ROBERT E. LEE
(Robert Edward Lee)
This quotation illustrates the degree or irrationality that Southerners practiced in considering racial matters. Lee was stating what virtually all Southern “Gentlemen” believed. Here was a class of people who had hardly worked at day in their lives opining on the work attitudes of the class of people who did most of all the work in the South. The Southern Whites not only expected the Negro slave to do the work, but to be enthusiastic about working. And it never even occurred to Lee and most of the other whites that Negro lack of “disposition” to work was the result of the fact that they were forced to work with the benefits going to someone else. It was a character flaw in Blacks, if they were not enthusiastic and disposed to work when forced to. One of the few ways a slave could register his/her protest was to beat the system now and then and do as little work as possible. Free Blacks in the North were among the hardest and most enthusiastic working people in America—certainly moreso than the Southern white gentlemen.
Robert Edward Lee was an American Confederate general best known as a commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He led the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862 until its surrender in 1865 and earned a reputation as a skilled tactician.
