Robert E. Lee Quotes

This quotation is very interesting historically. Despite the fact that Washington DC was a thoroughly racially segregated city, and the Southern racists controlled much of Congress, Blacks as well as whites were welcome in the Congressional galleries, and they attended many debates. Slavery and equality were not just debated in the 1850s but the issue was in constant friction from the earliest Congress.

Jamaica, then part of the British Empire which had outlawed slavery, was quite racially integrated with negroes and mulattos in civil positions such as magistrate. When the ship landed, the slave, John Anderson, was kept locked below deck since if he ran off and reached shore, the Jamaican authorities would have declared him a free man. The presence of the captive negro slave leaked out and a group of Jamaicans boarded the ship uninvited and forcibly removed Anderson, He was taken before a Jamaican magistrate who declared him a free person. The ship’s captain demanded that the authorities return the American private property which had been stolen from an American ship by a “mob”. Harrison, the US Counsel complained to the Jamaican Governor of the “Insult” to the American Flag that had taken place and demanded redress. In both efforts, the original decision of the magistrate was supported and Anderson was a free man. Harrison, an ardent Southerner from Virginia was apoplectic and asked the State Department to make this case a major issue in relations with London. His description of the public opinion then in Jamaica was classic. His racial bias was even supplemented by a virulent anti-Semitism because not only had Jewish Jamaican merchants supported abolition of slavery but some had intermarried with Negroes who had converted to Judaism.

For more about the Bureau. See {629185}.and {629187}.

As an entertainer she had toured much of the world and seen American slavery and that of some other nations. She became a staunch abolitionist and like entertainers in the 20th and 21st centuries she used her celebrity to give anti-slavery lectures and perform for audiences where she donated the proceeds of the event to the abolition cause. She is a particularly interesting political figure in that she seems to be one of the first entertainers to perform for a social cause and become an activist.

The Birth of a Nation was screened at the Woodrow Wilson White House as Wilson was the most racist president since Andrew Johnson. The editorial was persuasive to Boston liberals who were not prepared to impose censorship even to prevent racist propaganda from having an audience.

The first sentence is inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The last two sentences are rarely quoted.

Lincoln, just before the Civil War, quoted Jefferson that if slavery were not ended in America the results would be disastrous. But Lincoln at the time probably did not imagine how right Jefferson was, and Jefferson himself probably 1 how terrible the Civil War would be.

In early New England the General Court served as both a legislature and a judiciary before separation of powers was introduced. 5 years later the Court banned importing African slaves at all. While slavery was not common in Rhode Island, the laws was not seriously enforced on those who would defy them. It does represent a public anti-slavery sentiment that existed in Early America. It would take 200 years for Rhode Island to finally eliminate all forms of slavery.

Jefferson was an enigma with respect to slavery. Whereas he always abhorred it in his writings, and argued for an end to slavery, he maintained slaves himself and never did free them, unlike Washington, who spoke on the subject much less, but left orders in his will that all slaves were to be set free.

This quotation’s authenticity and accuracy are challenged by many scholars. The only source is the personal reminiscences of General Butler, a politician with Presidential aspirations who had his own agenda. The nuance of wording is very critical as to whether Lincoln was trying to accomplish export or whether he was asking Butler to staff out the feasibility so that Lincoln could deal with others who had raised the issue. Butler’s reply was that it was not feasible ({633655}), and there is no other record of the idea being advocated or implemented. The quotation, if indeed it was a quotations, is taken by some to indicate that Lincoln was no friend of Blacks and very racist to boot.

The general issued a military order emancipating slaves in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. President Abraham Lincoln rescinded the order feeling it was too premature and it would cause the slave states that stayed in the Union--Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky--to go over to the Confederates.

The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri statehood was considered. By previous agreement, slavery was not even discussed in Congress but the time period elapsed. Tallmadge not only proposed that no more slaves could come into Missouri {613176} but most shocking to the Southerners was that every person born in the new state would be free at the age of 25. In a generation, there would be no more slavery in Missouri and there would be no economic compensation for slave owners at all. The House of Representatives accepted the amendment, but it failed in the Senate. At that time, Senators were not elected by voters but were appointed by the state legislators and the Southern slave states had a disproportionate share of the senate from a population point of view. But what this quotation shows clearly that a majority of the country in 1819 were opposed to slavery and were willing to end it without compensation.

Negotiations regarding the exchange of prisoners and property. This was his view of his supposed obligation to return Negro slaves who had escaped and gone to the British during the war. The treaty of peace specified that all “property” including slaves, taken by, the British be returned to the Americans. But he and other officers did not always do so as they thought they had higher moral obligations. See {621936} for example.

The letter was written in the supposed style of a Black after Emancipation and includes most of the ugly false stereotypes of the worst of the racists of the present and the slaveowners of past times. Williams stated that he was not a racist and was trying to make a point about freedom required risk and responsibility. However, the effort was interpreted by many people, Black and white, to be insulting and a put down of African Americans. At the same time, although most of the Tea Party members were not racists, most of the racists in America were supporters of the Tea Party. Those people interpreted the quotation as "telling it like it is" about Blacks who do not want the responsiblities and risks of freedom and are not yet developed sufficiently to be equal citizens in a democracy.

This is an important quotation because it shows that slavery was the principle reason that the South succeeded and began their rebellion. In the early 20th century, there was a movement to make the Confederacy and the rebellion more noble by promoting the idea that the Civil War was fought by the South for more lofty reasons such as States Rights, Original Construction, different economic philosophies and the like. This was a more noble cause then the right to deny other human beings their rights, to own other human beings who they could beat, torture, sexually use and even murder them was a pretty selfish and demeaning reason to have started a rebellion that would then cost more Americans their lives than any other American conflict. The succession documents and others of the Southern States and the Confederacy make it clear that slavery was THE issue and fleeting references to any of the others were only made to complain about the potential effect on abolition and the refusal of the abolitionist states to cease aiding and protecting fugitive slaves.