Kindly Old Robert E. Lee
By Robert E. Lee was a kind slavemaster, certainly not the type of man who represents all that was inhumane about the Confederacy:
Lee married into ownership of nearly 200 slaves at Arlington and adjoining properties. Pryor forthrightly confronts this side of Lee’s life; he disliked slavery and found it a burden, but he was no “good” master, communicated badly with his slaves, and considered them naturally indolent and incapable of freedom. He confronted an “epidemic of runaways” (264) in the late 1850s and oversaw one brutal beating of a returned fugitive, including brine sewn into the wounds. Modern day Lee lovers will cringe at some of Pryor’s conclusions, rooted in strong evidence: Lee broke up families and “denied the slaves’ humanity” (275).