People From Virginia

"The educational system as it has developed both in Europe and America an antiquated process which does not hit the mark even in the case of the needs of the white man himself. If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own. The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. For example, the philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed. Negroes daily educated in the tenets of such a religion of the strong have accepted the status of the weak as divinely ordained, and during the last three generations of their nominal freedom they have done practically nothing to change it."

"The chief reason why so many give such a little attention to the background of the Negro is the belief that this study is unimportant. They consider as history only such deeds as those of Mussolini who after building up an efficient war machine with the aid of other Europeans would now use it to murder unarmed and defenseless Africans who have restricted themselves exclusively to attending to their own business. If Mussolini succeeds in crushing Abyssinia he will be recorded in "history" among the Caesars, and volumes written in praise of the conqueror will find their way to the homes and libraries of thousands of miseducated Negroes. The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with this interpretation of the crimes of the strong."

"The facts drawn from an experience of more than twenty years enable us to make certain deductions with respect to the study of the Negro. Only one Negro out of every ten thousand is interested in the effort to set forth what his race has thought and felt and attempted and accomplished that it may not become a negligible factor in the thought of the world. By traditions and education, however, the large majority of Negroes have become interested in the history and status of other races, and they spend millions annually to promote such knowledge. Along with this sum, of course, should be considered the large amount paid for devices in trying not to be Negroes."

"The average Negro has not been sufficiently mis-educated to become hopeless. Our minds must become sufficiently developed to use segregation to kill segregation, and thus bring to pass that ancient and yet modern prophecy, "The wrath of man shall praise thee." If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto. This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible. If the Negro area, however, is to continue as a district supported wholly from without, the inept dwellers therein will merit and will receive only the contempt of those who may occasionally catch glimpses of them in their plight."

"This shameful status of higher education is due in a large measure to low standards of institutions with a tendency toward the diplomamill procure. TO get a job or to hold one you ho in and stay until they "grind" you out a "darkter's 'gree." And you do not have to worry any further. The assumption is that almost any school will be glad to have you thereafter, and you will receive a large salary."

"History does not furnish a case of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thought and aspiration of the people thus served."

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary. The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race."

"Those who oppose our purposes are not always to be regarded as our enemies. We usually think and act from our immediate surroundings. The better rule is to judge our adversaries from their standpoint, not from ours."

"Lee was the last of the great old-fashioned generals."

"Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War battles, including Gettysburg, and had been with Robert E. Lee at Appamatox. My Uncle White was the younger brother of my grandfather. He hated Yankees and Republicans, not necessarily in that order, and talked derisively about both. When I visited, he was seated in a wheel chair, in grudging acquiescence to the infirmities of age. Tobacco juice decorated his shirt and stains around a spittoon on the floor testified to the inaccuracy of his aim. Flies buzzed through screenless windows. "What are you doing with yourself, son?" Uncle White asked. I answered the old veteran with trepidation. "I'm going to that same school that Grant and Sherman went to, the Military Academy at West Point, New York." Uncle White was silent for what seemed like a long time. "That's all right, son," he said at last. "Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson went there too.""

"This week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?"

"I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they'd never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice."

"Once we understand that the flags in question are those of an army, we can have a more intelligent discussion about what those armies did, such as the fact that the Army of Northern Virginia was under orders to capture and send south supposed escaped slaves during that army's invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863./ That is a question of correctly understanding that since the adoption of the US Constitution in 1787 with the 3/5 and Fugitive Slave tenets, all Commissioned US officers, in swearing to uphold the constitution, swore to uphold the institution, via these tenets, regardless of personal sentiments, including all future Northern officers. William T. Sherman wrote his brother of this from Florida in 1842."

"In 1864, black Union troops were involved in operations against Lee's army outside Richmond and Petersburg, and some of them are taken prisoner. Lee puts them to work on Confederate entrenchments that are in Union free-fire zones. When Grant gets wind of this, he threatens to put Confederate prisoners to work on Union entrenchments under Confederate fire unless Lee pulls out. So Grant was willing to embrace an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth retaliation policy based upon Confederate treatment of black prisoners. For Grant, it was the color of the uniform, not the skin, that mattered... The Lee myth. Lee being above slavery, Lee being in fact anti-slavery, is essential to the neo-Confederate argument that it's not about race, it's not about slavery. They've done a very good job of covering up Robert E. Lee's actual positions on this... In pre-war correspondence, Lee castigated the abolitionists for their political activity, and he never showed any qualms about the social order that he would later defend with arms. He also had a few slaves that he inherited as part of a will agreement, with provisions to emancipate those slaves. But in fact, he dragged his heels in complying with the terms of that will. And he never gave a second thought to the fact that his beloved Arlington mansion was run by slave labor."

"Although Lee was an enthusiastic and hardworking officer, his promotions in the Army came slowly. Sometimes he may have been discouraged, but he never gave up. His work as an Army engineer was outstanding, but it was in the Mexican War that he distinguished himself in combat. His commander, General Winfield Scott, praised him highly. His reputation as a soldier grew with the years. Just after Lincoln's call for troops, he was offered command of the Union Army. This was the highest goal that any American officer could reach, but Robert E. Lee refused to accept it. Lee's conscience would not permit him to bear arms against his native state. He resigned from the United States Army. Lee's loyalty to the Union was great, but his loyalty to Virginia was greater. He did not want to fight against the United States, but if duty required him to defend his native state, he was determined to do so. When Virginia chose him as the commander of her forces, he accepted the offer on April 23, 1861, and threw all his talents into her defense. Robert E. Lee represented the best of Virginia's traditions and ideals."

"There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves—one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’s integrated police force in battle against white-supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace."

"Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free; he fought for the preservation of slavery; his army kidnapped free black people at gunpoint and made them unfree—but all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for black Americans. Here we truly understand Frederick Douglass’s admonition that “between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.”"

"As a retired U.S. Army soldier and as a historian, I consider the issue simple. My former hero, Robert E. Lee, committed treason to preserve slavery. After the Civil War, former Confederates, their children, and their grandchildren created a series of myths and lies to hide the essential truth and sustain a racial hierarchy dedicated to white political power reinforced by violence. But for decades, I believed the Confederates and Lee were romantic warriors of a doomed but noble cause. As a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, I believe that American history demands, at least from me, a reckoning."

"One of the foundations of the Lost Cause myth was the near deification of Robert E. Lee as the perfect example of an educated Christian gentleman. A Marble Man without sin. Much of my life led me to glorify Robert E. Lee and Confederate soldiers. My first book, my first movie, my hometown, my college, even the U.S. Army and West Point honored Lee and his cause. I hope this book exposes the lies I grew up believing and why it took so long for me to see the evidence, the facts, that I now see so clearly. Eleven southern states seceded to protect and expand an African American slave labor system. Unwilling to accept the results of a fair, democratic election, they illegally seized U.S. territory, violently. Together, they formed a new "Confederacy," in contravention of the U.S. Constitution. Then West Point graduates like Robert E. Lee resigned their commissions, abrogating an oath sworn to God to defend the United States. During the bloodiest war in American history, Lee and his comrades killed more U.S. Army soldiers than any other enemy, ever. And they did it for the worst reason possible: to create a nation dedicated to exploit enslaved men, women, and children, forever."

"Lee is the greatest military genius in America, myself not excepted."

"So it was in the civil war. Farragut's father was born in Spain and Sheridan's father in Ireland; Sherman and Thomas were of English and Custer of German descent; and Grant came of a long line of American ancestors whose original home had been Scotland. But the Admiral was not a Spanish-American; and the Generals were not Scotch-Americans or Irish-Americans or English-Americans or German-Americans. They were all Americans and nothing else. This was just as true of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson and of Beauregard."

"I am very happy to take part in this unveiling of the statue of General Robert E. Lee. All over the United States we recognize him as a great leader of men, as a great general. But, also, all over the United States I believe that we recognize him as something much more important than that. We recognize Robert E. Lee as one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen."

"That old man had my division slaughtered at Gettysburg."

"We were immediately taken before General Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away. We frankly told him that we considered ourselves free. He then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget. He then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mister Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by General Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty. We were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us. Accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered. General Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed. Not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, General Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done. * The evidence consisting against this account includes the testimony in 1863 in the Boston Liberator in Lee's defense, in addition that Amanda Parks, sister of one of the two accompanying escaped slaves with Norris tried to visit Lee in Washington in 1866, and failing to meet him at his hotel, later wrote him. Her letter has not survived but the General's response has and the nature of the content, combined with her attempted voluntary meeting with the man who would have whipped her brother, throws a considerable doubt upon the Norris account."

"They had found a leader, Robert E. Lee—and what a leader! Fifty-five years old, tall, handsome, with graying hair and deep, expressive brown eyes which could convey with a glance a stronger reproof than any other general’s oath-laden castigation; kind at heart and courteous even to those who failed him, he inspired and deserved confidence. No military leader since Napoleon has aroused such enthusiastic devotion among troops as did Lee when he reviewed them on his horse Traveller. And, what a horse!"

"Theodore Roosevelt, certainly a serious student of history and able to see both sides, being a Northerner with a Southern mother, said Robert E. Lee was our greatest American. Winston Churchill, even more adept at history, said the same. So, too, did Eisenhower. In a 1954 speech to the Boy Scouts of America, President Eisenhower cited Lee as one of his heroes."

"Had he been the Northern general, Lee- like George Washington, a Southerner presiding over a Northern country- would have been in a unique position to bridge the gap between the two sides and unify a war-torn nation. Worshipped by his men, he exuded calm leadership. Nominated for U.S. President in 1868, he would have made a far better president than his wartime opponent, Ulysses Grant. As it turned out, the bitterness of the defeated Southerners because of Grant's and Sherman's slash-and-burn methods resonated for a full century- a long time for America."

"Whereas Grant and Sherman had no compunctions about laying waste to farms and doing harm to civilians standing in their way, Lee did. "It is well that war is so terrible," he said, "lest we grow too fond of it." As his armies advanced northward and captured farms, he instructed his soldiers that whatever food they took from the farmers, they pay for it. He, not Grant, won the moral advantage recognized by history."

"Lee's problem, wrote the British military historian Sir Liddell Hart, was that he always went on the attack. A wiser course might have been to combine defensive strategy with defensive tactics, "to lure the Union armies into attacking under disadvantageous conditions." He was a general who "would rather lose the war than his dignity." Sure enough, he lost the war and preserved his dignity so well that he has gone down in history a martyr, our most overrated general."

"No general surpassed him in audacity and aggressiveness. If McClellan took no risks, Lee perhaps took too many. He preferred the bold offensive, seeking in true Napoleonic fashion to destroy, not merely defeat, the enemy army. Dedicated to winning a battle of annihilation, he sometimes imprudently continued attacking beyond any reasonable prospect of success. Lee also needed to broaden his view of the war. Exhibiting a narrow parochialism, he believed Virginia was the most important war zone. He underestimated the problems Confederate commanders faced in the western and trans-Mississippi theaters and the significance of those theaters for southern survival. Yet Lee served the South well. Although costing the Confederacy dearly, his victories against great odds buoyed Confederate morale and depressed the North. Furthermore, Lee's emphasis on his native state was not entirely emotional. Richmond, the South's primary industrial center, acquired great symbolic value, and the Virginia countryside furnished men, mounts, food, and other logistical assets."

"The strategically insignificant Battle of Seven Pines had momentous consequences. Johnston was badly wounded, and on June 1 Davis appointed Lee to replace him. Nothing in the new commander's Civil War experience foretold the fame he would achieve leading the Army of Northern Virginia to destruction, and to immortality in military annals. Like Grant at Belmont, Lee began on an unpromising note. He was sent to oust the Federals from western Virginia; his strategy miscarried, and troops derisively called him "Granny Lee" and "Evacuating Lee". While commanding the southern Atlantic coast, he earned another unflattering nickname, "the King of Spades," by ordering his men to dig entrenchments. No nicknames have been less apt, because Lee's early wartime activities concealed his true character."

"Lee at Gettysburg who decided to attack, attack, attack, even though he knew that it was going to result in thousands of deaths. He made that decision because he thought it necessary in order to win that battle. And in turn perhaps to win the war, to accomplish his objectives. It's not quite so crude as 'the end justifies the means', but I think that all of these extremely difficult decisions, which in the context of a war do mean life and death for tens of thousands of people or destruction of property and the ruin of lives, were made on the grounds of absolute necessity in a crisis situation, not only a war but in some respects a revolutionary situation. The same kinds of things I suppose could be applied to any of the great revolutions in history, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and so on."

"General Lee directs me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th inst: and to say that he much regrets the unwillingness of owners to permit their slaves to enter the service. If the state authorities can do nothing to get those negroes who are willing to join the army, but whose masters refuse their consent, there is no authority to do it at all. What benefit they expect their negroes to be to them, if the enemy occupies the country, it is impossible to say. He hopes you will endeavor to get the assistance of citizens who favor the measure, and bring every influence you can to bear. When a negro is willing, and his master objects, there would be less objection to compulsion, if the state has the authority. It is however of primary importance that the negroes should know that the service is voluntary on their part. As to the name of the troops, the general thinks you cannot do better than consult the men themselves. His only objection to calling them colored troops was that the enemy had selected that designation for theirs. But this has no weight against the choice of the troops and he recommends that they be called colored or if they prefer, they can be called simply Confederate troops or volunteers. Everything should be done to impress them with the responsibility and character of their position, and while of course due respect and subordination should be exacted, they should be so treated as to feel that their obligations are those of any other soldier and their rights and privileges dependent in law & order as obligations upon others as upon theirselves. Harshness and contemptuous or offensive language or conduct to them must be forbidden and they should be made to forget as soon as possible that they were regarded as menials. You will readily understand however how to conciliate their good will & elevate the tone and character of the men…."

"I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand."

"This noble man died 'a prisoner of war on parole'. His application for 'amnesty' was never granted, or even noticed, and the commonest privileges of citizenship which are accorded to the most ignorant negro were denied to this king of men."

"He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbour without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward."

"He was a large man, a handsome man of commanding presence, with a grave face, lighted by a rarely sweet and winning smile. Men looked up to him, loved him, fought for him. General Scott made no secret of his opinion that Lee was the best of American soldiers—and that long before the outbreak of the War Between the States."

"I had known General Lee in the old army, and had served with him in the Mexican War; but did not suppose, owing to the difference in our age and rank, that he would remember me, while I would more naturally remember him distinctly, because he was the chief of staff of General Scott in the Mexican War. When I had left camp that morning I had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. When I went into the house I found General Lee. We greeted each other, and after shaking hands took our seats. I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during the whole of the interview. What General Lee's feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."

"Lee, the result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the C.S. Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia."

"Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

"Robert E. Lee was one of the small company of great men in whom there is no inconsistency to be explained, no enigma to be solved. What he seemed, he was—a wholly human gentleman, the essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two, simplicity and spirituality."

"Notwithstanding he was among the vanquished, Robert E. Lee is the South’s most revered hero. This circumstance indicates Southerners believe an individual has his grandest hour when he bravely fights against great odds for a lost cause he deems just."

"General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.…From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained."

"Lee and Jackson came to symbolize their men, a devotion to the principles of Constitutional liberty, and the heroic defense of their homeland; concepts for which they and their men were willing to leave their families and surrender their lives. Their consciously made sacrifices are an example to be enshrined and emulated."

"General Robert E. Lee's birthday on January 19th has been a holiday in the Commonwealth of Virginia since 1890. It was a day of remembrance for General Lee and later Stonewall Jackson whose birthday is the 21st of January. Lee's personal life was inspiring and even today provides lessons for us all: -As a citizen, during the challenges of the post [period], Lee advocated patience and reconciliation urging the veterans of the Confederate armies to turn their swords into proverbial ploughshares and help rebuild their communities; -As an educator, he assumed the Presidency of a financially strapped Washington College, established new and modern courses of study, and focused on developing young men to be good citizens, Christians and leaders in rebuilding an economically devastated South; -As a father, Lee communicated with his children often- advocating personal discipline, duty and responsibility. Stern at times, he was also tender and affectionate to their feelings; As a veteran, he wanted to document the heroic struggle of the Army of Northern Virginia to achieve Southern Independence and ensure the sacrifices of his men would not be forgotten or misinterpreted in history. In a letter to Jubal Early, Lee wrote, "My only object is to transmit, if possible, the truth to posterity, and do justice to our brave Soldiers.""

"It is ridiculous to seek to excuse Robert Lee as the most formidable agency this nation ever raised to make 4 million human beings goods instead of men. Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God."

"Like some tall cliff against whose solid base the angry waves are beating, and on whose massive breast the dark storm clouds are spread stands our Lee, with eternal sunshine on his good, grey head. Passing years have not dwarfed him. The new generation joins the remnant of his heroic followers in thanking God for the gift of Lee….We hail thee, thou best loved son of the South, and ranged round thee are thy people, their very hearts thy rampart."

"On Palm Sunday, at Appomattox Court House, the spirit of feudalism, of aristocracy, of injustice in this country, surrendered, in the person of Robert E. Lee, the Virginian slave-holder, to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and of equal rights, in the person of Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois tanner. So closed this great campaign in the 'Good Fight of Liberty'. So the Army of the Potomac, often baffled, struck an immortal blow, and gave the right hand of heroic fellowship to their brethren of the west. So the silent captain, when all his lieutenants had secured their separate fame, put on the crown of victory and ended civil war. As fought the Lieutenant-General of the United States, so fight the United States themselves, in the 'Good Fight of Man'. With Grant's tenacity, his patience, his promptness, his tranquil faith, let us assault the new front of the old enemy. We, too, must push through the enemy's Wilderness, holding every point we gain. We, too, must charge at daybreak upon his Spottsylvania Heights. We, too, must flank his angry lines and push them steadily back. We, too, must fling ourselves against the baffling flames of Cold Harbor. We, too, outwitting him by night, must throw our whole force across swamp and river, and stand entrenched before his capital. And we, too, at last, on some soft, auspicious day of spring, loosening all our shining lines, and bursting with wild battle music and universal shout of victory over the last desperate defense, must occupy the very citadel of caste, force the old enemy to final and unconditional surrender, and bring Boston and Charleston to sing Te Deum together for the triumphant equal rights of man."

"The proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy. My first hour of despondency will be the one in which that policy shall be adopted. You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war with negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together, and you can't trust negroes by themselves. It is difficult to get negroes enough for the purpose indicated in the President's message, much less enough for an Army. Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. But they won't make soldiers. As a class they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier. Better by far to yield to the demands of England and France and abolish slavery and thereby purchase their aid, than resort to this policy, which leads as certainly to ruin and subjugation as it is adopted; you want more soldiers, and hence the proposition to take negroes into the Army. Before resorting to it, at least try every reasonable mode of getting white soldiers. I do not entertain a doubt that you can, by the volunteering policy, get more men into the service than you can arm. I have more fears about arms than about men, For Heaven’s sake, try it before you fill with gloom and despondency the hearts of many of our truest and most devoted men, by resort to the suicidal policy of arming our slaves."

"Robert E. Lee's armies took special care to enslave free blacks during their northern campaign."