CID1990 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:22 pm
When it came to slavery, Lee was no angel, to be sure.
But that he whipped his own slaves is also a myth. Lee famously had no stomach for it, and whipping was not a “gentleman’s pursuit”.
Lee did in fact have slaves whipped on two occasions, and in one instance he sold some slaves “south”... leased them out to a tough owner to discipline them.
An interesting note about the Lee slaves- he inherited them all through his wife, Mary Custis. Mary was part if George Washington’s family and she inherited them from the late President with the enjoinder that they would be freed once they were able to be self sufficient. Lee never freed them.
You should read the book, “Reading the Man: Robert E. Lee Through His Letters”
I forget the author’s name off the top of my head, but she was a Foreign Service Officer when she wrote it. An excellent biopic, and it does not hide Lee’s significant warts.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
According to one of his former slaves, Lee had the stomach to order and watch, then wash in brine.
The testimony of Wesley Norris appeared in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on April 14, 1866.
My name is Wesley Norris; I was born a slave on the plantation of George Parke Custis; after the death of Mr. Custis, Gen. Lee, who had been made executor of the estate, assumed control of the slaves, in number about seventy; it was the general impression among the slaves of Mr. Custis that on his death they should be forever free; in fact this statement had been made to them by Mr. C. years before; at his death we were informed by Gen. Lee that by the conditions of the will we must remain slaves for five years; I remained with Gen. Lee for about seventeen months, when my sister Mary, a cousin of ours, and I determined to run away, which we did in the year 1859; we had already reached Westminster, in Maryland, on our way to the North, when we were apprehended and thrown into prison, and Gen. Lee notified of our arrest; we remained in prison fifteen days, when we were sent back to Arlington; we were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined 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. After this my cousin and myself were sent to Hanover Court-House jail, my sister being sent to Richmond to an agent to be hired; we remained in jail about a week, when we were sent to Nelson county, where we were hired out by Gen. Lee’s agent to work on the Orange and Alexander railroad; we remained thus employed for about seven months, and were then sent to Alabama, and put to work on what is known as the Northeastern railroad; in January, 1863, we were sent to Richmond, from which place I finally made my escape through the rebel lines to freedom; I have nothing further to say; what I have stated is true in every particular, and I can at any time bring at least a dozen witnesses, both white and black, to substantiate my statements: I am at present employed by the Government; and am at work in the National Cemetary on Arlington Heights, where I can be found by those who desire further particulars; my sister referred to is at present employed by the French Minister at Washington, and will confirm my statement.
Testimony of Wesley Norris Link
The Carroll County Democrat published a report on June 2nd, 1859 saying that four fugitive slaves had been arrested in Westminster, Maryland. On June 24th of the same year, two anonymous letters appeared in the New York Tribune. One of these reports that since becoming owner of his wife's family's estate, conditions on Lee's Arlington plantation had deteriorated sharply. The author alleges that an 80 year old man is made to work as a field hand, that elderly women were made to work through the night making clothes for field hands, that food rations had been slashed, and that arbitrary punishment had become common. She or he also recounts a very similar story to the one in the Testimony of Wesley Norris, though in this letter, the whipping is thirty nine lashes for both of the Norris siblings (the legally permitted maximum) rather than fifty and twenty. A second letter reportedly from a neighbour of Robert Lee also reports that the incident occurred, with alarm. Both letters protest that upon the death of his wife's father, the Arlington slaves were supposed to have been freed, and they strongly imply that Lee prevented the publication of the notice of manumission. Curiously, these letters portray Lee in a worse light again - both claim that he flogged the slaves himself:
Letter 1: The officer whipped the two men, and said he would not whip the woman, and Col. Lee stripped her and whipped him herself. These are the facts as I learn from near relatives of the men whipped. After being whipped, he sent them to Richmond and hired them out as farm hands
Letter 2: the men received thirty and nine lashes each, from the hands of the slave-whipper, when he refused to whip the girl, and Mr. Lee himself administered the thirty and nine lashes to her
Link
