Robert E. Lee's Views on Slavery

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From Robert E. Lee: Man and Soldier By Thomas Nelson Page 1912
Lee had no personal interests to subserve connected with the preservation of the institution of slavery; his inclinations and his views all tended the other way. "In this enlightened age," he had already written, "there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." He had set free the slaves he owned in his own right, and was "in favor of freeing all the slaves in the South, giving to each owner a bond to be the first paid by the Confederacy when its independence should be secured."

The slaves owned by Mrs. Lee he manumitted in 1862, or in January, 1863. In fact, it is a curious commentary on the motives connected with the war, that while Lee had set his slaves free, [Union General Ulysses S] Grant is said to have continued in the ownership of slaves until they were emancipated by the government of the United States.

It was, however, not so much the freeing of these slaves as the compassion and affection that breathe in his letters about them that testify Lee's character. His care that every one should have his papers, even though he might have gone off to the North; his provision for their wages; his solicitude for the weak and feeble among them, all testify to the feeling that the Virginian master had for his servants.

From A Memorial Wreath By George W. McDaniel 1921
The South was no more fighting for slavery than France was preparing to attack Germany through Belgium. The South fighting for negro slavery! What a travesty upon truth! Only one in thirty-three of the people owned slaves, and half of these held only from one to four. Fitzhugh Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and A. P. Hill never owned a slave. Stonewall Jackson owned two, whom he purchased at their own request. He gave these the privilege of acquiring their freedom at the purchase price, by the use for the purpose of their wages. The man accepted the offer and became a freeman; the woman preferred to remain a slave. Robert E. Lee, many years before the war, emancipated the few slaves inherited from his mother. The large majority of Lee Camp never owned a slave. The Confederate Constitution prohibited the importation of slaves. To say the South fought for slavery is not only to convict one's self of superficiality, but is also to fly in the face of unimpeachable history.

From The Cosmopolitan 1914
Many of our greatest warriors were not slave-holders, and as a matter of principle were strongly opposed to the holding of human beings as property. General Robert E. Lee was a free-soiler by instinctive principle, and when the family slaves came into his possession they were liberated. By the will of the former master of Arlington, General Lee was obliged to assume the care of the servants at the old mansion for five years after the death of the owner, at which time they were to be free. When the stated time had expired, he came home from the field, at great personal inconvenience, to see that everything possible was done for the welfare of the Arlington servants. “Stonewall” Jackson at one time owned two slaves, they having appealed to him to buy them and save them from a fate they dreaded. He bought them and immediately made out their free-papers. The man took his and went away. The woman begged permission to stay with Mrs. Jackson, and was allowed to remain.

From Leaves of Healing, Saturday June 7, 1902
Let us not forget, however, that the cotton plantations and the slaves of the South were largely owned in Massachusetts, in New York, and that the cotton merchants of the North, by mortgages or otherwise, had become the proprietors of tens of thousands of slaves.
Merchants in churches in New York, who were opposed to slavery nominally, were themselves slave owners literally.

From the Southern Historical Society Papers by R.A. Brock 1909
Northern writers and speakers have attempted to show that the South plunged this country into desperate war for the purpose of perpetuating slavery. Do the facts of history sustain this contention? The colonies protested time and again to the King of England against sending slaves to these shores. The House of Burgesses enacted laws on twenty-three different occasions against the importation of slaves. The King of England vetoed each act.

In 1832 the Legislature of Virginia came within one vote of passing a law of emancipation.
On page 88, vol. I, of Henderson's Life of Stonewall Jackson you will find an interesting letter written by General Robert E. Lee, showing what he thought of slavery before the war. Lee set free his slaves before the war began, while Grant retained his until freed by the proclamation. Not one man in thirty of the Stonewall Brigade owned a slave. A Northern writer says: "Slavery was the cause of the war just as property is the cause of robbery."

If any man will read the debates between Lincoln and Douglas just prior to the war, or the Emancipation Proclamation, he will see that slavery was not the cause of action or its abolition its intent. Emancipation was a war measure not affecting the border States.

Mr. Webster said at Capon Springs in 1851, "I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refused to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, the South would no longer be bound to keep the compact."

Did you ever see a soldier who was fighting for slavery? A celebrated English historian, in treating this subject, remarks: "Slavery was but the occasion of the rupture, in no sense the object of the war. Slavery would have been abolished in time had the South succeeded."

The enlightened sentiment of mankind, the spirit of the age, was against chattel slavery. England and France had freed their bondmen. Russia emancipated her serfs about 1880. In 1873 the Island of Porto Rico taxed itself $12,000,000 and freed 30,000 slaves. Does any one suppose that the enlightened and Christian people of the Southern States would have set themselves against the moral sentiment of mankind, and refused to heed the voice of civilization and progress?

From T. F. Goode, Confederate Banquet, January 19, 1893:
"The Confederate soldiers did not go to war to perpetuate slavery. Most of them never owned a slave, and our hero, Gen. Robert E. Lee, said that if he owned every one of the slaves in the South he would give them for the preservation of the Union. It was not for the slaves they fought, but for principle, for their homes and native land."

Reminiscences and Sketches By Charles Forster Smith 1909
The spirit of the chivalrous soldier and humane man characterized all his conduct in war, and he was wholly free from malice or vindictiveness. "We make war only upon armed men," he said in his general orders to his army on first invading Pennsylvania; he "earnestly exhorted the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury of private property," and "enjoined upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who should in any way offend against the orders on the subject." On one occasion he was seen to dismount from his horse and put up a farmer's fence, to set a good example to his soldiers.