In his Aug. 19 letter, “Removing history invites stupidity,” Peter L. Williamson suggested that “teaching factual history and how to learn from it” is a better option than the “purging of history … for social change.” I agree with that.
However he makes a typical revisionist statement about Robert E. Lee, saying that he was “Antislavery, against secession.” Lee inherited over 100 slaves from his father-in-law and under the conditions of the will, Lee was required to free the slaves “within five years.” Lee did say in a letter to his wife in 1856 that slavery was “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race … the painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction.”
While Lee was not a proponent of slavery, he kept his views private, save for his rejection of the offer to command the defense of Washington, D.C., (not command of the entire Army) when he wrote “If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union,” still he would not support the federal side, only Virginia; as someone who had spent his entire life in the U.S. Army, it seems to me that his sentiment didn’t speak well to his sense of loyalty.
