ActRaiserTheReturned said
Robert E Lee was probably a "Master" who treated his slaves like people, according to what I've heard. He was like a decent person working with Satan.

Robert E Lee was probably even one step above that. If I understand correctly, he was actually largely against the causes of the confederacy, he just wanted to defend his homeland from getting hit with cannonballs, even if they were on what he thought was the "wrong" side of the war.

Vilageidiotx said
I don't know too much about his particular story, but you have to watch out for that sort of approach to the subject. Oftentimes, on the larger plantations like that Lee inherited from his wife, the master wasn't very involved with their plantations anyway. It was the guys they hired that did the abuse.

Like many a CEO or the general owner of a large corporation he was most likely far from where things are actually going on, or the office even. And I'd hazard when in town he was probably never physically close enough to his "slaves" to notice them.

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Dinh AaronMk said
Like many a CEO or the general owner of a large corporation he was most likely far from where things are actually going on, or the office even. And I'd hazard when in town he was probably never physically close enough to his "slaves" to notice them.

Well they were definitely slaves -- if anything should be in quotation marks it's "HIS." Dude owned slaves, there's not really a moral upside to that, so let's not step around the issue at all. Lots of people in history owned slaves. Once upon a time, Hammurabi was literally *THE* paragon of morality. We've changed. If we're gonna be objective about historical figures then we need to get past the part where we try to make them 'okay' by modern standards. Lee was kind of a bastard, who did lots of other cool stuff and was otherwise a pretty remarkably awesome dude.

mdk said
Well they were definitely slaves -- if anything should be in quotation marks it's "HIS." Dude owned slaves, there's not really a moral upside to that, so let's not step around the issue at all. Lots of people in history owned slaves. Once upon a time, Hammurabi was literally *THE* paragon of morality. We've changed. If we're gonna be objective about historical figures then we need to get past the part where we try to make them 'okay' by modern standards. Lee was kind of a bastard, who did lots of other cool stuff and was otherwise a pretty remarkably awesome dude.

That was in addition to a response saying that though he owned slaves he probably wasn't anywhere close enough to them to ever feel strongly about releasing them as some posters in this thread have implied. I am adding to what Vilage said: Lee wasn't involved in the process of obtaining or caring for slaves. They were in his name and he allowed it to happen, but he just simply didn't care to change the course of the practice.

If Lee were a state he was closer to being a border state than Georgia or Alabama. He believed in a solid Union like the border states but permitted slavery. Infact, he was probably more ignorant to slavery than not before and during the Civil War. As written by Freeman:

"This [opinion] was the prevailing view among most religious people of Lee's class in the border states. They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races. Lee shared these convictions of his neighbors without having come in contact with the worst evils of African bondage. He spent no considerable time in any state south of Virginia from the day he left Fort Pulaski in 1831 until he went to Texas in 1856. All his reflective years had been passed in the North or in the border states. He had never been among the blacks on a cotton or rice plantation. At Arlington, the servants had been notoriously indolent, their master's master. Lee, in short, was only acquainted with slavery at its best, and he judged it accordingly. At the same time, he was under no illusion regarding the aims of the Abolitionists or the effect of their agitation."

He really made a emmancipation switch in the later days of the war when he basically had no men left and needed an army. Ulysses S. Grant had basically ended up grinding all his men up in his brunt and brash direct attacks on him, grinding both sides up and punishing limited Confederate industry. Lee couldn't keep up with ol' drunk Grant.

mdk said
Well they were definitely slaves -- if anything should be in quotation marks it's "HIS." Dude owned slaves, there's not really a moral upside to that, so let's not step around the issue at all. Lots of people in history owned slaves. Once upon a time, Hammurabi was literally *THE* paragon of morality. We've changed. If we're gonna be objective about historical figures then we need to get past the part where we try to make them 'okay' by modern standards. Lee was kind of a bastard, who did lots of other cool stuff and was otherwise a pretty remarkably awesome dude.

I would disagree with the part about "We've changed". The only thing that's really changed between us and them are resources and what amounts to "20-20 hindsight". Many moral principles we take for granted are probably less obvious than we realize. Slavery, for example.

What I think is a good way to think of it is like this: The people of the past were basically desperate post-apocalyptic survivors/well-intentioned extremists. There simply wasn't the resources for any reliable means of investigation, criminal records, or prisons. And, if one had grown up in an environment where roving bands of marauders could loot and pillage at will, perhaps setting up an authoritarian, imperialistic monarchy might come across as a rational, necessary course of action for the preservation of "civilization".

Protagonist said
What I think is a good way to think of it is like this: The people of the past were basically desperate post-apocalyptic survivors/well-intentioned extremists. There simply wasn't the resources for any reliable means of investigation, criminal records, or prisons. And, if one had grown up in an environment where roving bands of marauders could loot and pillage at will, perhaps setting up an authoritarian, imperialistic monarchy might come across as a rational, necessary course of action for the preservation of "civilization".

I think you're confusing mid 19th-century America with that of Dark Ages Britain, and it'd be best for you to not.

Not even the "Wild West" was as bad as the era of Atilla the Hun. Or Fallout.

Protagonist said
I would disagree with the part about "We've changed". The only thing that's really changed between us and them are resources and what amounts to "20-20 hindsight". Many moral principles we take for granted are probably less obvious than we realize. Slavery, for example.What I think is a good way to think of it is like this: The people of the past were basically desperate post-apocalyptic survivors/well-intentioned extremists. There simply wasn't the resources for any reliable means of investigation, criminal records, or prisons. And, if one had grown up in an environment where roving bands of marauders could loot and pillage at will, perhaps setting up an authoritarian, imperialistic monarchy might come across as a rational, necessary course of action for the preservation of "civilization".

I don't think Blood Meridian is real life.

Just because all you tend to hear about in history are the Richard the Lionhearts, the Julius Ceasars, The Stalins, and Pol Pots, and the Hitlers doesn't make every figure in history a crazed Daesha commander. If anything, those types just leave a bigger mark on history over the people who are very comparable to our time or were important in creating the over all progressive environment of our time. Chrysalorious, Ibn Al-Haytham and other such medieval-classical names are ignored, despite being considerable influential for the development of the future. The scope could be broadened to progressively minded individuals in the science or the social shema.

But just because Elder Scrolls fits the bill of Medieval doesn't make it a representation on what the period was like by the sheer number of bandits dicking around in the countryside. True they existed, we also still have them now. The only thing that's changed over time is the methods by which the arts have changed.

Well, back onto the topic that this thread is actually supposed to be about...

I'm descended from the MacLean clan.

Dinh AaronMk said
I think you're confusing mid 19th-century America with that of Dark Ages Britain, and it'd be best for you to not.Not even the "Wild West" was as bad as the era of Atilla the Hun. Or Fallout.

You are correct, though my statement does apply to 19th century America as well. Only less so.

TheEvanCat said
I don't think Blood Meridian is real life.

DON'T EVER SAY THAT.

Revans Exile said
I'm decided from Adam & Eve.

Im descended from Zeus

Biatch

mdk said
I am descended from Robert E. Lee, so go pick my cotton.

Dont talk to me like that peasant! Im royalty!

mdk said
Well they were definitely slaves -- if anything should be in quotation marks it's "HIS." Dude owned slaves, there's not really a moral upside to that, so let's not step around the issue at all. Lots of people in history owned slaves. Once upon a time, Hammurabi was literally *THE* paragon of morality. We've changed. If we're gonna be objective about historical figures then we need to get past the part where we try to make them 'okay' by modern standards. Lee was kind of a bastard, who did lots of other cool stuff and was otherwise a pretty remarkably awesome dude.

Wait... Hammurabi isnt our moral model anymore? Geuss I need to catch up on the past two thousand years

mdk said
Well they were definitely slaves -- if anything should be in quotation marks it's "HIS." Dude owned slaves, there's not really a moral upside to that, so let's not step around the issue at all. Lots of people in history owned slaves. Once upon a time, Hammurabi was literally *THE* paragon of morality. We've changed. If we're gonna be objective about historical figures then we need to get past the part where we try to make them 'okay' by modern standards. Lee was kind of a bastard, who did lots of other cool stuff and was otherwise a pretty remarkably awesome dude.

Yeh, but we don't really spend a lot of time praising the Babylonians. Quite the opposite, really.

The biggest difference between Hammurabi and Lee would be where they stand on the chain of human progress. Hammurabi codified law, presumably making punishment a less arbitrary experience. He owned slaves because the moral philosophy of the time hadn't developed to the point where there was opposition to it. The worth of human life is much less in an environment as harsh as the bronze age. I hate to use this phrase, but you can argue that he didn't really know any better.

In Lee's day, abolitionism was already a popular belief. People knew slavery was evil. The English speaking world had already accepted that life has a certain worth, and that freedom was a natural human right. Jefferson had flip-flopped on the same issue - recognizing, occasionally, that there was something wrong with Slavery but never going so far as to be an abolitionist. By the 19th century, slavery was being upheld through mental gymnastics, and Lee was one of those who followed this line of thought. You can't really escape the fact that, despite society moving against the concept of slavery, Lee and others remained slave owners for no other reason but for the easy lives that slavery afforded him, and his wife, and his children.

I'm not saying that he is evil, or that the Civil War was a conflict of good vs evil. Personally, I would call it a war between two different types of exploitative economics - feudal chatel slavery vs industrial wage slavery. In the north, children were forced into industrial contracts by their starving parents, where they did dangerous jobs like work on operating machines or mine coal in tiny, dust filled shafts. There were people unable to escape work in company towns because they worked twelve hours a day and were only payed in script that only bought things in company stores, so they could never save money. Chinese workers on the west coast where also forced into slave-like conditions, where escape often lead to them being beaten or killed. When slavery did finally end, the relationship didn't always change, and many former-slaves ended up share-croppers because they had no way to leave that relationship.

But it is important, despite how muddy these things are, to not go and white wash history so it feels more comfortable to us. Lee owned slaves - he was not blind to the idea that maybe slavery was evil, he just didn't agree that it was. This doesn't make him a monster we have to vilify, but we shouldn't try to exonerate him either, or work to create excuses for his behavior.

Vilageidiotx said But it is important, despite how muddy these things are, to not go and white wash history so it feels more comfortable to us. Lee owned slaves - he was not blind to the idea that maybe slavery was evil, he just didn't agree that it was. This doesn't make him a monster we have to vilify, but we shouldn't try to exonerate him either, or work to create excuses for his behavior.

Exactly.

mdk said Lee was kind of a bastard, who did lots of other cool stuff and was otherwise a pretty remarkably awesome dude.

Jews, Irish, English and French-Canadians, with no actual idea of whom I'm related to that's famous because the reality is that when 1/3rd of Germany is related to Charlemagne, that shit gets meaningless after a certain point.

HeySeuss said
Jews, Irish, English and French-Canadians, with no actual idea of whom I'm related to that's famous because the reality is that when 1/3rd of Germany is related to Charlemagne, that shit gets meaningless after a certain point.

"I'm related to Ghengis Khan!"

'How do you know?'

"Because I'm a person."