti-slavery Standard'' (1866-04-14) | work=Fair Use Repository | date=April 14, 1866 }}</ref>  Lee never publicly responded to this charge, but privately told a friend "There is not a word of truth in it&nbsp;... No servant, soldier, or citizen, that was ever employed by me can with truth charge me with bad treatment."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/an-unpleasant-legacy.htm | title=An Unpleasant Legacy – Arlington House, the Robert e. Lee Memorial (U.S. National Park Service) }}</ref>

Foner writes that "Lee's code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem to apply to blacks" during the War.  He did not stop his soldiers from kidnapping free black farmers and selling them into slavery.<ref name=":3" /> Princeton University historian [[James M. McPherson]] noted that Lee initially rejected a [[American Civil War prison camps#Prisoner exchanges|prisoner exchange between the Confederacy and the Union]] when the Union demanded that black Union soldiers be included.<ref name=":2" /> Lee did not accept the swap until a few months before the Confederacy's surrender.<ref name=":2" />  He also called the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] "a savage and brutal policy...which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.historynet.com/a-question-of-loyalty-why-did-robert-e-lee-join-the-confederacy/|title = A Question of Loyalty: Why Did Robert e. Lee Join the Confederacy|date = April 27, 2017}}</ref>

As the war dragged on and Lee's losses mounted, he eventually advocated enlisting enslaved people in the Confederate army in exchange for freedom.  However, he came to this position with great reluctance.  In an 1865 letter to his friend [[Andrew Hunter (lawyer)|Andrew Hunter]], he wrote: "Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both. I should therefore prefer to rely upon our white population to preserve the ratio between our forces and those of the enemy, which experience has shown to be safe. But in view of the preparations of our enemies, it is our duty to provide for continued war and not for a battle or a campaign, and I fear that we cannot accomplish this without overtaxing the capacity of our white population."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-andrew-hunter-on-employing-negro-troops/|title = Letter to Andrew Hunter on Employing Negro Troops}}</ref>

After the War, Lee told a congressional committee that blacks were "not disposed to work" and did not possess the intellectual capacity to vote and participate in politics.<ref name=":1" /> Lee also said to the committee that he hoped that Virginia could "get rid of them", referring to blacks.<ref name=":1" /> While not politically active, Lee defended Lincoln's successor [[Andrew Johnson]]'s approach to Reconstruction, which according to Foner, "abandoned the former slaves to the mercy of governments controlled by their former owners".<ref name=":4">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/robert-e-lee-slaves.html |title=What Robert E. Lee Wrote to ''The Times'' about Slavery in 1858 |last=Fortin |first=Jacey |date= August 18, 2017 |work=The New York Times |access-date= August 29, 2017 |issn= 0362-4331}}</ref> According to Foner, "A word from Lee might have encouraged white Southerners to accord blacks equal rights and inhibited the violence against the freed people that swept the region during Reconstruction, but he chose to remain silent."<ref name=":1" /> Lee was also urged to condemn the white-supremacy<ref>{{cite web |url= http://isbn.nu/toc/9780807119532 |title= ''White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction'' by Allen W. Trelease |publisher= Louisiana State University Press |date= 1995 }}</ref> organization [[Ku Klux Klan]], but opted to remain silent.<ref name="Foner" />

In the generation following the war, Lee, though he died just a few years later, became a central figure in the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]] interpretation of the war. The argument that Lee had always opposed slavery, and freed the people enslaved by his wife, helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.<ref name="Foner" />