 |
| Author of "Reading the Man," |
under construction -- p p pplease excuse the miss....
Make no mistake: Pryor tries to flatter Lee, like so many others have.
But Pryor had in her hands what no one even dreamed existed -- Lee's slave ledgers and dirty letters. These slave ledgers and dirty letters are as much as an indictment Lee "scholarship" as it is about Lee.
In fact, Lee never claimed he was anti slavery -- he was emphatic, slavery was ordained by God and aboltionist are on a course against God.
In fact, Lee's writings actually defend the torture of slaves, because God "knew and intended" slaves feel pain. Painful discipline was Gods plan --pain, he wrote, was "necessary for their instruction".
Alan Nolan, author of "Lee Considered" wrote 20 years ago that Lee was never considered honestly -he said we need to start over. Nolan had no clue Pryor would be allowed to actually see, study, and report (sorta) on the slave ledgers or dirty letters.
___________________________________________________
Consider this: it took 150 years for the Lee family to let ANYONE see those slave ledgers and letters
There is a very good reason for that secrecy.
________________________________________________
Pryor's overall narrative of Lee is flattering, in fact you can read the entire book and hardly notice the horrors -- but they are there.
Pryor blames the slaves for getting whipped, and claims Lee "had every right". But no one else admitted he had slaves whipped, we find out from Pryor, whipping was just ONE of Lee's tortures, and he used torture apparently regularly.
Lee's slaves hated him -- according to the papers written BY Lee himself. And he hated them. The goofy notion that Lee freed his slaves, or didn't own any, was always wrong. It was repeated over and over, so that it became commonly believed.
While Pryor does admit the tortures happened, even then, she claims it was "due to Lee's poor cross-cultural communication skills". It's sorta like saying a wife beater had "communication issues"
But Lee grew up seeing slaves whipped, it was the only reality knew knew. His father had a slave girl hung, despite her pleas to let her give birth first -- she was almost ready to deliver the child. Lee refused, and she was hung.
What was her crime? She knocked down a white man. No one bothered to record WHY she knocked down a white man. It did not matter, if a slave injured a white man, the penalty was death.
So she died.
__________________________________________________
Pryor very much on Lee's "side". Sometimes people will say she was out to smear Lee -- clearly, they never read the book.
When she does admit things like torture, she cites an excuse, such as blaiming Virginia laws, that, according to her, mandated whipping escaped slaves.
That's not true. There was no law you MUST whip your slave, Pryor just made that up apparently. That should tell you something.
Furthermore, there was no law that you had to pay 34x the usual bounty for the capture of certain girls. You could just let your slave escape. Lee sent his bounty hunters into the North, across several states, to catch girls.
Why? Pryor doesn't say.
Painful discipline, Lee insisted, was ordained of God ( see below), Pryor shows that Lee was an especially cruel slave master, given his social standing. Specifically, most slave masters of great wealth would typically try to keep the mother and child together.
Lee felt no such restraint, and separated families routinely, which Pryor implies started the violent confrontation that lasted the rest of Lee's life, till slavery ended.
___________________________________________________
WHITE FATHERS
When Lee "broke apart families" that means she took the child from the mother. The father was not in the picture, because often times, the father was a white man at Arlington.
Over 50% of Lee's slaves were mulatto. The typical ratio was 1 in 10. A little tid bit Pryor mentions carefully.
Therefore, without saying it aloud, Pryor showed that Lee owned more light skinned slaves, very likely, than anyone else in US history.
Who even dreamed such things? In fact, we were told by our history teachers, encylopedias, and movies that Lee didn't own slaves and was against slavery.
Nonsense. And we show you how that nonsense started, below
____________________________________________________
In early biographies of Lee, one writer didn't even mention the word "slave". If you were from Ireland or Mars, you would have no idea, from those books, that Lee ever saw a slave in his entire life. Incredibly, Lee was shown in early biographiers as Super Human. A man who would "dismount and pray" during battle, as bombs exploded around him!
These were not "history" books, they were fiction, really, with absolutely no regard for truth. But the Southern readers, by 1880 and 1890, were eager for books showing their history as anything but slave oriented.
In fact, Lee was shown as being a "super Christian" only concerned for salvation of souls, and of course, Lee was not for slavery! Lee was a man of "The Holy Spirit"
The massive evangeical resurgence, in the South, was eager to claim Lee as "their guy". Writers were eager to sell them books, now more affordable than ever.
Lee became the greatest Christian in the world, far greater for his adoration of Christ, supposedly, than his own perfection as a soldier.
Freeman simply beat everyone -- you could not claim any further honor. Christ sat at "the right hand of God" and Lee sat "at the right hand of Christ, his Lord."
Seriously, you can not beat that. Lee, in every sense, was elevated by SOUTHERN HISTORIANS, as seated at the right and of Christ.
Whoever flattered Lee more, seemed to get more sales. Either go big or go home.
All kinds of Lee "quotes" were simply made up by these authors. WHich ones, exactly? Who knows! But men who would claim Lee dismounted for prayers amid exploding bombs, would not likely hesitate to make up other goofy stuff.
Later, "historians" would pick which flattering stories to use, from these books, it their own books. That's how myths are made.
Elizabeth Pryor, pictured above, is the only person in 150 years, outside the Lee family, to be able to read Lee's stunning personal papers, including slave ledgers, kept by his family for 5 generations.
Pryor adores Lee -- that's why they chose her. But she could have no earthly idea of the horrors she would find. Her problem was how to write the book flattering to Lee, after she found evidence in Lee's own papers, of rapes, tortures, whippings, bounties, dirty letters, etc.
Pryor could only assume the slave ledgers and personal letters (a stunning 10,000 of them) would pretty much validate what we were told by "scholar" after "scholar" -- especially Douglas Southall Freeman, who insisted Lee freed all his "servants" but they loved him so much, they refused!
Nothing could be further from the truth. If Freeman had that basic fact wrong -- did he have any facts right?
Freeman, like so many other "scholars" would change just a few "facts" to make Lee sound spectacular. For example Freeman claimed Lee was called "King of Spades" early in the war, for his jocular way of having his soldiers dig earth works.
Nonsense - Lee was called King of Spades because of his massive use of slave labor in the war. Slaves were brought for all over, for Lee to force their labor on the biggest construction project you never heard of -- the earthworks around Richmond and Fredericksburg, something on the scale of the Pyramids
As you will see, since Lee had girls whipped during peace time,it's hard to imagine what he had done to men during wartime, when his life depended, perhaps, on the slaves rapid construction of the project that kept Richmond, and the Ironworks there, going throughout the war. If Richmond had fallen early, the Confederacy could not have put nearly as many canon in the field, nor behind their earth works.
BOUNTY BOUNTY WHO PAYS THE BOUNTY?
Lee apparently paid "bounties" for capture of blacks that were NOT his former slaves, and they were caught in the NORTH. But how is that a bounty, when the blacks captured were never slaves to begin with, and were in the North, and Lee's hunters caught them illegally?
Isn't that just kidnapping? Paid kidnapping? As Pryor puts it Lee "failed to fill out the time-consuming paperwork". There was no paperwork for capturing women and children in North who were never slaves. But Pryor realized "time consuming paper work" was a better way to explain that one.
Yet, we are told Lee "hated" slavery, in fact, the typical school book claims Lee was anti slavery and anti secession, but would never "draw my sword" against my state. No one mentions Lee was very willing to draw his whip (he paid others to use it, Lee would stand nearby and scream during the tortures, according to reports from eye witnesses).
Yes, Lee wrote a letter to his wife, apparently trying to placate her for his treatment of the slave girls, who would certainly have gone to her, since she owned them first, and she grew up with them, she had life long affection for them. Lee hated them, felt no personal human connection to any slave. Lee defended the torture of slaves as ordained - God "knew and intended" slaves feel pain "pain is necessary for their instruction"
More people in the South know about Lee's pet chicken, than know the names of the girls he bought, or had whipped. There is no monument for any of Lee's slaves, nor mention of the children he sold, nor mention of the various techniques Lee used to administer that "painful discipline".
Whipping, by the way, was only ONE of Lee's methods of "disciplining" slaves, including slave girls. Pryor shows reports of Lee's other tortures, again,artfully.
So "artful" is Pryor in revealing these horrors, that some people read the entire book, and don't recall anything about torture or rape or cruelties at Arlington, until you open the book and point to the page.
The book is "safe" for Lee admirers to read, she does not sensationalize anything, quite the opposite. Her narrative is as flattering as possible, considering what she found in the slave ledgers.
______________________________________
Lee also wrote that abolitionist were "against God" and men could only pray to end slavery, perhaps in 2000 years. Meanwhile it was not up to men to question God, or his will that slaves feel pain.
Lee paid much higher prices for the capture of certain girls -- Lee's female slaves seemed very eager to escape, he had probably fifty slaves try to escape, Pryor is coy about the number, other than saying there was an "epidemic" of attempted escapes, one day, seven slaves escaped, including a young light skinned girl.
Yeah-- Lee owned light skinned girl, one so light Lee wrote she could pass for white.
Lee's bounty for the girl was 346 dollars, but he paid about 10 dollars for males. For his "special" girl, he paid $346. Why was she worth 34 times as much? There was a reason -- see if you can figure it out....Pryor doesn't even hint at the reason, but when she discusses Lee's amazing sexually explicit letters, it's clear Lee was a very very "robust" man in that department.
Do you know what Lee's cash crop was? No, not cotton. Lee's cash crop was humans. He sold and "leased" humans. He knew that -- he kept records of exactly that.
If the Lee family would let others see the ledgers, we would all know. But only Pryor has seen them. It may be another 150 years, if ever, that the public is allowed to see them.
___________________________________________________
Mention Robert E Lee and slavery, and within seconds you find people smugly saying "Oh Lee never owned any slaves". The hell he didn't.
Lee owned slaves -- himself, and he regularly paid bounty hunters for them.
Lee was not always in charge of his wife's estate, but when his mother in law died, he became the "king" a title he would be called in SOuthern newspapers as "King of Spades" early in the war.
Lee treated the slaves drastically different than the Custis family did. He had them whipped, sold, and worst of all, he separated the mothers from the children, without the slightest hesistation, which caused massive repercussions.
Almost immediately, the slaves rebelled against Lee's cruel ways -- and dozens, over time, risked their lives to escape.
It was the attempted escapes that infuriated Lee, he had the many escaped slaves whipped.
Pryor could easily tell us how many slaves Lee owned --yes owned -- and managed. He had God like control of over 200 slaves, upon his word, they were sold, whipped, beaten or worked. A word from Lee, as with any slave master, and women were tied up, their children taken, or whatever the master felt like.
Lee's slaves said he "was the worst man we ever saw". That came from Lee's papers -- the worst man we ever saw.
Lee defended slavery as the will of God, and wrote only God could end it, man could only pray for the end. Abolitionist were the evil ones, on "a course against God".
Lee accused abolitionist as "trying to destroy the American Church". Yes, church.
Lee owned his own slaves, according to his own slave ledgers, and bought more -- he bought them from bounty hunters as you will se..
Yes, he gained control of his wife's slaves -- and immediately used violence and terror to keep them in line.
Lee was an especially cruel slave master, and was known as such. Newspapers before the Civil War reported some astonishing cruelty by him personally, as he screamed at slave girls while they were whipped, then ordered additional tortures for her. Eye witnesses said the extra tortures were to inflict pain.
Clearly, she is on Lee's side. Lee had "every right" to capture and discipline slaves, even slave girls, for attempted escape. She does not mention, on that page, but saves Lee's cruel way of tortures for a different page, and even then very carefully "reveals it".
_____________________________________________________
She admits, carefully, euphemistically, to the point of Orwellian double speak of rapes by white men of slave girls at Arlington, that were so common over half of Lee's slaves were mulatto.
At one point Pryor is in "cover up mode" describing the white looking or lighter slaves as being from "dalliances" -- which implies romantic playful encounter. Really? Playful?
These children were sold, whipped, rented out, same as the slaves of darker pigment. Women risked life and skin to escape. These were not dalliances, and Pryor knows it.
Elsewhere, Pryor calls these rapes "horrors" saying "whites were increasingly enslaving other whites". She is talking about ARLINGTON and the Lee family -- read it closely, she is. She mentions letters by "women at Arlington" about the "disgusting" fact of lighter skinned babies born to the slave girls -- at Arlington!
Pryor writes very very carefully. It's no accident she appears at times to be generalizing about slavery around Arlington or even elsewhere. It's almost as if she worked very hard to say what she had to, but not to make it too awful for the Lee family -- clearly her friends by then -- to read.
One technique is describe slavery generally, if you want to read it that way, you can assume she is not writing about Lee surely. Oh, yes, she is. She is writing about Lee and Arlington when she writes about the rapes, though she says there "is no evidence" Lee ever raped or fathered his own slaves -- clearly SOMEONE white was fathering the slaves at Arlingtion.
Pryor even says "coercion was used in those situations" -- meaning the girls where physically forced to give sexual service. Remember, Pryor had to see things, in Lee's own private papers, to make her say that. She did not have visions -- and just blurt out "coercion was used". Before she would dare to be that blunt, she would have to see likely overwhelming things in Lee's paper to indicate that.
And as every slave owner knew, slave girls did always have to be physically forced -- they compelled in 1000 ways, like the slave master who threatened to sell the children unless she continued to give him sexual services as he demanded. Every possible horrible story happened, slavery brings out the worst in slave masters, because power corrupts.
_____________________________________________________
LUSTY LEE
Contrary to Douglas Freeman's goofy deception of Lee as "most chaste" Lee was a hot to trot guy, and proud of it. He wrote women -- apparently routinely, and more than one woman -- about his sexual tricks, and sexually explicit discussion, he even apparently bragged about his son's sexual abilities. Remember, this was 1860s, the sexual 1890's was in France, 30 years later, this was highly unusual for anyone to write "hot" letters -- but Lee did.
Pryor tries to pass them off as "flirtations" and says "there is no evidence" that Lee acted on these words. There is no evidence he did not, too. "There is no evidence" is silly, too, how many men brag about their sexual tricks, and their son's sex ability, anyway? Who flirts like that? That's just odd.
Pryor could, of course, show us the letters, assuming the family said okay. But if she isn't going to show the slave ledgers and bounties, she sure isn't going to show the actual sexual letters.
Contrary to myth, Lee not only managed his wife's slaves -- and by managing we mean selling, whipping, paying bounties for their capture -- Lee had his own slaves.
He owned several entire "families" of slaves, meaning the mother and children. And as Pryor shows, Lee was not even hesitant to separate the mother from the child, renting or selling one or the other.
In a particularly clever bit of writing, Pryor discusses the fugative slave law, and Lee, saying Lee failed "to fill out the time consuming paperwork" regarding captured blacks. But Lee apparently bought some blacks from bounty hunters who caught them in the North who had never been slaves at all, and never been to Arlington. That was the "paperwork" Lee failed to fill out. Like much of Pryor's diplomatic prose, you have to read it carefully.
Too "time consuming" said Pryor. Uh huh. Neat trick -- to make those mean old "bureaucrats" the bad guy, not Lee, who bought the people his hunters found.
The point is, Lee bought blacks, fugitive or not, his escaped slaves or not, from bounty hunters who searched various Northern states for black skin to sell.
___________________________________________________
Most people today are not aware of the horrors of slavery, since they don't know that slave girls were raped, and children sold by the man that raped the slave girl. Slave masters were actually selling their own children from rapes. Pryor admits tactfully that someone white at Arlington was raping the slave girls, regularly.
Pryor also reports what clearly upset her -- white looking slave girls. Slave children were born having increasingly light skin. Pryor thinks it his a "horror" that "almost white" looking girls were enslaved, sold, raped. She wrote "whites were increasingly enslaving other whites".
She meant -- at Arlington. It was Lee's own slave ledgers and census reports that show a stunningly high percentage of light skinned, or mulatto, slaves.
Who else even mentioned -- or dreamed -- of such things? No one.
So how did Lee get this fantastically undeserved reputation for being anti slavery. Lee's main biographer -- Douglas Southall Freeman -- made it up, to be blunt.
Before Freeman's Lee -- even now praised as the "definitive" Lee biography -- Lee was praised by two generations of hack writers, who just wrote page after page of praise about Lee. They made up quotes, facts, whatever sounded good. They would claim Lee would dismount during battle, with all his officers, amid exploding bombs, for a long silent prayer.
Page after page of nonsense - but the books sold, people born after the Civil War, particularly in the South, were eager to buy such books. It's not a grand conspiracy -- it was how things worked, if you wanted to sell books, and books were suddenly affordable and drastically more common than before the Civil War, particularly in the the South.
Add to the explosion of book sales, religious revival was going on all over the USA -- and in the South, virtually everyone wanted to claim Lee was of their "persuasion". Men wrote books who clearly had never met Lee, but acted as if they were his bosom buddy. It happens.
Of course, Southern reader did not want to hear tales of rape, torture, and cowardice. They were eager to hear great things about their heroes, were a perfect storm.
Amazingly, though, it is those books that served as the basis for even "scholarly" examination of Lee.
Douglass Southall Freeman addressed this issue of Lee worship, by in effect claiming they had not praised Lee enough. With stunning detail, apparently much of it manufactured in his own head, Freeman wrote almost a biblical praise of Lee.
Pryor won't even write the words "slave ledgers". She calls them "monthly account books". But they are about his slaves, that's clear from her context. About his bounties, purchases, expenses, rewards, and description of his slaves. That makes them slave ledgers.
READING THE MAN - is Elizabeth Pryor's book about Robert E Lee's slave ledgers and personal letters. She is the only person, outside the Lee family, to have access to those ledgers and papers in 150 years.
There is much more to Lee than slave ledgers.
Pryor praises Lee- - as much as she can.
But woven into her flattery are facts so startling, no future serious biography can treat Lee the same idolizing way-- which means they simply repeat the distortions by Douglas Freeman. That Freeman was ever taken seriously is an indictment on "Confederate Scholarship"
Freeman would write things like this:
And no one said otherwise. No one wrote tell all books about Lee. At all. You can't find one. At best, you have people suggesting maybe --maybe -- Lee was overestimated a tad. But no one showed whippings, bounties, cruelties. No one mentioned his dirty letters to variouswomen.
No one showed his payments for girls, or how his slaves hated him, and risked life and limb and the skin on their backs, to escape.
When girls as young as 14 would escape, Lee seemed especially motivated to have them captured and whipped. No one told us that.
Lee, according to Freeman, was the best soldier in world history, but that pales to his real attribute -- the greatest Christian!
No flaws. Greatest Christian. Born noble, and became more noble. Even the most tidy, polite, chaste, and kind. There was literally nothing Freeman would not claim for Lee -- and this was the "scholarly" epic biography of Lee.
And it was total nonsense.
Here is a typical paragraph from a Lee biography in the 1890's -- the author insists Lee and all his officers would dismount during battle, to listen to an extended prayer!
Lee rescuing black children from burning buildings, Lee praying with a black woman when no one else would, Lee standing with all his officers as bombs exploded around them....
On and on, every page more goofy than the last. But the books sold, it's a free country. It was a way to sell books.
But astonishingly, these goofy books are the sources for much of the " information" we now teach as fact about Lee.
Many of the "Lee quotes" about leading men to Christ, and respect for all races, comes from these books. The quotes were repeated so often, most people have no clue Lee said few of the things attributed to him.
Some of these books did not even mention the word slave-- they called slaves "servants". If you were from a different country, and read some of these biographies, you would have no clue -- at all -- that slavery was a factor in the Civil War, or that Lee defended slavery and the torture of slaves as ordained by God.
_________________________________________________
It's not that Lee was an evil man -- he was not. Power corrupts, and slave owners had, essentially, the power of GOD. They could sell, whip, torture, and rape. The slave must endure it. Lee said that was God's plan --God intended for slaves to feel pain-- painful discipline "is necessary for their instruction"
_______________________________________
FREEMANS FRAUD
Freeman outdid all other Lee devotees, when he stated, as fact, that Lee was now at "the right of of Christ his Lord". You just can't beat that. Christ was next to God, and Lee was next to Christ.
Freeman had a drawing of Lee, with what looked like a halo around his head, apparently blessing a child that a woman held out.
MACK LEE FRAUD
Did Freeman know about Lee's torture of slaves? He sure did. He dismissed them, however, as so unlike Lee they were not worthy of mention. But Freeman actually distorted things he knew were false --the big fraud in Freeman's work is his knowing use of a supposed ex slave of Lee-- Rev Mack Lee.
Freeman said Lee' greatness was proven by his slave's love for him! Those who knew him best (his slaves) Freeman posited, loved him most --no greater testament could be given. Since his slaves loved him, Lee must be great indeed.
No, as we know from Lee's own papers now, Lee's slaves said he was the meanest man they ever knew, and many risked their lives to escape. So by that measure --the measure of your slaves -- Lee was a foul and cruel man.
Freeman used the hustler Mack Lee, to validate Lee's kindness to slaves. And Freeman knew Mack Lee was a poser, a fake, a hustler.
Freeman said Mack Lee's book about Lee, proved how amazing Lee was. Actually, it was not a book at all, it was a pamplet Mack Lee handed out on the day of his talks, he would walk up and down the streets, handing these pamphlets out.
Mack Lee, according to newspapers at the time, wore a CONFEDERATE UNIFORM!! You heard right, for his speeches to white audiences, he dressed like a Confederate soldier, and blantantly told the whites they were right about "colored" who were mostly lazy and dishonest, Lee would tell them. Blacks should appreciate the good nature of whites, Lee would say, which the suckers of course loved to hear.
Then Freemen would give his false spiel about with Lee -- one story was that a cannon ball hit near Mack Lee, nearly killing him, but Robert E Lee laughed and said "Aint never seen no nigger do dat,"
he was essentially a clown.
Freeman knew that of course, but never told his readers. The way Freeman explained Mack Lee, he was a serious man who wrote a serious book. Total bullshit, and Freeman knew it.
Freeman also knew Mack Lee was never Lee's slave, and certainly not one of his "body servants" during the war, which Mack Lee told everyone.
Lee was a "preacher" in the 1920's who claimed he had been Lee's personal slave. He raised money by speaking to groups, dressed in a Confederate uniform, to groups like the KKK, and white church groups. He would tell the white audience they were right, blacks needed to be obedient to whites, for their own good, because most blacks were lazy and untrustworthy.
Mack Lee likely had never set eyes on Lee, and was certainly not one of his slaves Lee had with him --which Freeman could name readily. In fact, Freeman should have exposed Mack Lee, but needed the fraudulent hustler to "prove" how great Lee was.
___________________________________________________
CAN WE BELIEVE ANYTHING OF THE LEE MYTH?
This is typical of Lee "biographies" one page after the other of praise, each author trying to outdo the previous. Adoration is fine -- but was it real? Was it based on facts?
Apparently not.
This is the kind of paragraph in books about Lee during the 1870's-1920's. They have Lee praying, with all his officers, as shells exploded around him....
Such goofy claims of Lee praying (with all his officers) as bombs exploded around him sound silly -- but in those books are the "facts" and especially the quotes we are told Lee said. These authors were just making stuff up to sell books -- but much of the "facts" in those books are now repeated as truth.
BELIEF OR EXCUSE?
The best witness to Lee's treatment of slaves should be Lee himself. That's why his slave ledgers are sooo important.
His family did not let anyone see the ledgers for 150 years. Even now, they will not let the public see them. All other Civil War leaders have their papers in the public domain -- not Lee.
Not even now. Why not? So what if they show affairs, no one cares about that now. Show his papers for fundamental truth about what happened at Arlington to the slaves.
We have Lincoln's embarrassing letters, we have Jeff Davis wife's letter about his cowardice. We have Grants papers -- you name the person, and we have their papers.
Not Lee's. Even now, we only have Pryor's very carefully filtered view. And she decides how much, or little, or how candid, or cleverly, she tells us about his papers.
_____________________________________
__________________________________________________
Prory is on his side - apparently. She blames the slaves for being whipped, saying they "tested Lee" and that Lee "had every right" to have them whipped.
She even posits, in her own editorial voice, that "discipline" (whipping) early on in a slaves life was for their benefit! Discipline applied early, she writes, can avoid more painful discipline later. How old was the youngest slave Lee had whipped?
Pryor probably knows.
She does not trash in any one sentence. In fact, she is careful to excuse him. The whippings were "the result of Lee's poor cross cultural communication skills". Yeah, that's it, Lee could not express his feelings well enough, that caused the regular use of the whip (yes, the whip was used often at Arlington, as you will see)
Lee had "every right" to have slave girls "disciplined" for running away. They were warned. And indeed, they were warned.
But they ran away regardless, especially when Lee started to separate the mothers from their children. Lee "broke apart every family but one" Pryor carefully says, which meant Lee took the mothers from the children, because that was the family unit. Slaves could be punished for telling a child who it's father was, even if the woman knew for sure. And because rape was common, as Pryor admits, the mother was not always sure who the father was.
Yes, Lee and all his officers dismounted in silent prayer, as bombs exploded around him. Every lunatic who wanted to sell books would add their own nonsense, and amazingly, that nonsense is now taught as fact.
Lee was the greatest soldier -- ever -- but more, much more, he was a "far better Christian". No word about Lee's habit of writing sexually explicit letters to various women, whipping slave girls, or saying God intended he administer pain, because "pain is necessary for their instruction".
According to Lee's slave ledgers -- studied at long last by Elizabeth Pryor -- Lee paid drastically higher bounties for the capture and punishment of young female slaves.
Why? Who even knew Lee owned slaves? Was he not against slavery? Did he not write a sentence that said slavery was evil?
Clearly Lee valued the 14 year old girl drastically more than the average slave male. Financially, she was worth much more to him.
'
Pryor opens her book by praising Lee's ancestors, revealing Lee's lovely sounding letter about them. What Pryor "forgets" to mention is that Lee's father was more brutal than he -- White Horse Harry Lee actually had a slave girl hung, not just whipped and tortured in other ways. He had her hung, despite her pleas that she be allowed to give birth to her child first, who was almost ready to be born.
SO Lee's father personally ordered a slave girl hung -- her crime? Worse than running away, apparently. She had knocked over a white man. No one even bothered to record why she would do that -- was he trying to rape her? Was he beating her? Was he whipping her child?
It did not matter why she knocked down the white man, it was immaterial to Lee. He had her hung.
That was Lee's family. His father was famous for whoring and deception, he would do things like sell slaves, help them escape, and sell them again. He would eventually be hunted down by men he cheated, beaten, and hot lead poured in his eyes.
The elder Lee survived the eye torture, and Lee himself saw his father in that condition, and knew well the circumstances about it.
Yes -- invariably -- when boasting of Robert E Lee, biographers boast of his "noble birth". As Douglas Freeman said "Lee was born noble, and became nobler still".
Utter nonsense. Lee was born to a man who personally ordered a begging girl to be hung. It was so unimportant to him, why she knocked down a white man, no one even asked her, apparently. It was a capital crime for a slave to strike a white person in anger.
Do you know the punishment for slave who resisted slavery by force? Who took up arms, or used weapons, against whites?
They were burnt to death.
_____________________________________________________
LEE's LETTER
Ironically, South has taken one part of one sentence -- Lee said slavery was a political and moral evil -- and pretended that letter shows Lee was against slavery. But Lee's letter did not stop there -- he went on to defend slavery and the brutality of slave discipline as being God's will, and told his wife it is not up to us to question God. God -- not man -- must end slavery, and God might take 2000 years to do so.
Pryor saw more than his letters, she saw his slave ledgers. She carefully calls them monthly "account books" but they are account books of his slaves- - bounties he paid, expenses and income from them. Pryor could easily show us his receipts -- how much he got from the sale of slaves (yes, he did sell slaves), but Pryor is very very careful to say things in a way that does not alarm or paint a cruel picture of Lee.
Historians were well aware of the two trunks kept by the family - and most assumed the papers would just show more of what we are told -- how sweet Lee was, how he was against slavery, how his slaves loved him, or that he freed the slaves.
Not so much.
Pryor defends Lee- - she is not out to trash him, as you will see. That actually makes her more credible, because even though she exposes his tortures, sexual letters, and cruelties carefully, no one can say she want to do a "tell all" book.
For decades, ,historians were well aware of the two trunks kept by the family - and most assumed those papers would just show more of what we are told: how sweet Lee was, how religious, how he was against slavery, how his slaves loved him, how he freed the slaves.
Not so much. Those things were were told about again and again, simply were not in his personal papers.
What was in his papers -- his handwritten bounties for 14 year old girls, his references to whipping slaves, including younger female slaves, and his hatred of slaves. Lee felt contempt for his slaves, in fact, he was bitter that his slaves did not appreciate him.
Yet Lee sold children, had women whipped, and even taunted slaves before he had them whipped. He was clueless as to why his slaves would hate him- which they did.
_________________________________________________
Lee's family did not release the actual slave ledgers, nor his personal and sexually explicit letters. But they did let one person out side the family read them. She is Elizabeth Pryor, and she adored Lee. That's why the family and Virginia Historical society picked her, presumably.
__________________________________________________
You probably heard Robert E Lee was "anti slavery" and "freed his wife's slaves before the Civil War."
We were told Lee was a "super Christian" who was "the bravest soldier, but far more, the best Christian". Serious and prize winning "historian" Douglass Southall Freeman said Lee "now sits at the right hand of Christ, his Lord".
Lee's real mission in life, "historians" said, was to "bring young men to know the Lord". Other "historians" told us Lee would dismount, with all his officers, and say long silent prayers as bombs exploded around them.
Lee saved babies from burning building, prayed with black woman when all other whites shunned her, and was "violently" opposed to slavery. He only fought for the South, because he "would not raise his sword against his native state".
Nothing -- nothing-- I repeat -- nothing was too goofy to praise Lee about. No one said otherwise either. Until now. There was never a "tell all" book about Lee. Quit the opposite, biographies seemed to compete with one another to praise him more.
All based on the same myth.
_____________________________________________
I wonder what Elizabeth Pryor thought the first time she held them. Slave ledgers? Lee? Dozens of them. One for each month he managed the slaves.
She found horrors: rapes, tortures, sale of children, bounties, whippings, cruelty uncommon even for slave masters. She writes, there were horrors. She is careful how she writes it, as you will see. She mentions that rape was "common". And admits someone "white" was fathering the slaves at Arlington.
Pryor tells us, as if it was a casual thing, that "over half" of slaves at Arlington were mulatto - born of a white father, in most cases. It was very rare that a white woman would give birth to a black or dark skinned child, but very common for the reverse.
At one point, Pryor tries to pass these mixed race children as the product of "dalliances" -- which implies flirting playful behavior.
But another place, Pryor writes it was rape. She says "coercion was used in those circumstances", Coercion was used? Cute.
It was RAPE. And everyone knew it. A woman knew better than to resist -- the punishment for putting your hands on a slave owner in anger, was death. Not whipping DEATH.
Pryor is careful to say, however, that "there is no evidence" Lee fathered his own slaves. But someone did -- someone white did father Lee's slaves. Pryor implies, Lee had to know that person. Of course he knew. Everyone knew someone white fathered many of the slaves.
In fact, Pryor cryptically admits letters from "Arlington women" showed disgust that slave girls were giving birth to the children of white men. Since these were Lee's letters, what Pryor leaves out, is the likelihood that "Arlington women" -- his own daughters perhaps -- wrote to him about this "disgusting" ongoing occurrence.
Pryor could have shown us who wrote that, and revealed exactly what she wrote-- to Lee or whoever it was. Pryor avoids being candid, in all such situations.
Since we are told Lee was honorable brave and "pure" (Freeman told us Lee was the "most" pure), and that was not true, what would stop Lee from doing what others did -- at Arlington? He would have girls whipped. He would scream at them while they were whipped. He would write sexually explicit letters about his sexual habits, seriously, what would stop such a man from doing what many other slave owners did -- and what someone white was doing at Arlington?
No black woman could refuse a sexual request, by the way. Pryor relates that it was common for white men to "visit" the slave cabins at night, and take any slave woman they felt like. IF a male slave tried to interfere, he was whipped.
So the males would actually sleep in a different cabin -- because more than one male slave had tried to stop the white man from raping his daughter, his wife, his girlfriend, and that did not work well. The price for putting your hand on a white man in anger, for a slave, was death.
__________________________________________________________________
So why not put those ledgers -- or even a page -- or even the cover -- in the book? Well, her job was not to trash Lee, that's why.
But what she shows, for example, is a lovely letter Lee wrote about some of his relatives, and his drawing of a pile driver.
Had she put a picture of Lee's record of whippings, tortures, and bounties, assuming the Lee family let her, it would probably have caused traffic accidents, if not riots. Riots by some to hang Pryor from the nearest Lee memorial, or riots by others to remove Lee's name from the schools, where girls that age go to school.
_____________________________________________________
Seriously - which would give you a better understanding of Lee? A picture of any page of his slave ledgers, or a drawing of well rigging? She gives us the pile driver.
_____________________________________________________
TWO BOOKS IN ONE,
Pryor writes two books in one. The overall narrative is flattering, as all Lee biographies are. You could, if you are so disposed, read the entire book and, as one reviewer said, "I realize now Lee was more complex than I thought"
Pryor could have shown Lee in a far more cruel light, but that was not her goal. She was chosen by the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, and she did not write in a way to insult them. Still, she inserted facts, carefully, that no biographer dared, before.
Well, if complex meant he had slave girls whipped while he screamed at them, sold children as punishment to the mother, got rich on slaves, and insisted God intended slaves to feel pain, because "pain is necessary for their instruction", then yes, Lee is a tad complex.
If you never heard of Lee before, and someone told you about a Virginia slave owner who was obsessed with slave girls, owned more light skinned girls than anyone else in US history, had bounty hunters search, for months, for specific girls he wanted, and then personally attended their tortures, while he screamed at them, and defended the pain he inflicted by saying God ordained and wanted it, would you think this guy was "complex"?
Or a cruel bastard?
Guess what -- according to Lee's own papers, as reported by Ms Pryor, Lee's slaves said he was "the worst man we ever saw".
But if you like to say complex, this is America.
Pryor was given the papers inside the trunks, along with some 10,000 letters too and from Robert E Lee. Short of having a film crew follow Lee around the slave barns, his slave ledgers, and letters about the slaves, give a bird-eye view of what Lee did, say, and saw in the slave barns.
___________________________________________________
lave ledgers show horrible things-- whippings, bounties, sale of children. So it's no surprise that Lee's slave ledgers have a few "embarrassing" entries.
Lee's words are even more ominous when paired with his actions of having slaves whipped, and incredibly, his use of other tortures -- specifically salt brine poured on the woman or man after a whipping, an almost unbelievably painful torture. Witnesses reported Lee did it for added punishment.
____________________________________________________
________________________________________________
Utter nonsense. Those assertions were always baseless -- myths repeated endlessly. Myths that were turned into "facts" by repetition.
But if Lee's own handwritten slave ledgers and thousands of personal letters mean anything, Lee not only defended slavery as God's will, he went further -- pain was necessary to "instruct" slaves. Even young female slaves should be whipped. And Lee paid extra to have them "instructed".
But not just whipping, stunningly, Lee had other tortures applied AFTER whipping, according to witnesses. Newspapers before the Civil War -- several newspapers - reported the torture of slave girls at Arlington. Stunningly, those tortures, long dismissed as so unlike what we know about Lee that they could not be true, are actually confirmed, by none other, than Robert E Lee himself, in his slave ledgers.
We can't be sure he yelled "Hit her harder" (Lay it on) over and over, all through her torture, as reports said. But as to the whipping, the payments to bounty hunters on that day, and the names and places described -- Lee's slave ledgers show inescapable validation that slave girls were whipped and Lee ordered it.
Your history teacher didn't tell you, because only recently has anyone been allowed to see the ledgers or sexually explicit letters.
Yes-- Robert E Lee.
Elizabeth Pryor -- above -- is the first person in 150 years outside the Lee family allowed to see the actual slave ledgers written by Robert E Lee. She was given access to the ledgers, and about 10,000 personal letters to and from Lee, kept by the family.
Make no mistake -- she is not out to trash her hero, Lee. In fact, just the opposite. She worked under the nose of the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, which exists, basically, to flatter Lee. She writes very very carefully, sprinkling the ugly truths like MSG in a Chinese buffet. SPreading it out, a bit here, a bit there, camouflaged almost among flattering narrative of Lee.
Pryor adores Lee, and the word "portrait" is apt. She tries to paint a lovely picture of Lee, but the paint she has to work with makes that difficult.
In Lee's "private papers" are reports of torture, escapes, hate, bounties, even rape. Make no mistake -- she is on Lee's "side". She defends and excuses the torture of slaves (and it was torture, the worst kind) as "due to Lee's poor cross cultural communication skills".
_________________________________________________
But no one else has ever even admitted he has slaves tortured. In fact, biographies of Lee have shown Lee as freeing slaves, kind to slaves, or anything else they thought sounded noble. They had no idea Lee's slave ledgers and personal letters would show otherwise.
Lee's treatment of slaves was not less brutal than others of his station, but more brutal. His upbringing, contrary to what you have been told, was of extreme brutality to slaves. His father had a slave girl hung, for knocking down a white man. No one even bothered to record why she knocked him down. Lee's father had her hung,. SHe was almost ready to give birth, and he refused pleas for her to deliver her baby first. Both mother and child were killed.
Lee was not a vile as his father, but the myths surrounding them both is a testament to the power of myth.
It's proper to call it torture, as you will see, because Lee went beyond the horrible whip. He had slaves whipped, but he also used other physical tortures, and even taunted the slave as they were whipped.
Lee also used psychological terror - again an accurate word - because Lee would separate mothers from their children as punishment. Once Lee took over control of the slave girls at Arlington, all hell broke loose. Slaves who had been relatively submissive at Arlington started to escape - en masse -- and Lee responded with brutal and personal and extreme punishment.
________________________________________________
Historians knew of the existence of two trunks (see above) filled with Lee's personal papers, but no one was allowed to see them. Pryor, who adores Lee, was allowed to actually study them, for months. She could have no earthly idea she would find evidence of tortures, rapes, white slaves, and sexually explicit letters in Lee's own handwriting.
Yet Pryor's goal is not to trash Lee. In fact, her goal is to praise Lee. She is very very -- very -- careful how she tells us of the tortures, rapes, etc. She is clearly on Lee's side -- for example, she claims Lee's habit of whipping slaves (he had them whipped) was just a result of his "poor cross cultural communication skills"
She even claims Lee "had every right" to whip slaves, because, according to her, Virginia Law required escaped slaves be whipped.
(Virginia law required no such thing).
Even if Virginia law required such tortures -- no law required Lee to sell children as punishment, which he did, no law required Lee scream at slave girls as he had them whipped, which he also did.
Pryor does her best to gloss over the horrors -- to minimize and excuse. But she does what no one else dared do -- she told the truth, as much as she dared, about a cruel man.
Essentially Pryor's reports of Lee's papers (she is not allowed to show the actual papers) undermine everything we were told about Lee, and not just about his cruelty to slave girls. For example, she reports Lee ordered in own sharpshooters to kill his own soldiers who ran during battle. That's a Stalin technique. That's a Hitler technique. Pryor reports it, carefully.
________________________________________________
See the little girl in the picture above, with the black slave? Actually, both she and the black man are Lee's slaves.
Lee owned the man, and the little girl. Bet you didn't know Lee owned white looking slaves.
In fact, as Pryor shows, over half -- OVER HALF -- of Lee's slaves were mulatto. Lee apparently owned, by far, the highest number of mulatto slave women, and light skinned women, in US history. Who would have imagined such a thing?
Pryor, as she does with all surprising facts, from tortures, rapes, and white looking slave girls, says it very carefully. She does not show us the actual slave ledgers no Lee's personal letters, she is painting a "portrait" of Lee -- that's the subtitle of the book -- that flatters Lee as much as possible.
But she mentions things in a curious way -- she barely mentions the light skinned girl, you could easily think she was perhaps talking about other slave owners. No, she was talking about Lee, and slave girls at Arlington. Did she put the picture of the light skinned slave child as a way to make it clear, when her words were cleverly ambiguous?
Only Pryor knows. Another curious thing -- she shows George Mason's description of "SOuthern Gentlemen" as essentially sociopaths who fake religion and manners, but are as brutal and cruel as anyone in history. George Mason was a founding father, and knew Lee's father. Why put Mason's opinion about the poisoned mind, cruelty, and fakery of Southern "Gentleman"?
Was she trying to say something about Lee, that she did not want to say herself?
Guess what he Lee did with the little girl? From Pryor's book, read carefully, you see Lee sold her, or rented her out. How do we know? Because of a very sly "throw away" sentence, about slaves at Arlington at one point. Only males, very young, or very old, were left. She did not explain it- but Lee did something to the women and girls. Pryor would know exactly what he did with them -- she could have told us. She could have shown us the pages. Lee did not "forget" to write things down, he was meticulous and obsessed with profit. He would have written it down.
So very likely, Pryor saw what he did with the girls. Why doesn't she tell us? Maybe like so much of her book, she is very careful how she reveals the horrors. We don't know.
We don't know how much he got for her, did he sell her mother too?
Pryor carefully states "Lee separated every family but one". Family, of course, did not include the father -- in fact, as you will see, the father was often a white man. So when Pryor writes that Lee "separated" families, she is using a euphemism for he separated the mothers from their children. She also "casually" mentions that Lee used separation as discipline. Meaning, in blunt terms, Lee separated the mothers from children as punishment or intimidation.
Pryor is horrified -- and she said so -- to learn that as time went on, whites were enslaving whites.
She meant -- at Arlington. Whites were enslaving other whites -- at Arlington.
And that means Lee enslaved whites. She had his slave ledgers, his letters - and she had the letters of women at Arlington. When she says "Whites were enslaving other whites" it's her way of saying Lee enslaved whites -- without infuriating the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, who gave her access to the papers.
While Ms Pryor does her best to keep Lee's halo on his head -- the facts she relates,such as his torture (yes, torture) of slave girls, and his habit of writing sexually explicit letters to various women show something quite different:
LEE'S PREFERED TORTURE
If you replace the euphemisms, her work is stunning.
For example, she mentions only deep in the book, buried in a paragraph far into a chapter, that Lee's "preferred" method of discipline was the whip. Think about that! Earlier she showed reports of Lee screaming at a girl as he had her whipped -- which she said "were undoubtedly predicated on actual events".
Later she mentions Lee's "preference" for "discipline" was whipping. Is she telling us, in a polite as way as possible?
She did not dream this up, she saw hundreds of his pages of ledgers and personal letters. Something he wrote himself had to give her that impression, that whipping was his preference.
'
He had other means of torture -- and it was torture. Let's not call it discipline, it involved tying the girl up, whipping her until Lee was satisfied, and THEN on top of that, pouring salt brine on the girls back.
________________________________________________
But Lee's father had a girl her age, about, hung. So compare Lee to his father, and from what we know, Lee never hung a slave girl. What Lee did to the 5,000 slave men he ruled over to dig the massive earth works (see below) we have no records for. If Lee wrote records for those slave tortures, we don't know of them.
But if Lee had slave girls whipped in peace time, and screamed at them during their torture, for his own ego, what would he not do to slave men, during war time, when his life depending on their working as fast as possible to dig the earthworks around Richmond?
_____________________________________________
Slave rape, according to Pryor herself, was common by 1861, almost an open secret, even the wives knew. Famed Civil War diarist Mary Chestnut knew the men were raping slave girls.
The women at Arlington, Pryor writes, were "disgusted" with the birth of white looking children by slave girls. How would Pryor know that amazing fact?
Do you believe Lee and all his officers dismounted during battle to stand silent and pray as bombs exploded around them? That's actually typical of the goofy exaggerations or outright falsehoods written for 100 years in Lee "biographies".
In fact, even supposed "scholarly" biographies" repeated or somehow exaggerated even the most absurd claims, about Lee's honor, his private life, and his treatment of slaves.
As Alan Nolan said 15 years ago, we should "start over" with Lee, because the "scholarship" about him was, to be kind, suspect.
Nolan wrote we should start over BEFORE Ms Pryor was allowed to see his slave ledgers. He could have no idea how right he was.
No story was too goofy or too false. Lee freed his slaves (no, he did not) Lee's slaves loved him (no, they did not). Lee was kind to slaves (no, he had them tortured).
How do we finally know? Because Lee kept records -- slave ledgers. And Lee wrote letters -- thousands of them.
Lee's family kept two trunks full of slave ledgers and personal letters, and after 150 years, they let one person outside the family see them. While Ms Pryor does her best to keep Lee's halo on his head -- the facts she relates,such as his torture (yes, torture) of slave girls, and his habit of writing sexually explicit letters to various women show something quite different:
Lee's father, for example, had a black girl hung -- she was pregnant and about to give birth, but Lee refused to let her give birth first, he had her hung on the spot. What did she do?
She knocked over a white man. No one even bothered to record WHY she knocked over the white man, and it did not matter. She touched a white person in anger, and she was hung.
Slave owners also had slave men burned to death who used violence to fight back. If you just ran away -- as Robert E Lee's slaves did often -- you were whipped. But if you fought back, you could be burned to death.
Learn about Lee's real childhood - not the nonsense fed to us in US history books -- and his slave ledgers make sense.....
_________________________________
Clearly, Ms Pryor takes Lee's side. She claims Lee "had every right" to capture and punish his slaves, including the 14 year old girl. She does not say it on that page, but in another part of the book she describes the torture that girl had to endure at Lee's orders.
And she was not the only one. In yet another page, she tells us that whipping was Lee's "prefered" method of discipline. If you flip back and forth between those pages, and take things as a whole, you see Lee actually used extreme tortures -- not just whipping which was vile enough. Lee had salt brine poured on the backs of girls after their whipping -- according to witness, to inflict more pain.
_______________________________________________
PAIN IS NECESSARY FOR THEIR INSTRUCTION.
Lee wrote that God "knew and intended" that slaves feel "painful discipline." Slave "must endure" pain he wrote.
As you will see, Lee was brought up to think so -- his father had a pregnant slave girl hung for knocking down a white man. In fact, Confederate leaders such as Alexander Stephens insisted slavery was a punishment by GOD on slaves, and white men were entrusted to inflict that punishment. Oh, so no one told you about Lee's believe in pain for slaves?
No one told you about Confederate leaders often repeated bragging that slavery was instituted by GOD to punish the black race?
Well, learn Southern documents about it. The Death of The Southern God of Slavery -- shhhhh. Lee was not a radical, his belief -- if you call it a belief -- was mainstream for slave owners. WHen you have slaves, sell children, whip women, you must -- must - do whatever mental gymnastics necessary to justify your actions somehow. The "God of slavery" was very much a real mental presence in the minds of slave owners, even though our history books like to gloss over that.
__________________________________________________
Lee, like all slave masters, had to justify slavery in his own head -- and because his wife owned most of the slaves, Lee had to explain things to her.
Pain is "necessary for their instruction" Lee wrote to his wife. Far from being against slavery, Lee claimed slavery is a "religious liberty" and wrote abolitionist are "trying to destroy the American Church".
Lee hated abolitionists -- blamed them for slaves being "dissatisfied".
Abolitionists create ill will in the slave -- they were at fault. Slaves were "better off" as slaves, and it was God's plan. It is not up to us, Lee told us wife, to question God's plan for slavery. We must obey God. Our only recourse is to "pray" for an end to slavery. Only God can end slavery, it is evil for man to interfere in that timeline.
Lee suggested 2000 years might be necessary to "instruct" the slaves to be "civilized",
Abolitionist "are on an evil course" against God, Lee wrote.
________________________________________________
Pryor also overlooks such amazing facts that Lee, early in the Civil War, was called "King of Spades" by Richmond newspapers, because he was in charge of thousands of slaves to build the earthworks around Richmond and Petersburg, which would prolong the war and protect the huge iron works there. Tredegar Iron Works.
Lee "scholars" have slyly attributed the nickname, "King of Spades" as a term of joyful merriment by his men, for making them dig earth works! Nonsense, it was a term used in newspapers at the time, in the articles about the slave built massive earth works.
_____________________________________________
____________________________________________
PRYOR CLAIMS LEE'S WHIPPING
- caused by Lee's "Poor cross cultural communication skills."
__________________________________________________
People who only hear of the book, claim Pryor was out to trash Lee-- utter nonsense. She bends over backwards on every page, every paragraph, to excuse, minimize, explain way, or minimize the horrors.
So why would Pryor say the whipping post was "silent reminder" on one page, but on others mention the screaming? She does such verbal misdirections often --she knew the whipping post was no silent reminder, because she later tells of the brutal whippings there. So why say "silent reminder" ? Because she is writing a positive narrative, not a tell all.
In another page, equally as bizarre she claims Lee's slaves "did not fully agree with Lee's theory of labor management." Is she writing for a comedy journal? They did not "fully agree" with his "theory" of labor management?
_____________________________________________
Lee freed all his slaves, and they loved him so much they stayed, is another report. (Wrong).
Lee was so religious, he got off his horse during battle, and had all his officers do the same, as bombs exploded around them, in silent prayer. A Southern best seller, written 20 years after Lee's death, said Lee overheard a prayer during battle -- and did this....
Maybe that has something to do with fact, Lee own very light skinned slave girls. See the girl in the picture above? She is one of 50 or so mulatto slaves -- not dark skinned. In fact, Lee had slave girls that he wrote could pass for white.
_____________________________________________
SURPRISING SENTENCES
Of the many surprising sentences in Pryor's otherwise flattering book about Lee, maybe the most shocking is that Lee's preference for discipline was the whip (he had other ways to cause them pain too), and that "increasingly, whites were enslaving other whites".
Lee wrote many sentences -- 10,000 letters, and monthly slave ledgers. Pryor won't let us actually see but a minuscule percentage of what he wrote. Why? When she writes that Lee's "preference" for discipline was the whip, no doubt she read dozens of his letters about that exact topic. Why not let us see those?
___________________________________________
LEE'S KNOWN PARTIAL LETTER
For about 80 years the South has insisted Lee "hated" slavery because of one sentence in a letter to his wife. But that part of the Lee was not even Lee's own words, he copied that part word for word from a book available to him at the time, of Daniel Webster's letters. For a wordsmith like Lee to deliberately plagarize someone else's words is surprising.
But read the FULL letter -- the part that is NOT plagiarized, is Lee's own words. And they are the most amazing defenses of slavery -- and the pain inflicted on slaves -- ever written
God "knew and intended" slaves "must endure painful discipline". You often heard slave masters claim slavery was ordained-- Lee went on and on about the PAIN slaves must endure.
Apparently Lee is trying to pacify his wife on his torture (and it was torture) of slaves, as we know his own slave ledgers. God knew and intended slaves endure pain -- he wrote they "must endure" it, and "pain is necessary for their instruction."
Pain was ordained by God -- not just slavery, is Lee's basic narrative to his wife. Slaves MUST endure it, pain is necessary. We, mankind, can not question God's wisdom. The slaves are better off here has slaves, than free in Africa, though Lee was never in Africa, and by that logic, and nation that wanted to take Lee women as slaves, should be able to, if they say they are better off as slaves.
Lee used the South's ever present blame game of blaming the "abolitionist" who "dissatisfy" slaves. Never mind that the slaves never met an abolitionist, and it was against the law for WHITES to own anti-slavery books or pamphlets, let alone blacks. In the South, it was a crime even for preachers to preach anything other than slaves owed Godly obedience to their master.
Man, Lee wrote, can only "pray" for an end to slavery, perhaps in 2000 years, he suggests. We must leave the timing of that up to the Lord. Men who try to end slavery against God's time are on an "evil course". In another letter he tells her Abolitionist are "trying to destroy the American Church".
Lee tries to convince his wife (and apparently he does convince her) that all the problems with rebellious slaves, run away slaves, are from the abolitionist. As Jeff Davis said, "The evil serpent of the abolitionist have whispered the lie of freedom in the ear of the slave".
We could know much more if Pryor and the Lee family actually showed the 10,000 letters and slave ledgers. We only get a very edited, and very "cleaned up" view -- but Pryor reveals stunning things even so.
_______________________________________________
Who knew Lee wrote dirty letters? Yes, he did. Or as Pryor tactfully calls it - sexually suggestive. Lee reminded various women of his sexual tricks, and bragged about his son's sexual ability. That's all Pryor mentions, but it had to be much more. She puts things, as you will see, very carefully.
She "desensationalizes" everything. Lee did not torture slaves, he "disciplined" them. And the way Pryor writes,
Although she tries to keep the "Lee Myth" alive, essentially she shows that, at least on slavery, Lee is nothing at all like the contrived and deliberately fraudulent myth about him.
In fact, Lee was remarkably cruel, even for slave masters.
No one reported anything like what Pryor does -- she uses his own slave ledgers and letters. More, she tries to minimize, explain away, or excuse Lee's tortures.
She claims Lee was "required" to have slaves whipped who tried to escape -- not true. But certainly he was no "required" to spend huge bounties for the girls especially, nor was he required to taunt them before their whipping, and scream at them during the whipping, as the newspaper reports from before the Civil War showed.
Yes -- you heard right.
________________________________________________
WHY LEE'S WHIPPING MADE THE NEWSPAPER
Newspapers BEFORE the Civil War reported on the whippings at Arlington, not because whipping was rare -- it was common for escaped slaves -- but because the regular overseer refused to whip the girl. That was news. An overseer (a black man, usually a slave) just told Lee -- NO.
The overseer whipped the other slaves Lee caught, but refused to whip her, because she was too young, said a witness. That was stunning. An overseer saying no. We don't know if Lee had him whipped, in retaliation, or whatever happened to him.
Lee found someone else to whip the girl, and screamed at her during her torture. THATS why it made the papers. He yelled all through her torture "Hit her harder, hit her harder" -- or in the vernacular of slave masters and whips "Lay it on, Lay it on".
Lee was excited. He had paid 342 dollars for her capture, and he wanted his money's worth, apparently.
____________________________________________
How do we know those newspaper reports were true? That's the amazing part.
Lee's slave ledgers show many of the names, dates, and other particulars mentioned in the newspapers. Lee wrote things down which verify those reports. As Pryor says, the whipping and torture of the girl was "unquestionably" predicated on facts Lee wrote down.
Strange indeed if reports at that time -- by people who would never see Lee's slave ledgers -- had details that matched up substantially.
___________________________________________
Why did Lee offer so much more money for the capture of the girl?
Could the young girls pick more cotton? Actually, Lee didn't grow cotton. Lee grew slaves -- his product was not food or cotton, it was SLAVES and slave labor.
How do you think Lee made money? He made it by renting or selling slaves. When "scholars" talk about Lee "managing" Arlington, they hope you don't realize, that meant maxamizing his profit from the sale and or rental of slaves.
And Lee did both -- he sold slaves and he rented them. Pryor is very careful how she addresses that, and the other horrors.
_______________________________________________
Make no mistake: Pryor tries to flatter Lee, like so many others have.
But Pryor had in her hands what no one even dreamed existed -- Lee's slave ledgers and dirty letters. These slave ledgers and dirty letters are as much as an indictment Lee "scholarship" as it is about Lee.
In fact, Lee never claimed he was anti slavery -- he was emphatic, slavery was ordained by God and aboltionist are on a course against God.
In fact, Lee's writings actually defend the torture of slaves, because God "knew and intended" slaves feel pain. Painful discipline was Gods plan --pain, he wrote, was "necessary for their instruction".
Alan Nolan, author of "Lee Considered" wrote 20 years ago that Lee was never considered honestly -he said we need to start over. Nolan had no clue Pryor would be allowed to actually see, study, and report (sorta) on the slave ledgers or dirty letters.
___________________________________________________
Consider this: it took 150 years for the Lee family to let ANYONE see those slave ledgers and letters
There is a very good reason for that secrecy.
________________________________________________
Pryor's overall narrative of Lee is flattering, in fact you can read the entire book and hardly notice the horrors -- but they are there.
Pryor blames the slaves for getting whipped, and claims Lee "had every right". But no one else admitted he had slaves whipped, we find out from Pryor, whipping was just ONE of Lee's tortures, and he used torture apparently regularly.
Lee's slaves hated him -- according to the papers written BY Lee himself. And he hated them. The goofy notion that Lee freed his slaves, or didn't own any, was always wrong. It was repeated over and over, so that it became commonly believed.
While Pryor does admit the tortures happened, even then, she claims it was "due to Lee's poor cross-cultural communication skills". It's sorta like saying a wife beater had "communication issues"
But Lee grew up seeing slaves whipped, it was the only reality knew knew. His father had a slave girl hung, despite her pleas to let her give birth first -- she was almost ready to deliver the child. Lee refused, and she was hung.
What was her crime? She knocked down a white man. No one bothered to record WHY she knocked down a white man. It did not matter, if a slave injured a white man, the penalty was death.
So she died.
__________________________________________________
Pryor very much on Lee's "side". Sometimes people will say she was out to smear Lee -- clearly, they never read the book.
When she does admit things like torture, she cites an excuse, such as blaiming Virginia laws, that, according to her, mandated whipping escaped slaves.
That's not true. There was no law you MUST whip your slave, Pryor just made that up apparently. That should tell you something.
Furthermore, there was no law that you had to pay 34x the usual bounty for the capture of certain girls. You could just let your slave escape. Lee sent his bounty hunters into the North, across several states, to catch girls.
Why? Pryor doesn't say.
This girl is one of probably seven or eight
light skinned girl slaves owned by Lee.
Painful discipline, Lee insisted, was ordained of God ( see below), Pryor shows that Lee was an especially cruel slave master, given his social standing. Specifically, most slave masters of great wealth would typically try to keep the mother and child together.
Lee felt no such restraint, and separated families routinely, which Pryor implies started the violent confrontation that lasted the rest of Lee's life, till slavery ended.
___________________________________________________
WHITE FATHERS
When Lee "broke apart families" that means she took the child from the mother. The father was not in the picture, because often times, the father was a white man at Arlington.
Over 50% of Lee's slaves were mulatto. The typical ratio was 1 in 10. A little tid bit Pryor mentions carefully.
Therefore, without saying it aloud, Pryor showed that Lee owned more light skinned slaves, very likely, than anyone else in US history.
Who even dreamed such things? In fact, we were told by our history teachers, encylopedias, and movies that Lee didn't own slaves and was against slavery.
Nonsense. And we show you how that nonsense started, below
____________________________________________________
In early biographies of Lee, one writer didn't even mention the word "slave". If you were from Ireland or Mars, you would have no idea, from those books, that Lee ever saw a slave in his entire life. Incredibly, Lee was shown in early biographiers as Super Human. A man who would "dismount and pray" during battle, as bombs exploded around him!
These were not "history" books, they were fiction, really, with absolutely no regard for truth. But the Southern readers, by 1880 and 1890, were eager for books showing their history as anything but slave oriented.
In fact, Lee was shown as being a "super Christian" only concerned for salvation of souls, and of course, Lee was not for slavery! Lee was a man of "The Holy Spirit"
 |
| Add caption |
The massive evangeical resurgence, in the South, was eager to claim Lee as "their guy". Writers were eager to sell them books, now more affordable than ever.
Lee became the greatest Christian in the world, far greater for his adoration of Christ, supposedly, than his own perfection as a soldier.
Freeman simply beat everyone -- you could not claim any further honor. Christ sat at "the right hand of God" and Lee sat "at the right hand of Christ, his Lord."
Seriously, you can not beat that. Lee, in every sense, was elevated by SOUTHERN HISTORIANS, as seated at the right and of Christ.
Whoever flattered Lee more, seemed to get more sales. Either go big or go home.
All kinds of Lee "quotes" were simply made up by these authors. WHich ones, exactly? Who knows! But men who would claim Lee dismounted for prayers amid exploding bombs, would not likely hesitate to make up other goofy stuff.
Later, "historians" would pick which flattering stories to use, from these books, it their own books. That's how myths are made.
Elizabeth Pryor, pictured above, is the only person in 150 years, outside the Lee family, to be able to read Lee's stunning personal papers, including slave ledgers, kept by his family for 5 generations.
Pryor adores Lee -- that's why they chose her. But she could have no earthly idea of the horrors she would find. Her problem was how to write the book flattering to Lee, after she found evidence in Lee's own papers, of rapes, tortures, whippings, bounties, dirty letters, etc.
Pryor could only assume the slave ledgers and personal letters (a stunning 10,000 of them) would pretty much validate what we were told by "scholar" after "scholar" -- especially Douglas Southall Freeman, who insisted Lee freed all his "servants" but they loved him so much, they refused!
Nothing could be further from the truth. If Freeman had that basic fact wrong -- did he have any facts right?
Freeman, like so many other "scholars" would change just a few "facts" to make Lee sound spectacular. For example Freeman claimed Lee was called "King of Spades" early in the war, for his jocular way of having his soldiers dig earth works.
 |
| Lee was called "King of Spades" by Richmond Papers for his use of slaves, who he forced to dig the massive earthworks |
Nonsense - Lee was called King of Spades because of his massive use of slave labor in the war. Slaves were brought for all over, for Lee to force their labor on the biggest construction project you never heard of -- the earthworks around Richmond and Fredericksburg, something on the scale of the Pyramids
As you will see, since Lee had girls whipped during peace time,it's hard to imagine what he had done to men during wartime, when his life depended, perhaps, on the slaves rapid construction of the project that kept Richmond, and the Ironworks there, going throughout the war. If Richmond had fallen early, the Confederacy could not have put nearly as many canon in the field, nor behind their earth works.
BOUNTY BOUNTY WHO PAYS THE BOUNTY?
 |
Lee's figure is on the largest bas relief sculpture on earth
deliberately made larger than Lincoln's,. |
Isn't that just kidnapping? Paid kidnapping? As Pryor puts it Lee "failed to fill out the time-consuming paperwork". There was no paperwork for capturing women and children in North who were never slaves. But Pryor realized "time consuming paper work" was a better way to explain that one.
Yet, we are told Lee "hated" slavery, in fact, the typical school book claims Lee was anti slavery and anti secession, but would never "draw my sword" against my state. No one mentions Lee was very willing to draw his whip (he paid others to use it, Lee would stand nearby and scream during the tortures, according to reports from eye witnesses).
Yes, Lee wrote a letter to his wife, apparently trying to placate her for his treatment of the slave girls, who would certainly have gone to her, since she owned them first, and she grew up with them, she had life long affection for them. Lee hated them, felt no personal human connection to any slave. Lee defended the torture of slaves as ordained - God "knew and intended" slaves feel pain "pain is necessary for their instruction"
More people in the South know about Lee's pet chicken, than know the names of the girls he bought, or had whipped. There is no monument for any of Lee's slaves, nor mention of the children he sold, nor mention of the various techniques Lee used to administer that "painful discipline".
 |
| George Mason Described Southern Leaders like Lee as essentially sociopaths who seemed like "gentleman" but were as vile as any despot in history. Why did Pryor include Mason's description in this book? |
Whipping, by the way, was only ONE of Lee's methods of "disciplining" slaves, including slave girls. Pryor shows reports of Lee's other tortures, again,artfully.
So "artful" is Pryor in revealing these horrors, that some people read the entire book, and don't recall anything about torture or rape or cruelties at Arlington, until you open the book and point to the page.
The book is "safe" for Lee admirers to read, she does not sensationalize anything, quite the opposite. Her narrative is as flattering as possible, considering what she found in the slave ledgers.
______________________________________
 |
| TYPICAL PICTURE OF ARLINGTON THEY DON'T SHOW THE WHIPPING POSTS |
Lee also wrote that abolitionist were "against God" and men could only pray to end slavery, perhaps in 2000 years. Meanwhile it was not up to men to question God, or his will that slaves feel pain.
Pryor admits Lee had slaves whipped -- she refuses to say how many were whipped, just like she artfully dodges telling us how many he owned. Yes, he owned.
Lee paid much higher prices for the capture of certain girls -- Lee's female slaves seemed very eager to escape, he had probably fifty slaves try to escape, Pryor is coy about the number, other than saying there was an "epidemic" of attempted escapes, one day, seven slaves escaped, including a young light skinned girl.
Yeah-- Lee owned light skinned girl, one so light Lee wrote she could pass for white.
Lee's bounty for the girl was 346 dollars, but he paid about 10 dollars for males. For his "special" girl, he paid $346. Why was she worth 34 times as much? There was a reason -- see if you can figure it out....Pryor doesn't even hint at the reason, but when she discusses Lee's amazing sexually explicit letters, it's clear Lee was a very very "robust" man in that department.
Do you know what Lee's cash crop was? No, not cotton. Lee's cash crop was humans. He sold and "leased" humans. He knew that -- he kept records of exactly that.
If the Lee family would let others see the ledgers, we would all know. But only Pryor has seen them. It may be another 150 years, if ever, that the public is allowed to see them.
___________________________________________________
Mention Robert E Lee and slavery, and within seconds you find people smugly saying "Oh Lee never owned any slaves". The hell he didn't.
Lee owned slaves -- himself, and he regularly paid bounty hunters for them.
Lee was not always in charge of his wife's estate, but when his mother in law died, he became the "king" a title he would be called in SOuthern newspapers as "King of Spades" early in the war.
Lee treated the slaves drastically different than the Custis family did. He had them whipped, sold, and worst of all, he separated the mothers from the children, without the slightest hesistation, which caused massive repercussions.
Almost immediately, the slaves rebelled against Lee's cruel ways -- and dozens, over time, risked their lives to escape.
It was the attempted escapes that infuriated Lee, he had the many escaped slaves whipped.
Pryor could easily tell us how many slaves Lee owned --yes owned -- and managed. He had God like control of over 200 slaves, upon his word, they were sold, whipped, beaten or worked. A word from Lee, as with any slave master, and women were tied up, their children taken, or whatever the master felt like.
Lee's slaves said he "was the worst man we ever saw". That came from Lee's papers -- the worst man we ever saw.
Lee defended slavery as the will of God, and wrote only God could end it, man could only pray for the end. Abolitionist were the evil ones, on "a course against God".
Lee accused abolitionist as "trying to destroy the American Church". Yes, church.
Lee owned his own slaves, according to his own slave ledgers, and bought more -- he bought them from bounty hunters as you will se..
Yes, he gained control of his wife's slaves -- and immediately used violence and terror to keep them in line.
Lee was an especially cruel slave master, and was known as such. Newspapers before the Civil War reported some astonishing cruelty by him personally, as he screamed at slave girls while they were whipped, then ordered additional tortures for her. Eye witnesses said the extra tortures were to inflict pain.
Given who was looking over her shoulder -- the Lee family -- Pryor actually gives information drastically different than the Lee Myth. But she does so carefully.
Clearly, she is on Lee's side. Lee had "every right" to capture and discipline slaves, even slave girls, for attempted escape. She does not mention, on that page, but saves Lee's cruel way of tortures for a different page, and even then very carefully "reveals it".
WHY NOT just show the slave ledgers? Show the letters, payments, and whatever else she saw? You can probably figure it out. If it were just sexually "embarrassing" things, simple leave those out, it's not a problem. But not only are no pages shown, Pryor refuses to even call them ledgers. She calls they monthly "account" books. They are account books about slave discipline, payments, rentals -- who knows what else?____________________________________
_____________________________________________________
She admits, carefully, euphemistically, to the point of Orwellian double speak of rapes by white men of slave girls at Arlington, that were so common over half of Lee's slaves were mulatto.
At one point Pryor is in "cover up mode" describing the white looking or lighter slaves as being from "dalliances" -- which implies romantic playful encounter. Really? Playful?
These children were sold, whipped, rented out, same as the slaves of darker pigment. Women risked life and skin to escape. These were not dalliances, and Pryor knows it.
Elsewhere, Pryor calls these rapes "horrors" saying "whites were increasingly enslaving other whites". She is talking about ARLINGTON and the Lee family -- read it closely, she is. She mentions letters by "women at Arlington" about the "disgusting" fact of lighter skinned babies born to the slave girls -- at Arlington!
Pryor writes very very carefully. It's no accident she appears at times to be generalizing about slavery around Arlington or even elsewhere. It's almost as if she worked very hard to say what she had to, but not to make it too awful for the Lee family -- clearly her friends by then -- to read.
One technique is describe slavery generally, if you want to read it that way, you can assume she is not writing about Lee surely. Oh, yes, she is. She is writing about Lee and Arlington when she writes about the rapes, though she says there "is no evidence" Lee ever raped or fathered his own slaves -- clearly SOMEONE white was fathering the slaves at Arlingtion.
Pryor even says "coercion was used in those situations" -- meaning the girls where physically forced to give sexual service. Remember, Pryor had to see things, in Lee's own private papers, to make her say that. She did not have visions -- and just blurt out "coercion was used". Before she would dare to be that blunt, she would have to see likely overwhelming things in Lee's paper to indicate that.
And as every slave owner knew, slave girls did always have to be physically forced -- they compelled in 1000 ways, like the slave master who threatened to sell the children unless she continued to give him sexual services as he demanded. Every possible horrible story happened, slavery brings out the worst in slave masters, because power corrupts.
_____________________________________________________
LUSTY LEE
Contrary to Douglas Freeman's goofy deception of Lee as "most chaste" Lee was a hot to trot guy, and proud of it. He wrote women -- apparently routinely, and more than one woman -- about his sexual tricks, and sexually explicit discussion, he even apparently bragged about his son's sexual abilities. Remember, this was 1860s, the sexual 1890's was in France, 30 years later, this was highly unusual for anyone to write "hot" letters -- but Lee did.
Pryor tries to pass them off as "flirtations" and says "there is no evidence" that Lee acted on these words. There is no evidence he did not, too. "There is no evidence" is silly, too, how many men brag about their sexual tricks, and their son's sex ability, anyway? Who flirts like that? That's just odd.
Pryor could, of course, show us the letters, assuming the family said okay. But if she isn't going to show the slave ledgers and bounties, she sure isn't going to show the actual sexual letters.
Contrary to myth, Lee not only managed his wife's slaves -- and by managing we mean selling, whipping, paying bounties for their capture -- Lee had his own slaves.
He owned several entire "families" of slaves, meaning the mother and children. And as Pryor shows, Lee was not even hesitant to separate the mother from the child, renting or selling one or the other.
In a particularly clever bit of writing, Pryor discusses the fugative slave law, and Lee, saying Lee failed "to fill out the time consuming paperwork" regarding captured blacks. But Lee apparently bought some blacks from bounty hunters who caught them in the North who had never been slaves at all, and never been to Arlington. That was the "paperwork" Lee failed to fill out. Like much of Pryor's diplomatic prose, you have to read it carefully.
Too "time consuming" said Pryor. Uh huh. Neat trick -- to make those mean old "bureaucrats" the bad guy, not Lee, who bought the people his hunters found.
The point is, Lee bought blacks, fugitive or not, his escaped slaves or not, from bounty hunters who searched various Northern states for black skin to sell.
___________________________________________________
Most people today are not aware of the horrors of slavery, since they don't know that slave girls were raped, and children sold by the man that raped the slave girl. Slave masters were actually selling their own children from rapes. Pryor admits tactfully that someone white at Arlington was raping the slave girls, regularly.
Pryor also reports what clearly upset her -- white looking slave girls. Slave children were born having increasingly light skin. Pryor thinks it his a "horror" that "almost white" looking girls were enslaved, sold, raped. She wrote "whites were increasingly enslaving other whites".
She meant -- at Arlington. It was Lee's own slave ledgers and census reports that show a stunningly high percentage of light skinned, or mulatto, slaves.
Who else even mentioned -- or dreamed -- of such things? No one.
So how did Lee get this fantastically undeserved reputation for being anti slavery. Lee's main biographer -- Douglas Southall Freeman -- made it up, to be blunt.
 |
| FREEMAN ASSURED US THAT LEE "IS NOW AT THE RIGHT HAND OF CHRIST, HIS LORD". |
Before Freeman's Lee -- even now praised as the "definitive" Lee biography -- Lee was praised by two generations of hack writers, who just wrote page after page of praise about Lee. They made up quotes, facts, whatever sounded good. They would claim Lee would dismount during battle, with all his officers, amid exploding bombs, for a long silent prayer.
Page after page of nonsense - but the books sold, people born after the Civil War, particularly in the South, were eager to buy such books. It's not a grand conspiracy -- it was how things worked, if you wanted to sell books, and books were suddenly affordable and drastically more common than before the Civil War, particularly in the the South.
Add to the explosion of book sales, religious revival was going on all over the USA -- and in the South, virtually everyone wanted to claim Lee was of their "persuasion". Men wrote books who clearly had never met Lee, but acted as if they were his bosom buddy. It happens.
Of course, Southern reader did not want to hear tales of rape, torture, and cowardice. They were eager to hear great things about their heroes, were a perfect storm.
Amazingly, though, it is those books that served as the basis for even "scholarly" examination of Lee.
Douglass Southall Freeman addressed this issue of Lee worship, by in effect claiming they had not praised Lee enough. With stunning detail, apparently much of it manufactured in his own head, Freeman wrote almost a biblical praise of Lee.
Pryor won't even write the words "slave ledgers". She calls them "monthly account books". But they are about his slaves, that's clear from her context. About his bounties, purchases, expenses, rewards, and description of his slaves. That makes them slave ledgers.
READING THE MAN - is Elizabeth Pryor's book about Robert E Lee's slave ledgers and personal letters. She is the only person, outside the Lee family, to have access to those ledgers and papers in 150 years.There is much more to Lee than slave ledgers.
 |
| Largest Bas Relief in the world is of Robert E Lee, deliberately made larger than Abraham Lincoln or any US President at Mt. Rushmore. |
But woven into her flattery are facts so startling, no future serious biography can treat Lee the same idolizing way-- which means they simply repeat the distortions by Douglas Freeman. That Freeman was ever taken seriously is an indictment on "Confederate Scholarship"
Freeman would write things like this:
And no one said otherwise. No one wrote tell all books about Lee. At all. You can't find one. At best, you have people suggesting maybe --maybe -- Lee was overestimated a tad. But no one showed whippings, bounties, cruelties. No one mentioned his dirty letters to variouswomen.
No one showed his payments for girls, or how his slaves hated him, and risked life and limb and the skin on their backs, to escape.
When girls as young as 14 would escape, Lee seemed especially motivated to have them captured and whipped. No one told us that.
Lee, according to Freeman, was the best soldier in world history, but that pales to his real attribute -- the greatest Christian!
No flaws. Greatest Christian. Born noble, and became more noble. Even the most tidy, polite, chaste, and kind. There was literally nothing Freeman would not claim for Lee -- and this was the "scholarly" epic biography of Lee.
And it was total nonsense.
Here is a typical paragraph from a Lee biography in the 1890's -- the author insists Lee and all his officers would dismount during battle, to listen to an extended prayer!
Lee rescuing black children from burning buildings, Lee praying with a black woman when no one else would, Lee standing with all his officers as bombs exploded around them....
On and on, every page more goofy than the last. But the books sold, it's a free country. It was a way to sell books.
But astonishingly, these goofy books are the sources for much of the " information" we now teach as fact about Lee.
Many of the "Lee quotes" about leading men to Christ, and respect for all races, comes from these books. The quotes were repeated so often, most people have no clue Lee said few of the things attributed to him.
Some of these books did not even mention the word slave-- they called slaves "servants". If you were from a different country, and read some of these biographies, you would have no clue -- at all -- that slavery was a factor in the Civil War, or that Lee defended slavery and the torture of slaves as ordained by God.
_________________________________________________
It's not that Lee was an evil man -- he was not. Power corrupts, and slave owners had, essentially, the power of GOD. They could sell, whip, torture, and rape. The slave must endure it. Lee said that was God's plan --God intended for slaves to feel pain-- painful discipline "is necessary for their instruction"
_______________________________________
FREEMANS FRAUD
Freeman outdid all other Lee devotees, when he stated, as fact, that Lee was now at "the right of of Christ his Lord". You just can't beat that. Christ was next to God, and Lee was next to Christ.
Freeman had a drawing of Lee, with what looked like a halo around his head, apparently blessing a child that a woman held out.
MACK LEE FRAUD
Did Freeman know about Lee's torture of slaves? He sure did. He dismissed them, however, as so unlike Lee they were not worthy of mention. But Freeman actually distorted things he knew were false --the big fraud in Freeman's work is his knowing use of a supposed ex slave of Lee-- Rev Mack Lee.
 |
| Mack Lee: Would appear in Confederate Uniform, always trying to raise 500 dollars for his church |
Freeman said Lee' greatness was proven by his slave's love for him! Those who knew him best (his slaves) Freeman posited, loved him most --no greater testament could be given. Since his slaves loved him, Lee must be great indeed.
No, as we know from Lee's own papers now, Lee's slaves said he was the meanest man they ever knew, and many risked their lives to escape. So by that measure --the measure of your slaves -- Lee was a foul and cruel man.
Freeman used the hustler Mack Lee, to validate Lee's kindness to slaves. And Freeman knew Mack Lee was a poser, a fake, a hustler.
Freeman said Mack Lee's book about Lee, proved how amazing Lee was. Actually, it was not a book at all, it was a pamplet Mack Lee handed out on the day of his talks, he would walk up and down the streets, handing these pamphlets out.
Mack Lee, according to newspapers at the time, wore a CONFEDERATE UNIFORM!! You heard right, for his speeches to white audiences, he dressed like a Confederate soldier, and blantantly told the whites they were right about "colored" who were mostly lazy and dishonest, Lee would tell them. Blacks should appreciate the good nature of whites, Lee would say, which the suckers of course loved to hear.
Then Freemen would give his false spiel about with Lee -- one story was that a cannon ball hit near Mack Lee, nearly killing him, but Robert E Lee laughed and said "Aint never seen no nigger do dat,"
he was essentially a clown.
Freeman knew that of course, but never told his readers. The way Freeman explained Mack Lee, he was a serious man who wrote a serious book. Total bullshit, and Freeman knew it.
Freeman also knew Mack Lee was never Lee's slave, and certainly not one of his "body servants" during the war, which Mack Lee told everyone.
Lee was a "preacher" in the 1920's who claimed he had been Lee's personal slave. He raised money by speaking to groups, dressed in a Confederate uniform, to groups like the KKK, and white church groups. He would tell the white audience they were right, blacks needed to be obedient to whites, for their own good, because most blacks were lazy and untrustworthy.
Mack Lee likely had never set eyes on Lee, and was certainly not one of his slaves Lee had with him --which Freeman could name readily. In fact, Freeman should have exposed Mack Lee, but needed the fraudulent hustler to "prove" how great Lee was.
___________________________________________________
CAN WE BELIEVE ANYTHING OF THE LEE MYTH?
This is typical of Lee "biographies" one page after the other of praise, each author trying to outdo the previous. Adoration is fine -- but was it real? Was it based on facts?
Apparently not.
This is the kind of paragraph in books about Lee during the 1870's-1920's. They have Lee praying, with all his officers, as shells exploded around him....
Such goofy claims of Lee praying (with all his officers) as bombs exploded around him sound silly -- but in those books are the "facts" and especially the quotes we are told Lee said. These authors were just making stuff up to sell books -- but much of the "facts" in those books are now repeated as truth.
BELIEF OR EXCUSE?
His family did not let anyone see the ledgers for 150 years. Even now, they will not let the public see them. All other Civil War leaders have their papers in the public domain -- not Lee.
Not even now. Why not? So what if they show affairs, no one cares about that now. Show his papers for fundamental truth about what happened at Arlington to the slaves.
We have Lincoln's embarrassing letters, we have Jeff Davis wife's letter about his cowardice. We have Grants papers -- you name the person, and we have their papers.
Not Lee's. Even now, we only have Pryor's very carefully filtered view. And she decides how much, or little, or how candid, or cleverly, she tells us about his papers.
_____________________________________
__________________________________________________
Prory is on his side - apparently. She blames the slaves for being whipped, saying they "tested Lee" and that Lee "had every right" to have them whipped.
She even posits, in her own editorial voice, that "discipline" (whipping) early on in a slaves life was for their benefit! Discipline applied early, she writes, can avoid more painful discipline later. How old was the youngest slave Lee had whipped?
Pryor probably knows.
She does not trash in any one sentence. In fact, she is careful to excuse him. The whippings were "the result of Lee's poor cross cultural communication skills". Yeah, that's it, Lee could not express his feelings well enough, that caused the regular use of the whip (yes, the whip was used often at Arlington, as you will see)
Lee had "every right" to have slave girls "disciplined" for running away. They were warned. And indeed, they were warned.
But they ran away regardless, especially when Lee started to separate the mothers from their children. Lee "broke apart every family but one" Pryor carefully says, which meant Lee took the mothers from the children, because that was the family unit. Slaves could be punished for telling a child who it's father was, even if the woman knew for sure. And because rape was common, as Pryor admits, the mother was not always sure who the father was.
Yes, Lee and all his officers dismounted in silent prayer, as bombs exploded around him. Every lunatic who wanted to sell books would add their own nonsense, and amazingly, that nonsense is now taught as fact.
Lee was the greatest soldier -- ever -- but more, much more, he was a "far better Christian". No word about Lee's habit of writing sexually explicit letters to various women, whipping slave girls, or saying God intended he administer pain, because "pain is necessary for their instruction".
According to Lee's slave ledgers -- studied at long last by Elizabeth Pryor -- Lee paid drastically higher bounties for the capture and punishment of young female slaves.
Why? Who even knew Lee owned slaves? Was he not against slavery? Did he not write a sentence that said slavery was evil?
Clearly Lee valued the 14 year old girl drastically more than the average slave male. Financially, she was worth much more to him.
'
Pryor opens her book by praising Lee's ancestors, revealing Lee's lovely sounding letter about them. What Pryor "forgets" to mention is that Lee's father was more brutal than he -- White Horse Harry Lee actually had a slave girl hung, not just whipped and tortured in other ways. He had her hung, despite her pleas that she be allowed to give birth to her child first, who was almost ready to be born.
SO Lee's father personally ordered a slave girl hung -- her crime? Worse than running away, apparently. She had knocked over a white man. No one even bothered to record why she would do that -- was he trying to rape her? Was he beating her? Was he whipping her child?
It did not matter why she knocked down the white man, it was immaterial to Lee. He had her hung.
That was Lee's family. His father was famous for whoring and deception, he would do things like sell slaves, help them escape, and sell them again. He would eventually be hunted down by men he cheated, beaten, and hot lead poured in his eyes.
The elder Lee survived the eye torture, and Lee himself saw his father in that condition, and knew well the circumstances about it.
Yes -- invariably -- when boasting of Robert E Lee, biographers boast of his "noble birth". As Douglas Freeman said "Lee was born noble, and became nobler still".
Utter nonsense. Lee was born to a man who personally ordered a begging girl to be hung. It was so unimportant to him, why she knocked down a white man, no one even asked her, apparently. It was a capital crime for a slave to strike a white person in anger.
Do you know the punishment for slave who resisted slavery by force? Who took up arms, or used weapons, against whites?
They were burnt to death.
_____________________________________________________
LEE's LETTER
Ironically, South has taken one part of one sentence -- Lee said slavery was a political and moral evil -- and pretended that letter shows Lee was against slavery. But Lee's letter did not stop there -- he went on to defend slavery and the brutality of slave discipline as being God's will, and told his wife it is not up to us to question God. God -- not man -- must end slavery, and God might take 2000 years to do so.
Pryor saw more than his letters, she saw his slave ledgers. She carefully calls them monthly "account books" but they are account books of his slaves- - bounties he paid, expenses and income from them. Pryor could easily show us his receipts -- how much he got from the sale of slaves (yes, he did sell slaves), but Pryor is very very careful to say things in a way that does not alarm or paint a cruel picture of Lee.
Historians were well aware of the two trunks kept by the family - and most assumed the papers would just show more of what we are told -- how sweet Lee was, how he was against slavery, how his slaves loved him, or that he freed the slaves.
Not so much.
Pryor defends Lee- - she is not out to trash him, as you will see. That actually makes her more credible, because even though she exposes his tortures, sexual letters, and cruelties carefully, no one can say she want to do a "tell all" book.
For decades, ,historians were well aware of the two trunks kept by the family - and most assumed those papers would just show more of what we are told: how sweet Lee was, how religious, how he was against slavery, how his slaves loved him, how he freed the slaves.
Not so much. Those things were were told about again and again, simply were not in his personal papers.
What was in his papers -- his handwritten bounties for 14 year old girls, his references to whipping slaves, including younger female slaves, and his hatred of slaves. Lee felt contempt for his slaves, in fact, he was bitter that his slaves did not appreciate him.
Yet Lee sold children, had women whipped, and even taunted slaves before he had them whipped. He was clueless as to why his slaves would hate him- which they did.
_________________________________________________
Lee's family did not release the actual slave ledgers, nor his personal and sexually explicit letters. But they did let one person out side the family read them. She is Elizabeth Pryor, and she adored Lee. That's why the family and Virginia Historical society picked her, presumably.
__________________________________________________
You probably heard Robert E Lee was "anti slavery" and "freed his wife's slaves before the Civil War."
We were told Lee was a "super Christian" who was "the bravest soldier, but far more, the best Christian". Serious and prize winning "historian" Douglass Southall Freeman said Lee "now sits at the right hand of Christ, his Lord".
Lee's real mission in life, "historians" said, was to "bring young men to know the Lord". Other "historians" told us Lee would dismount, with all his officers, and say long silent prayers as bombs exploded around them.
Lee saved babies from burning building, prayed with black woman when all other whites shunned her, and was "violently" opposed to slavery. He only fought for the South, because he "would not raise his sword against his native state".
Nothing -- nothing-- I repeat -- nothing was too goofy to praise Lee about. No one said otherwise either. Until now. There was never a "tell all" book about Lee. Quit the opposite, biographies seemed to compete with one another to praise him more.
All based on the same myth.
_____________________________________________
I wonder what Elizabeth Pryor thought the first time she held them. Slave ledgers? Lee? Dozens of them. One for each month he managed the slaves.
She found horrors: rapes, tortures, sale of children, bounties, whippings, cruelty uncommon even for slave masters. She writes, there were horrors. She is careful how she writes it, as you will see. She mentions that rape was "common". And admits someone "white" was fathering the slaves at Arlington.
At one point, Pryor tries to pass these mixed race children as the product of "dalliances" -- which implies flirting playful behavior.
But another place, Pryor writes it was rape. She says "coercion was used in those circumstances", Coercion was used? Cute.
It was RAPE. And everyone knew it. A woman knew better than to resist -- the punishment for putting your hands on a slave owner in anger, was death. Not whipping DEATH.
Pryor is careful to say, however, that "there is no evidence" Lee fathered his own slaves. But someone did -- someone white did father Lee's slaves. Pryor implies, Lee had to know that person. Of course he knew. Everyone knew someone white fathered many of the slaves.
In fact, Pryor cryptically admits letters from "Arlington women" showed disgust that slave girls were giving birth to the children of white men. Since these were Lee's letters, what Pryor leaves out, is the likelihood that "Arlington women" -- his own daughters perhaps -- wrote to him about this "disgusting" ongoing occurrence.
Pryor could have shown us who wrote that, and revealed exactly what she wrote-- to Lee or whoever it was. Pryor avoids being candid, in all such situations.
Since we are told Lee was honorable brave and "pure" (Freeman told us Lee was the "most" pure), and that was not true, what would stop Lee from doing what others did -- at Arlington? He would have girls whipped. He would scream at them while they were whipped. He would write sexually explicit letters about his sexual habits, seriously, what would stop such a man from doing what many other slave owners did -- and what someone white was doing at Arlington?
No black woman could refuse a sexual request, by the way. Pryor relates that it was common for white men to "visit" the slave cabins at night, and take any slave woman they felt like. IF a male slave tried to interfere, he was whipped.
So the males would actually sleep in a different cabin -- because more than one male slave had tried to stop the white man from raping his daughter, his wife, his girlfriend, and that did not work well. The price for putting your hand on a white man in anger, for a slave, was death.
__________________________________________________________________
So why not put those ledgers -- or even a page -- or even the cover -- in the book? Well, her job was not to trash Lee, that's why.
But what she shows, for example, is a lovely letter Lee wrote about some of his relatives, and his drawing of a pile driver.
Had she put a picture of Lee's record of whippings, tortures, and bounties, assuming the Lee family let her, it would probably have caused traffic accidents, if not riots. Riots by some to hang Pryor from the nearest Lee memorial, or riots by others to remove Lee's name from the schools, where girls that age go to school.
_____________________________________________________
Seriously - which would give you a better understanding of Lee? A picture of any page of his slave ledgers, or a drawing of well rigging? She gives us the pile driver.
_____________________________________________________
TWO BOOKS IN ONE,
Pryor writes two books in one. The overall narrative is flattering, as all Lee biographies are. You could, if you are so disposed, read the entire book and, as one reviewer said, "I realize now Lee was more complex than I thought"
Pryor could have shown Lee in a far more cruel light, but that was not her goal. She was chosen by the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, and she did not write in a way to insult them. Still, she inserted facts, carefully, that no biographer dared, before.
Well, if complex meant he had slave girls whipped while he screamed at them, sold children as punishment to the mother, got rich on slaves, and insisted God intended slaves to feel pain, because "pain is necessary for their instruction", then yes, Lee is a tad complex.
If you never heard of Lee before, and someone told you about a Virginia slave owner who was obsessed with slave girls, owned more light skinned girls than anyone else in US history, had bounty hunters search, for months, for specific girls he wanted, and then personally attended their tortures, while he screamed at them, and defended the pain he inflicted by saying God ordained and wanted it, would you think this guy was "complex"?
Or a cruel bastard?
Guess what -- according to Lee's own papers, as reported by Ms Pryor, Lee's slaves said he was "the worst man we ever saw".
But if you like to say complex, this is America.
Pryor was given the papers inside the trunks, along with some 10,000 letters too and from Robert E Lee. Short of having a film crew follow Lee around the slave barns, his slave ledgers, and letters about the slaves, give a bird-eye view of what Lee did, say, and saw in the slave barns.
___________________________________________________
lave ledgers show horrible things-- whippings, bounties, sale of children. So it's no surprise that Lee's slave ledgers have a few "embarrassing" entries.
Lee's words are even more ominous when paired with his actions of having slaves whipped, and incredibly, his use of other tortures -- specifically salt brine poured on the woman or man after a whipping, an almost unbelievably painful torture. Witnesses reported Lee did it for added punishment.
____________________________________________________
________________________________________________
Utter nonsense. Those assertions were always baseless -- myths repeated endlessly. Myths that were turned into "facts" by repetition.
But if Lee's own handwritten slave ledgers and thousands of personal letters mean anything, Lee not only defended slavery as God's will, he went further -- pain was necessary to "instruct" slaves. Even young female slaves should be whipped. And Lee paid extra to have them "instructed".
But not just whipping, stunningly, Lee had other tortures applied AFTER whipping, according to witnesses. Newspapers before the Civil War -- several newspapers - reported the torture of slave girls at Arlington. Stunningly, those tortures, long dismissed as so unlike what we know about Lee that they could not be true, are actually confirmed, by none other, than Robert E Lee himself, in his slave ledgers.
We can't be sure he yelled "Hit her harder" (Lay it on) over and over, all through her torture, as reports said. But as to the whipping, the payments to bounty hunters on that day, and the names and places described -- Lee's slave ledgers show inescapable validation that slave girls were whipped and Lee ordered it.
Your history teacher didn't tell you, because only recently has anyone been allowed to see the ledgers or sexually explicit letters.
Yes-- Robert E Lee.
Elizabeth Pryor -- above -- is the first person in 150 years outside the Lee family allowed to see the actual slave ledgers written by Robert E Lee. She was given access to the ledgers, and about 10,000 personal letters to and from Lee, kept by the family.
Make no mistake -- she is not out to trash her hero, Lee. In fact, just the opposite. She worked under the nose of the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, which exists, basically, to flatter Lee. She writes very very carefully, sprinkling the ugly truths like MSG in a Chinese buffet. SPreading it out, a bit here, a bit there, camouflaged almost among flattering narrative of Lee.
Pryor is the author of the book "Reading the Man," her subtitle, "A Portrait of Robert E Lee Trough His Private Papers."
Pryor adores Lee, and the word "portrait" is apt. She tries to paint a lovely picture of Lee, but the paint she has to work with makes that difficult.
In Lee's "private papers" are reports of torture, escapes, hate, bounties, even rape. Make no mistake -- she is on Lee's "side". She defends and excuses the torture of slaves (and it was torture, the worst kind) as "due to Lee's poor cross cultural communication skills".
_________________________________________________
But no one else has ever even admitted he has slaves tortured. In fact, biographies of Lee have shown Lee as freeing slaves, kind to slaves, or anything else they thought sounded noble. They had no idea Lee's slave ledgers and personal letters would show otherwise.
Lee's treatment of slaves was not less brutal than others of his station, but more brutal. His upbringing, contrary to what you have been told, was of extreme brutality to slaves. His father had a slave girl hung, for knocking down a white man. No one even bothered to record why she knocked him down. Lee's father had her hung,. SHe was almost ready to give birth, and he refused pleas for her to deliver her baby first. Both mother and child were killed.
Lee was not a vile as his father, but the myths surrounding them both is a testament to the power of myth.
It's proper to call it torture, as you will see, because Lee went beyond the horrible whip. He had slaves whipped, but he also used other physical tortures, and even taunted the slave as they were whipped.
Lee also used psychological terror - again an accurate word - because Lee would separate mothers from their children as punishment. Once Lee took over control of the slave girls at Arlington, all hell broke loose. Slaves who had been relatively submissive at Arlington started to escape - en masse -- and Lee responded with brutal and personal and extreme punishment.
________________________________________________
Historians knew of the existence of two trunks (see above) filled with Lee's personal papers, but no one was allowed to see them. Pryor, who adores Lee, was allowed to actually study them, for months. She could have no earthly idea she would find evidence of tortures, rapes, white slaves, and sexually explicit letters in Lee's own handwriting.
Yet Pryor's goal is not to trash Lee. In fact, her goal is to praise Lee. She is very very -- very -- careful how she tells us of the tortures, rapes, etc. She is clearly on Lee's side -- for example, she claims Lee's habit of whipping slaves (he had them whipped) was just a result of his "poor cross cultural communication skills"
She even claims Lee "had every right" to whip slaves, because, according to her, Virginia Law required escaped slaves be whipped.
(Virginia law required no such thing).
Even if Virginia law required such tortures -- no law required Lee to sell children as punishment, which he did, no law required Lee scream at slave girls as he had them whipped, which he also did.
Pryor does her best to gloss over the horrors -- to minimize and excuse. But she does what no one else dared do -- she told the truth, as much as she dared, about a cruel man.
Essentially Pryor's reports of Lee's papers (she is not allowed to show the actual papers) undermine everything we were told about Lee, and not just about his cruelty to slave girls. For example, she reports Lee ordered in own sharpshooters to kill his own soldiers who ran during battle. That's a Stalin technique. That's a Hitler technique. Pryor reports it, carefully.
________________________________________________
See the little girl in the picture above, with the black slave? Actually, both she and the black man are Lee's slaves.
Lee owned the man, and the little girl. Bet you didn't know Lee owned white looking slaves.
In fact, as Pryor shows, over half -- OVER HALF -- of Lee's slaves were mulatto. Lee apparently owned, by far, the highest number of mulatto slave women, and light skinned women, in US history. Who would have imagined such a thing?
Pryor, as she does with all surprising facts, from tortures, rapes, and white looking slave girls, says it very carefully. She does not show us the actual slave ledgers no Lee's personal letters, she is painting a "portrait" of Lee -- that's the subtitle of the book -- that flatters Lee as much as possible.
But she mentions things in a curious way -- she barely mentions the light skinned girl, you could easily think she was perhaps talking about other slave owners. No, she was talking about Lee, and slave girls at Arlington. Did she put the picture of the light skinned slave child as a way to make it clear, when her words were cleverly ambiguous?
Only Pryor knows. Another curious thing -- she shows George Mason's description of "SOuthern Gentlemen" as essentially sociopaths who fake religion and manners, but are as brutal and cruel as anyone in history. George Mason was a founding father, and knew Lee's father. Why put Mason's opinion about the poisoned mind, cruelty, and fakery of Southern "Gentleman"?
Was she trying to say something about Lee, that she did not want to say herself?
So very likely, Pryor saw what he did with the girls. Why doesn't she tell us? Maybe like so much of her book, she is very careful how she reveals the horrors. We don't know.
We don't know how much he got for her, did he sell her mother too?
Pryor carefully states "Lee separated every family but one". Family, of course, did not include the father -- in fact, as you will see, the father was often a white man. So when Pryor writes that Lee "separated" families, she is using a euphemism for he separated the mothers from their children. She also "casually" mentions that Lee used separation as discipline. Meaning, in blunt terms, Lee separated the mothers from children as punishment or intimidation.
Pryor is horrified -- and she said so -- to learn that as time went on, whites were enslaving whites.
She meant -- at Arlington. Whites were enslaving other whites -- at Arlington.
And that means Lee enslaved whites. She had his slave ledgers, his letters - and she had the letters of women at Arlington. When she says "Whites were enslaving other whites" it's her way of saying Lee enslaved whites -- without infuriating the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, who gave her access to the papers.
While Ms Pryor does her best to keep Lee's halo on his head -- the facts she relates,such as his torture (yes, torture) of slave girls, and his habit of writing sexually explicit letters to various women show something quite different:
LEE'S PREFERED TORTURE
If you replace the euphemisms, her work is stunning.
For example, she mentions only deep in the book, buried in a paragraph far into a chapter, that Lee's "preferred" method of discipline was the whip. Think about that! Earlier she showed reports of Lee screaming at a girl as he had her whipped -- which she said "were undoubtedly predicated on actual events".
Later she mentions Lee's "preference" for "discipline" was whipping. Is she telling us, in a polite as way as possible?
She did not dream this up, she saw hundreds of his pages of ledgers and personal letters. Something he wrote himself had to give her that impression, that whipping was his preference.
'
He had other means of torture -- and it was torture. Let's not call it discipline, it involved tying the girl up, whipping her until Lee was satisfied, and THEN on top of that, pouring salt brine on the girls back.
________________________________________________
But Lee's father had a girl her age, about, hung. So compare Lee to his father, and from what we know, Lee never hung a slave girl. What Lee did to the 5,000 slave men he ruled over to dig the massive earth works (see below) we have no records for. If Lee wrote records for those slave tortures, we don't know of them.
But if Lee had slave girls whipped in peace time, and screamed at them during their torture, for his own ego, what would he not do to slave men, during war time, when his life depending on their working as fast as possible to dig the earthworks around Richmond?
_____________________________________________
Slave rape, according to Pryor herself, was common by 1861, almost an open secret, even the wives knew. Famed Civil War diarist Mary Chestnut knew the men were raping slave girls.
The women at Arlington, Pryor writes, were "disgusted" with the birth of white looking children by slave girls. How would Pryor know that amazing fact?
Do you believe Lee and all his officers dismounted during battle to stand silent and pray as bombs exploded around them? That's actually typical of the goofy exaggerations or outright falsehoods written for 100 years in Lee "biographies".
In fact, even supposed "scholarly" biographies" repeated or somehow exaggerated even the most absurd claims, about Lee's honor, his private life, and his treatment of slaves.
As Alan Nolan said 15 years ago, we should "start over" with Lee, because the "scholarship" about him was, to be kind, suspect.
Nolan wrote we should start over BEFORE Ms Pryor was allowed to see his slave ledgers. He could have no idea how right he was.
No story was too goofy or too false. Lee freed his slaves (no, he did not) Lee's slaves loved him (no, they did not). Lee was kind to slaves (no, he had them tortured).
How do we finally know? Because Lee kept records -- slave ledgers. And Lee wrote letters -- thousands of them.
Lee's family kept two trunks full of slave ledgers and personal letters, and after 150 years, they let one person outside the family see them. While Ms Pryor does her best to keep Lee's halo on his head -- the facts she relates,such as his torture (yes, torture) of slave girls, and his habit of writing sexually explicit letters to various women show something quite different:
Lee's father, for example, had a black girl hung -- she was pregnant and about to give birth, but Lee refused to let her give birth first, he had her hung on the spot. What did she do?
She knocked over a white man. No one even bothered to record WHY she knocked over the white man, and it did not matter. She touched a white person in anger, and she was hung.
Slave owners also had slave men burned to death who used violence to fight back. If you just ran away -- as Robert E Lee's slaves did often -- you were whipped. But if you fought back, you could be burned to death.
Learn about Lee's real childhood - not the nonsense fed to us in US history books -- and his slave ledgers make sense.....
_________________________________
_________________
Clearly, Ms Pryor takes Lee's side. She claims Lee "had every right" to capture and punish his slaves, including the 14 year old girl. She does not say it on that page, but in another part of the book she describes the torture that girl had to endure at Lee's orders.
And she was not the only one. In yet another page, she tells us that whipping was Lee's "prefered" method of discipline. If you flip back and forth between those pages, and take things as a whole, you see Lee actually used extreme tortures -- not just whipping which was vile enough. Lee had salt brine poured on the backs of girls after their whipping -- according to witness, to inflict more pain.
_______________________________________________
PAIN IS NECESSARY FOR THEIR INSTRUCTION.
Lee wrote that God "knew and intended" that slaves feel "painful discipline." Slave "must endure" pain he wrote.
As you will see, Lee was brought up to think so -- his father had a pregnant slave girl hung for knocking down a white man. In fact, Confederate leaders such as Alexander Stephens insisted slavery was a punishment by GOD on slaves, and white men were entrusted to inflict that punishment. Oh, so no one told you about Lee's believe in pain for slaves?
No one told you about Confederate leaders often repeated bragging that slavery was instituted by GOD to punish the black race?
Well, learn Southern documents about it. The Death of The Southern God of Slavery -- shhhhh. Lee was not a radical, his belief -- if you call it a belief -- was mainstream for slave owners. WHen you have slaves, sell children, whip women, you must -- must - do whatever mental gymnastics necessary to justify your actions somehow. The "God of slavery" was very much a real mental presence in the minds of slave owners, even though our history books like to gloss over that.
__________________________________________________
Lee, like all slave masters, had to justify slavery in his own head -- and because his wife owned most of the slaves, Lee had to explain things to her.
Pain is "necessary for their instruction" Lee wrote to his wife. Far from being against slavery, Lee claimed slavery is a "religious liberty" and wrote abolitionist are "trying to destroy the American Church".
Lee hated abolitionists -- blamed them for slaves being "dissatisfied".
Abolitionists create ill will in the slave -- they were at fault. Slaves were "better off" as slaves, and it was God's plan. It is not up to us, Lee told us wife, to question God's plan for slavery. We must obey God. Our only recourse is to "pray" for an end to slavery. Only God can end slavery, it is evil for man to interfere in that timeline.
Lee suggested 2000 years might be necessary to "instruct" the slaves to be "civilized",
Abolitionist "are on an evil course" against God, Lee wrote.
________________________________________________
Pryor also overlooks such amazing facts that Lee, early in the Civil War, was called "King of Spades" by Richmond newspapers, because he was in charge of thousands of slaves to build the earthworks around Richmond and Petersburg, which would prolong the war and protect the huge iron works there. Tredegar Iron Works.
Lee "scholars" have slyly attributed the nickname, "King of Spades" as a term of joyful merriment by his men, for making them dig earth works! Nonsense, it was a term used in newspapers at the time, in the articles about the slave built massive earth works.
_____________________________________________
____________________________________________
PRYOR CLAIMS LEE'S WHIPPING
- caused by Lee's "Poor cross cultural communication skills."
__________________________________________________
People who only hear of the book, claim Pryor was out to trash Lee-- utter nonsense. She bends over backwards on every page, every paragraph, to excuse, minimize, explain way, or minimize the horrors.
So why would Pryor say the whipping post was "silent reminder" on one page, but on others mention the screaming? She does such verbal misdirections often --she knew the whipping post was no silent reminder, because she later tells of the brutal whippings there. So why say "silent reminder" ? Because she is writing a positive narrative, not a tell all.
|
| The largest bas relief sculpture on earth, honors a man who had slave girls whipped and sold. |
 |
| Pryor excuses Lee's whipping of slave girls as due to "his failure to communicate". No, we aren't kidding. |
In another page, equally as bizarre she claims Lee's slaves "did not fully agree with Lee's theory of labor management." Is she writing for a comedy journal? They did not "fully agree" with his "theory" of labor management?
_____________________________________________
Weren't we all told Lee hated slavery? Wasn't he religious, devout, kind, and honorable? That was the story anyway, and no one bothered to say otherwise. SO how can Pryor report, euphamistically or otherwise, about tortures, rapes, salt brine, whipping post, huge bounties for 14 year old girls, ect?
How do we know? Because Lee wrote it all down -- prices, names, dates.
 |
| Paper Weight sold at Museum of Confederacy. |
How do we know? Because Lee wrote it all down -- prices, names, dates.
Lee freed all his slaves, and they loved him so much they stayed, is another report. (Wrong).
Lee was so religious, he got off his horse during battle, and had all his officers do the same, as bombs exploded around them, in silent prayer. A Southern best seller, written 20 years after Lee's death, said Lee overheard a prayer during battle -- and did this....
Maybe that has something to do with fact, Lee own very light skinned slave girls. See the girl in the picture above? She is one of 50 or so mulatto slaves -- not dark skinned. In fact, Lee had slave girls that he wrote could pass for white.
_____________________________________________
SURPRISING SENTENCES
Of the many surprising sentences in Pryor's otherwise flattering book about Lee, maybe the most shocking is that Lee's preference for discipline was the whip (he had other ways to cause them pain too), and that "increasingly, whites were enslaving other whites".
Lee wrote many sentences -- 10,000 letters, and monthly slave ledgers. Pryor won't let us actually see but a minuscule percentage of what he wrote. Why? When she writes that Lee's "preference" for discipline was the whip, no doubt she read dozens of his letters about that exact topic. Why not let us see those?
___________________________________________
LEE'S KNOWN PARTIAL LETTER
For about 80 years the South has insisted Lee "hated" slavery because of one sentence in a letter to his wife. But that part of the Lee was not even Lee's own words, he copied that part word for word from a book available to him at the time, of Daniel Webster's letters. For a wordsmith like Lee to deliberately plagarize someone else's words is surprising.
But read the FULL letter -- the part that is NOT plagiarized, is Lee's own words. And they are the most amazing defenses of slavery -- and the pain inflicted on slaves -- ever written
God "knew and intended" slaves "must endure painful discipline". You often heard slave masters claim slavery was ordained-- Lee went on and on about the PAIN slaves must endure.
Apparently Lee is trying to pacify his wife on his torture (and it was torture) of slaves, as we know his own slave ledgers. God knew and intended slaves endure pain -- he wrote they "must endure" it, and "pain is necessary for their instruction."
Pain was ordained by God -- not just slavery, is Lee's basic narrative to his wife. Slaves MUST endure it, pain is necessary. We, mankind, can not question God's wisdom. The slaves are better off here has slaves, than free in Africa, though Lee was never in Africa, and by that logic, and nation that wanted to take Lee women as slaves, should be able to, if they say they are better off as slaves.
Lee used the South's ever present blame game of blaming the "abolitionist" who "dissatisfy" slaves. Never mind that the slaves never met an abolitionist, and it was against the law for WHITES to own anti-slavery books or pamphlets, let alone blacks. In the South, it was a crime even for preachers to preach anything other than slaves owed Godly obedience to their master.
Man, Lee wrote, can only "pray" for an end to slavery, perhaps in 2000 years, he suggests. We must leave the timing of that up to the Lord. Men who try to end slavery against God's time are on an "evil course". In another letter he tells her Abolitionist are "trying to destroy the American Church".
Lee tries to convince his wife (and apparently he does convince her) that all the problems with rebellious slaves, run away slaves, are from the abolitionist. As Jeff Davis said, "The evil serpent of the abolitionist have whispered the lie of freedom in the ear of the slave".
We could know much more if Pryor and the Lee family actually showed the 10,000 letters and slave ledgers. We only get a very edited, and very "cleaned up" view -- but Pryor reveals stunning things even so.
_______________________________________________
Who knew Lee wrote dirty letters? Yes, he did. Or as Pryor tactfully calls it - sexually suggestive. Lee reminded various women of his sexual tricks, and bragged about his son's sexual ability. That's all Pryor mentions, but it had to be much more. She puts things, as you will see, very carefully.
She "desensationalizes" everything. Lee did not torture slaves, he "disciplined" them. And the way Pryor writes,
Although she tries to keep the "Lee Myth" alive, essentially she shows that, at least on slavery, Lee is nothing at all like the contrived and deliberately fraudulent myth about him.
In fact, Lee was remarkably cruel, even for slave masters.
 |
| NOT LEE -- Lee hired out the whippings. He said pain was "necessary for their instruction" ______________________________________________________ |
No one reported anything like what Pryor does -- she uses his own slave ledgers and letters. More, she tries to minimize, explain away, or excuse Lee's tortures.
She claims Lee was "required" to have slaves whipped who tried to escape -- not true. But certainly he was no "required" to spend huge bounties for the girls especially, nor was he required to taunt them before their whipping, and scream at them during the whipping, as the newspaper reports from before the Civil War showed.
Yes -- you heard right.
________________________________________________
WHY LEE'S WHIPPING MADE THE NEWSPAPER
Newspapers BEFORE the Civil War reported on the whippings at Arlington, not because whipping was rare -- it was common for escaped slaves -- but because the regular overseer refused to whip the girl. That was news. An overseer (a black man, usually a slave) just told Lee -- NO.
The overseer whipped the other slaves Lee caught, but refused to whip her, because she was too young, said a witness. That was stunning. An overseer saying no. We don't know if Lee had him whipped, in retaliation, or whatever happened to him.
Lee found someone else to whip the girl, and screamed at her during her torture. THATS why it made the papers. He yelled all through her torture "Hit her harder, hit her harder" -- or in the vernacular of slave masters and whips "Lay it on, Lay it on".
Lee was excited. He had paid 342 dollars for her capture, and he wanted his money's worth, apparently.
____________________________________________
How do we know those newspaper reports were true? That's the amazing part.
Lee's slave ledgers show many of the names, dates, and other particulars mentioned in the newspapers. Lee wrote things down which verify those reports. As Pryor says, the whipping and torture of the girl was "unquestionably" predicated on facts Lee wrote down.
Strange indeed if reports at that time -- by people who would never see Lee's slave ledgers -- had details that matched up substantially.
___________________________________________
Why did Lee offer so much more money for the capture of the girl?
Could the young girls pick more cotton? Actually, Lee didn't grow cotton. Lee grew slaves -- his product was not food or cotton, it was SLAVES and slave labor.
How do you think Lee made money? He made it by renting or selling slaves. When "scholars" talk about Lee "managing" Arlington, they hope you don't realize, that meant maxamizing his profit from the sale and or rental of slaves.
And Lee did both -- he sold slaves and he rented them. Pryor is very careful how she addresses that, and the other horrors.
_______________________________________________
(under construction)
____________________________________________
Why would Lee pay 30 times as much bounty for the capture and discipline (whipping) of a 14 year old girl, than for an adult male slave?
To those who though Lee did not even own slaves (or any other factual nonsense), this might be a surprise. But you only know what you are told; what we have been told, even by "experts" about Lee was largely myth.
___________________________________________________
LEE -- THE "WORST" MAN WE EVER SAW?
Pryor shows that contrary to the myth, Lee's slaves hated him. With reason. She quotes slaves as saying Lee was "the meanest man we ever saw".
Was Pryor lying? Actually she is trying very very hard to excuse minimize or gloss over the horrors she found, as you will see. Ironically her zeal to excuse Lee, adds credibility when she shows facts, even though her facts or often revealed in euphemism or Orwellian double talk.
________________________________________________
Meanest? Yes. Lee had slave girls whipped, sold or rented out children, and insisted God "intended and knew" slaves should feel pain -- physical pain. "Pain," Lee wrote, "is necessary for their instruction." And he seemed a very eager instructor.
Actually, dozens of slaves tried to escape -- perhaps more than 60, Pryor wont's say, though she surely could give a number. Lee's slave account books were no doubt as detailed as his other financial matters. Pryor tactfully says Lee had "epidemics" of escaped slaves. Like everything cruel or contrary to Lee myth, Pryor is vague at best, and Orwellian, at worst, but she does say things no one ever dared say.
_________________________________________________
____________________________________________
COULD 14 YEAR OLD GIRLS PICK 34 TIMES AS MUCH COTTON?
To those who though Lee did not even own slaves (or any other factual nonsense), this might be a surprise. But you only know what you are told; what we have been told, even by "experts" about Lee was largely myth.
___________________________________________________
LEE -- THE "WORST" MAN WE EVER SAW?
Pryor shows that contrary to the myth, Lee's slaves hated him. With reason. She quotes slaves as saying Lee was "the meanest man we ever saw".
Was Pryor lying? Actually she is trying very very hard to excuse minimize or gloss over the horrors she found, as you will see. Ironically her zeal to excuse Lee, adds credibility when she shows facts, even though her facts or often revealed in euphemism or Orwellian double talk.
________________________________________________
Meanest? Yes. Lee had slave girls whipped, sold or rented out children, and insisted God "intended and knew" slaves should feel pain -- physical pain. "Pain," Lee wrote, "is necessary for their instruction." And he seemed a very eager instructor.
Actually, dozens of slaves tried to escape -- perhaps more than 60, Pryor wont's say, though she surely could give a number. Lee's slave account books were no doubt as detailed as his other financial matters. Pryor tactfully says Lee had "epidemics" of escaped slaves. Like everything cruel or contrary to Lee myth, Pryor is vague at best, and Orwellian, at worst, but she does say things no one ever dared say.
_________________________________________________
So why did Lee give so much extra for girls? Young girls?
Who knows? IF we could see the actual letters, or how Lee phrased the bounties, or see ads he might have placed, we would know much more about his reasons. But Pryor refuses to use the term "slave ledgers" -- just calling them monthly "account books". Her job is not to trash Lee -- her job is to keep the halo upon his combed over head (Lee had a comb over, he was bald, said people who knew him well).
Pryor adores Lee -- make no mistake.
Even when she admits things like his torture of slave girls (it was torture) she tries to minimize it or explain it away. She admits Lee had slaves whipped, but only because "his poor cross cultural communication skills" to slaves.
Poor cross cultural communication skills? That's why he had slave's whipped? If Pryor were not talking about the torture of young teenage girls, it might be funny. Elsewhere, using Orwellian double talk, she wrote "The slaves did not fully agree with Lee's theory of labor management". You can't make this up! Lee's theory of labor "management"?
But Lee had "nothing but contempt" for slaves, he wished slave children would "die quickly" when they got sick.
Lee sold or rented out mothers or children, forever separating the child from the mother. Lee had no apparent feeling whatsoever for the mothers or children, he would separate them for his financial benefit, and that caused a violent and ongoing struggle -- slaves would escape, probably 50 or 60 tried -- even though it meant certain whipping and other tortures.
Lee was apparently obsessed with getting certain girls back. Why? Pryor doesn't say -- she probably knows, it was likely in his letters or bounty lists.
So if you read her book -- and we suggest you do -- remember that. Every page, every paragraph, she is excusing, minimizing, and doing her best to gloss over the horrors she found in his slave ledgers and letters. Still -- the admits them, in Orwellian double talk at times, in euphamism, at other times, but she does what no one else dared do- - show what a cruel, even sadistic, man Lee really was.
Elizabeth Pryor was allowed to study Lee's personal papers, kept in trunks by the Lee family, all these years.
Lee's slave ledgers still exists -- ironically his papers were saved by Union Army and returned to his family.
We know of no other Confederate leader whose slave ledgers survived -- but Lee's family kept them tucked away for 150 years.
Even now, they only let one person study them (you will soon find out why), and they had to pick that person very very carefully.
Elizabeth Pryor, a Lee devotee, and diplomat, studied 10,000 Lee letters -- and the slave ledgers. She apparently was not allowed to show us any, and how she reveals the facts in them, well, they chose her because she is a diplomat. She is very careful how she reveals anything.
Elizabeth Pryor only mentions such facts as payments for slave girls very carefully, in fact, she gets the math wrong, she claims Lee paid "six times" the bounty for one girl. Actually he paid 30 times as much for one specific girl. Why?
Who knows? IF we could see the actual letters, or how Lee phrased the bounties, or see ads he might have placed, we would know much more about his reasons. But Pryor refuses to use the term "slave ledgers" -- just calling them monthly "account books". Her job is not to trash Lee -- her job is to keep the halo upon his combed over head (Lee had a comb over, he was bald, said people who knew him well).
Pryor adores Lee -- make no mistake.
Even when she admits things like his torture of slave girls (it was torture) she tries to minimize it or explain it away. She admits Lee had slaves whipped, but only because "his poor cross cultural communication skills" to slaves.
Poor cross cultural communication skills? That's why he had slave's whipped? If Pryor were not talking about the torture of young teenage girls, it might be funny. Elsewhere, using Orwellian double talk, she wrote "The slaves did not fully agree with Lee's theory of labor management". You can't make this up! Lee's theory of labor "management"?
But Lee had "nothing but contempt" for slaves, he wished slave children would "die quickly" when they got sick.
Lee sold or rented out mothers or children, forever separating the child from the mother. Lee had no apparent feeling whatsoever for the mothers or children, he would separate them for his financial benefit, and that caused a violent and ongoing struggle -- slaves would escape, probably 50 or 60 tried -- even though it meant certain whipping and other tortures.
Lee was apparently obsessed with getting certain girls back. Why? Pryor doesn't say -- she probably knows, it was likely in his letters or bounty lists.
So if you read her book -- and we suggest you do -- remember that. Every page, every paragraph, she is excusing, minimizing, and doing her best to gloss over the horrors she found in his slave ledgers and letters. Still -- the admits them, in Orwellian double talk at times, in euphamism, at other times, but she does what no one else dared do- - show what a cruel, even sadistic, man Lee really was.
Elizabeth Pryor was allowed to study Lee's personal papers, kept in trunks by the Lee family, all these years.
Lee's slave ledgers still exists -- ironically his papers were saved by Union Army and returned to his family.
We know of no other Confederate leader whose slave ledgers survived -- but Lee's family kept them tucked away for 150 years.
Even now, they only let one person study them (you will soon find out why), and they had to pick that person very very carefully.
Elizabeth Pryor only mentions such facts as payments for slave girls very carefully, in fact, she gets the math wrong, she claims Lee paid "six times" the bounty for one girl. Actually he paid 30 times as much for one specific girl. Why?
If we could see his actual slave ledgers, and the 10,000 personal letters Pryor said the family kept, maybe Lee said it bluntly and candidly at one point -- perhaps in a letter to bounty hunters. Pryor only shows us what she wants to, and that, carefully.
One thing for sure -- though Pryor adores Lee and tries to keep the halo upon his head, Lee the person (especially his treatment of slaves) was drastically different than the myth about him.
ELIZABETH PRYOR SEES LEE'S SLAVE LEDGERS
If Elizabeth Pryor could tell Robert E Lee one thing -- it might be this: "Please, General, if you are going to whip girls and sell children, don't write it down in your slave ledgers."
| Burn your letters and slave ledgers. ONLY KNOW WHAT WE ARE TOLD Make no mistake -- Pryor adores Lee, and was chosen by the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society (which exists, essentially, to praise Lee). If anything, Pryor is Lee's able and willing defense attorney, for what she, and she only, found in his slave ledgers and letters. For 80 years scholars have known about two trunks of "Lee papers" kept locked away by the Lee family -- finally,150 years after Lee last wrote in them -- someone outside the family was allowed to read Lee's slave ledgers and personal letters. Pryor excuses, minimizes, and uses euphemisms to cover up the horrors she found -- she called them horrors. She even resorts to bizarre Orwellian double talk ("The slaves did not fully appreciate Lee's theory of labor management ). But she does what no one else dared do -- she showed the stunning cruelties Lee regularly inflicted upon his slaves, including tortures (whips and other tortures) rapes at Arlington, Lee's dirty letters to various women, and much more. For example, Lee ordered his own sharpshooters to shoot his own soldiers, if they ran during battle. Those are the kinds of thing Pryor, writing carefully, gets in. But she gets it in very carefully, like sprinkling MSG around a Chinese Buffet.  Pryor claimed Lee "had every right" to capture and discipline escaped slaves. She even carefully admits whipping was Lee's "preferred" method of "instruction". Pryor he says in her own editorial voice that discipline (whipping) applied early can prevent more painful discipline later. So she is not out to trash Lee. She is trying very hard on every page to please the Lee family and Virginia Historical Society, who picked her personally to see the slave ledgers and letters -- no one else has, outside the Lee family that we know of -- for 150 years. But she does say Lee used bounty hunters. She does not tell you their methods, she does not write descriptively about the slave dogs and whips. She does not point out that Lee's hunters would chase slaves for months, hounding them even in the North, and capturing not only those escaped slaves, but "others" too, and apparently return the "others" to Lee. Lee "failed to fill out the time consuming paper work" Pryor tells us -- never making it clear the "paperwork" was about the "other" blacks and they might well not have even been Lee's slaves, but he got them anyway. Pryor does not tell us that Lee had his soldiers, during the Civil War, capture freed blacks in the North, have them chained, and then sold as slaves when they were returned South. But when Pryor wants to paint Lee as caring -- she says he donated his used clothing to slaves. And if not burning them was a noble act. She is out to praise Lee -- remember that -- and to minimize his cruelties, as much as she can. According to newspapers before the Civil War, Lee was known for cruelty - no kindness. In one incident, Lee's own overseer refused to whip a slave girl because of her youth, Lee was apparently irate, and found someone else to whip the girl, while he yelled at her during her torture. Such newspaper reports about Lee (remember the reports appeared in various papers BEFORE the Civil War) have long been so dismissed by "Lee scholars" that they never even mentioned them. But Lee's own handwritten entries in his slave ledgers, for the dates mentioned in the paper, and names Lee wrote, and amounts he paid, gave Pryor no choice. She said the reports of that torture (discipline) were "unquestionably based on facts". Did Lee actually scream at a girl while he had her whipped? Lee did not write that down, but the witnesses who said he did, had everything else right, and lined up with what Lee wrote down, himself. ___________________________________________________ Her narrative is quite flattering -- by design. While she tries to praise Lee on every page The most basic fact of history is -- you only know what you are told. Your understanding of history is only as valid as what you have been told. And what we are told about Lee is always wonderful, religious, inspiring and mostly false. He did not write most of the things we are told -- see who did. His upbringing was not what we are told. And his treatment of slaves was more cruel, not less cruel, than anyone has even hinted. And his military "genius" is not as certain as you might think. He is the only person in US history to order his sharpshooters to kill his own soldiers who run during battle. He is also the only person we know of, that ordered his soldiers to capture free civilians, in enemy territory, and have them sold as slaves. ________________________________________________ The biographies of Lee claim Lee was born "of noble birth" and grew more noble. He grew to the most Christian of Christian heroes, because of his lovely family and faith.  "PAIN IS NECESSARY FOR THEIR INSTRUCTION" Is that true? No. Lee's father had a pregnant slave girl hung, for knocking down a white man. No one even bothered to record why she knocked down a white man -- it did not matter. Lee would later have girls that age tied up and whipped, and even had other tortures applied, to make her feel more pain, as if whipping was not painful enough.  LEE wrote to his wife, giving her his excuses for "painful discipline" slaves "must endure". He copied, verbatim, from a book about slavery at the time. His goal was to make his wife accept his discipline of slave girls. But it did not matter -- Lee's father had her hung. This was Lee's upbringing, not the lofty nonsense we are told about. Lee himself would have girls her age whipped, not hung, so he probably thought he was moderate. And Lee defended the "painful discipline" slaves "must endure" as being God's will -- God "new and intended" that slaves feel pain. Pain is "necessary for their instruction". The letter about slave discipline, to his wife, ironically, the South has used for 100 years to prove how Lee was against slavery . Read the full letter -- yes he says slavery is a political and moral evil -- but the rest of the letter justifies it. Lee wrote slaves "must endure" painful discipline, because it's God's plan. That would mean everything to his wife, who like most women of the time, believed whatever their husband told them about God. Pain is necessary for a slaves instruction, Lee told her. It's not our role to question the wisdom of "Divine Providence". Lee told her abolitionist are on an "evil course". If they will just accept slavery and obey, slaves can learn what God wants them to learn. Slaves are better off here, than in African jungles, Lee said. Only God can end slavery, man can not, and man should not even try. The only way to get rid of slavery is if slaves learn their place -- and we can pray for that! When you understand Lee what Lee did to slaves, that letter that supposedly is against slavery, is actually a cruel and manipulative effort by Lee to mollify his very religious wife, to assure her that his "discipline" of slaves, which no doubt she asked him about, was all for God. ________________________________ We are told Robert E Lee was not only the best military commander in US history, but he was "an ever greater Christian". Yes, he fought for the Confederacy, but he never owned any slaves, he simply managed his wife's slaves reluctantly. And he freed them as soon as possible. Douglass Southall Freeman, the "definitive" scholar on Lee, insisted Lee's slaves knew him best, and the fact that they loved Lee, shows what kind of man he was. He also said Lee is "now at the right hand of Christ". Lee's Freeman had the balls to claim Lee's "servants" loved him, when nothing could be further from the truth -- nothing. According to Pryor's book, Lee's papers show his slaves said he was "the worse man we ever saw". They hated and feared him, even his "favorites" tried to escape, which pissed him off to no end. Lee felt he was the one suffering, not slaves. He had no clue that when he sold children, or whipped slave girls, that would horrify the slaves. Lee was clueless. Yes, Freeman was right -- the slaves really did know Lee best. One little problem. Lee's slaves hated him -- Elizabeth Pryor adores Lee, and wrote as flattering as she could about him. She is the only person we know of, outside the Lee family, to see his slave ledgers and 10,000 unpublished letters to and from him -- many about his slaves. She tries valiantly to excuse, minimize and explain away the horrors she found -- tortures, whippings, bounties, sales of children (it's a sale if you send a child or mother away, and you get money for it, no matter what you call it). ____________________________________________ Welcome to the world of Lee's slave ledgers. Pryor wont even call them slave ledgers --- she calls them account books. But they are account books about his slaves -- bounties, rentals, sales, whippings, bounties. Pryor excuses or justifies the whippings -- she is clearly on his side. She claimed Lee was required by law to have slaves whipped who tried to escape- - and over 50 slaves, apparently tried. They were all tortured -- it was torture-- if they were caught. Lee paid 10 dollars for the capture of male slaves, Pryor tells us. But he paid 342 dollars for the capture and "discipline" of a 14 year old girl Lee seemed obsessed about. Why was a 14 year old girl worth 3,400% more than his male slaves? Could she pick 3400% more cotton? Lee seemed to take her escape personally, because he made sure he was there for her return, taunted her before her torture, and screamed at her the entire time she was whipped, What did he scream? "Hit her harder, hit her harder" over and over, the entire time. In the vernacular of slave masters, it was actually "Lay it on, lay it on" Pryor is lying about the Virginia law -- there is no such requirement. But she had to cover for Lee somehow. Still, even Pryor does not claim the law required him to pay far more for her capture, and scream at her during her torture. ____________________________________________ |
Other biographers glorified Lee with religious accolades, but in that one sentence, Freeman ended the game. Christ sits at the right hand of God. And Lee sits at the right hand of Christ.Game over. No one can top that.
Freeman is the source for much of our "knowledge" about Lee. Who dared suggest otherwise? Even the book that questioned some of the "Lee scholarship" seemed to praise Lee for ten pages, before they would suggest in one sentence that reality might be anything different.
______
to be continued
_____________________________________________
