Why did Robert E. Lee free his slaves?
This is one of the questions commenter “Proud” asked in the comments. Or, if Lee freed his slaves before the war, didn’t that mean he was against slavery and that slavery was therefore not the cause of the civil war? Gail Jarvis frames the claim this way:
Robert E. Lee vigorously opposed slavery and as early as 1856 made this statement: “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.”
Robert E. Lee did not own slaves, but many Union generals did. When his father-in-law died, Lee took over the management of the plantation his wife had inherited and immediately began freeing the slaves. By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, every slave in Lee’s charge had been freed. Notably, some Union generals didn’t free their slaves until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. [ Remembering Robert E. Lee ]
Jarvis leaves out a couple of key facts, however. First, Lee released “his” slaves under terms dictated by his father-in-law’s will:
then I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease. [ Will of George Washington Parke Custis ]
Lee, having been named executor of the will, freed the remainder of Custis’s slaves in 1862, five years after Custis’s death.
The second fact that Jarvis skips was that Lee’s opposition to slavery was limited to believing it to be a necessary evil. The letter Jarvis quotes goes on to explain that slavery is necessary to turn the black Africans into good Christians and condemn the abolitionists for wanting to interfere in this good work. [ Lee's Letter to his wife on Slavery ].
Lee’s “Vigorous Opposition” was apparently limited to prayer. When you stand that opposition up against the armed insurrection of John Brown, it really doesn’t look all that vigorous.
So Robert E. Lee freed his slaves because those were the last wishes of his father-in-law, not because Lee opposed the institution of slavery or thought the practice was morally indefensible and repugnant.
Thanks to the Rad Geek, who’s article on this subject pointed me to the transcriptions of primary sources.
