Following in Their Footsteps

[mylesk]

Friday afternoon on the Red Arrow inter-city motor-coach have the conditions I've been waiting for for months: 3 hours of isolation; no deadlines to meet for 48 hours. It doesn't seem to happen very often at all.

Three most recent comments heard about my blog:
1. Anthony Henry: Have you been writing The Ephemeral Tourist lately? I like it. It's

Comments

Discouraging Word about Robert E. Lee

[anonymous]

From PBS American Experience about Robert E. Lee, Lee believed that the black slaves were much better off being slaves in USA than being free in Africa where they came from and so they remaining slaves was right.

Re: Discouraging Word about Robert E. Lee

[mylesk]

Thanks for the visit and comment!

I will agree that Lee's opinions reflect an clear ethnocentricity (which is true of everyone to one degree or other), but your/PBS' excerpting his comments as you have (removing it from the context) makes it sound as though he did not regard slavery as immoral, did not anticipate or support emancipation, and thought that the slaves should remain slaves in-perpetuity.

You can see from his letter posted at: http://www.civilwarhome.com/leepierce.htm that for him, the question was how should emancipation occur:

Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy.

Revolution or evolution is the perennial debate in all movements for social change.

[anonymous]

Hello to you, I'm john tipton, I live out west of victoria bc. It is my family you have chosin to look up And I thank you. My dad grew up on univercity ave, There's an older lady , Ms Simmons she still lives next door . I'd love to find out more too eh . jt

[mylesk]

Hi John! Thanks for leaving the comment! It's quite exciting to me to hear from a descendant of John G. Tipton. Have you done a lot of genealogy on your family?

I have not gone much further beyond what I alluded to here.