• Rekhyt@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Unless the statue was erected by George Wallace, that caption is irrelevant. Put a caption of Lee’s written words:

    There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.

    This passage is commonly cut off after the full sentence before you get the full context in which Lee actually cares about how bad slavery is for white people and how slavery was good for the enslaved.