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.@nytdavidbrooks R. E. Lee considered slave relation "the best that can exist between the white and black races" texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth139262/m1/1021/
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.@nytdavidbrooks Lee was aware enough of writing on the wall to realize in 1865 that enslaved people were flocking to Union for freedom +
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.@nytdavidbrooks And unlike some rebs who floated proposals to arm slaves, Lee understood that wouldn't work w/o emancipation. +
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.@nytdavidbrooks However, Lee was pushed to these positions by enslaved people's anti-CSA actions, which baffled him as loss of "fealty" +
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.@nytdavidbrooks Any "case for Lee" built on his saying slavery was "moral & political evil" misses the larger point most historians make +
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.@nytdavidbrooks As Bruce Levine puts it, Lee was "a tested upholder of bondage." In Lee's own words, Union emancipation was "pernicious."