Quotes of robert e lee on slavery
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Robert E. Lee and Slavery
In this letter, Robert E. Lee discusses a central dilemma of his own life, and of American history, slavery. Lee was a gradual emancipationist who criticized slavery as an evil system, but had only vague hopes that it would eventually end. He owned few slaves in his own right, but in , as executor of his father-in-law's large estate, he became responsible for almost slaves who lived and worked on three large Virginia plantations that George W. P. Custis had willed to his Lee grandsons. Lee's emancipation of slaves during the Civil War has been described as a personal rejection of slavery, but he was merely fulfilling his father-in-law's wishes, rather than acting in his own right. Lee had similarly provided for the liberation of the family of slaves that he owned after his death in a will written at the time of the Mexican War.
George Washington Parke Custis died in debt, leaving it to his son-in-law to sort out the financial obligations of his estate, including
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Notable Quotes From Robert E. Lee
Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.
You cannot be a true man until you learn to obey.
It is well that war is so terrible. Otherwise, we would grow too fond of it.
A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.
To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.
True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them—the desire to do right—is precisely the same.
I like whiskey. I always did, and that is the reason I never use it.
I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.
(Regarding Northern abolitionists) 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.
In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & p
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As an Enslaver
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