Editing Robert E. Lee (section)

===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>