#I don’t even like kiplings stuff except for this apparently. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

imaginedsoldier · 7 years

Text

I keep seeing posts and stuff about how Robert E. Lee was a kind gentleman and an abolitionist. This isn’t just historical illiteracy, its patently false revisionism.

Lee was not an abolitionist- he clarified his thoughts on the matter in a letter where he enumerated his feelings on the institution of slavery:

“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. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . ” [1]

To sum that up- slavery is bad for white people since they have to bear the weight of responsibility (read: The White Man’s Burden, Rudyard Kipling), good for Black people, the violent punishments inflicted on the slaves were for their own betterment as a people, and the only way they should be emancipated is by literal divine intervention. He suggested that abolitionists run the risk of angering the slave master and indirectly harming the slaves as the result of their attempts at abolition, which reads like a backhanded threat. His perspective was at best Christian lip service as an excuse for continued slavery and at worst the ramblings of a racist religious fundamentalist. He considered abolition in the manner that it was being carried out to be evil.

He wasn’t some kind man bearing the weight of an unfortunate institution; its a matter of historical fact that he was a violent, sadistic master with his contemporaries writing of him in no uncertain terms- his slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see. [sic]” He intentionally separated slave families, something even his slave-owning contemporaries viewed as inhuman, and would carry out intensely violent punishment on runaways and resistant slaves. In a letter to the editor, published in the NY Tribune, 24 June, 1859 regarding Lee’s treatment of slaves:

“Some three or four weeks ago, three, more courageous than the rest, thinking their five years would never come to an end, came to the conclusion to leave for the North. They were most valuable servants, but they were never advertised, and there was no effort made to regain them which looks exceedingly as though Mr. Lee, the present proprietor, knew he had no lawful claim to them. They had not proceeded far before their progress was intercepted by some brute in human form, who suspected them to be fugitives, and probably wished a reward. They were lodged in jail, and frightened into telling where they had started from. Mr. Lee was forthwith acquainted with their whereabouts, when they were transported back, taken into a barn, stripped, and the men received thirty and nine lashes each, from the hands of the slave-whipper, when he refused to whip the girl, and Mr. Lee himself administered the thirty and nine lashes to her. They were then sent to Richmond jail, where they are now lodged.” [3]

I will spare you detail upon detail, but the interested don’t have to look very hard or very far to find records and testimony of Lee’s horrific treatment of slaves, firsthand.

The narrative of Lee as an abolitionist is somewhat harmed by the fact as well that his father-in-law’s will dictated that his slaves be set free immediately upon the event of his death, yet Lee, as the executor, maintained ownership of his slaves, looking to use their labor to save his dying estate through legal manipulation and a generous interpretation of his father-in-law’s will, attempted to maintain ownership of them.

As executor of the Custis estate, General Lee was, in fact, bound by principles of equity to carry out the wishes of the testator under circumstances in which he believed the testator's wishes were in conflict. Custis apparently wished that the slaves be emancipated immediately, yet the only way payment of his legacies to General Lee's daughters could be funded was through the cash received from the labor of the slaves. To resolve this conflict, General Lee applied to the circuit court of Arlington for an interpretation of the will provisions, and for an order specifying the point in time when the will’s provision regarding emancipation must be executed. Eventually, the Court ruled that Lee was legally empowered to hold the slaves in service to the estate until the legacies were satisfied, but that, notwithstanding this, the slaves had to be freed no later than five years from the date of Custis's death, October 10, 1857. [4]

"The will of the late George W.P. Custis directs that all his slaves, some 200 or 300, shall be set free within the next five years, leaving it to his executors to provide the necessary funds from his estate to remove them from the Commonwealth."

According to contemporary sources, the slaves at Arlington had thought they were being freed immediately; some newspaper stories said Custis had told them as much on his deathbed.

But the executor of the estate -- Lee -- had something else in mind.

Lee, then a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, "determined that the slave labor was necessary to improve Arlington's financial status," according to a story about slavery at Arlington on the National Park Service website. And so he freed no one.

The controversy over the will and the slaves' future was addressed in a letter to the editor of The New York Times in January 1858, in response to a story published Dec. 30 that speculated that Custis' wishes were not being followed.

"It is there charged that the emancipation of the slaves will be much retarded, if not wholly prevented, by his heirs; that all attempts to see the will of Mr. Custis have proved abortive; that it is whispered about Washington that foul play is in progress in regard to the negroes on his plantations in Virginia; that they are now being sold South; that all of them will be consigned to hopeless slavery unless something is done; and that nothing can be done unless the will is produced, etc.," the letter says.

Lee did not just keep the slaves, he relished in their abuse, whipping and beating them himself despite the work of their management being delegated to others. Not just that, but he exceeded even his broadly interpreted will’s terms:

The terms of the will stipulated that the slaves had to be free within five years of Custis' death. But Lee kept them beyond even that, eventually freeing them in early 1863. [5]

This post is kind of losing form and speed, and its already pretty long so I will terminate with this- historical revisionism is what permits neo-Nazis, boneheads, white supremacists, and even soft conservatives to push a narrative that paints them as reasonable. They are anything but. They are liars, they are cowards, and they are aggressors. The narrative currently being painted by Trump about “both sides being in the wrong” at Charlottesville is a perpetuation of their proud legacy of pretending they were good guys all along and silently cowering until they can be brazen again. Don’t let them.

#text #robert e lee #history

45 notes · View notes

skaterukedbt-blog · 7 years

Text

Diary Card 1 (03/23-03/29)

03/23:

Okie dokie, so if there’s a time and place for jokes about drinking, group therapy sure isn’t it. I don’t like feeling so sensitive to even mentions of drinking, because I truly didn’t see my drinking as a problem until I had to quit. I guess that was a perk of being baked and buzzed all the time–nothing really seemed like a problem. To be entirely honest, when I left group tonight all I wanted was to stop at a Meijer, pick up a tiny bit of whiskey, and camp my ass somewhere nice and quiet. What stopped me? Okay, at first it wasn’t my incredible willpower and determination to Always Do The Right Thing–it was the fact that one of the ukuleles I had ordered had arrived at my house while group was going on, so at the very least I knew I wanted to open it up. Then, when I was holding it and tuning it, I kept thinking about drinking, and picked up my phone to text J for help at least four or five times before I realized that she was probably just going to suggest using DISTRACT anyway…so I practiced on my ukulele for a solid half hour until the urge had passed. Then I picked up my phone a few more times because I wanted to text J to let her know I just kicked that urge’s ass, but realized that was probably outside of the phone boundaries or something, so then I had to validate myself. I just wish someone knew how hard I was working on my own to do the right things, because I’m always alone so no one ever really sees me trying. I swear I’m trying.

03/24:

I would dare to call today a good day, and the weather even agreed with me. I did quite a bit of cruising on my longboards both at Granger Park and on my street, and I think that I’m just a couple of weeks away from figuring out the pumping thing (so I don’t have to constantly push). I also got to talk to A on the phone for 2 hours, which hasn’t happened in a bit. We were doing okay with staying in touch, but we haven’t really communicated the last few weeks because she just started her new job and I’ve been sleeping all day, so that was really nice. We talked about J, then about how things are going in general for us…and for the most part they’re okay. Except it turns out she’s worried about how much pot she’s been smoking and acknowledges that it isn’t just recreational for her anymore, and apparently her boyfriend has been drinking more. It’s hard to hear that because I really care about both of them, and I lowkey worry that I maybe set an example in substance abuse that my friends fell into. A barely ever smoked before she met me. So, I spent some time trying to learn the intro to Vance Joy’s “Riptide”, which helped pull me back from that place of blaming myself for everyone else’s pot/beer consumption. I literally don’t know what I did before I bought a longboard and uke this week (okay, I dealt with stuff by not dealing with stuff) but I’m actually kind of feeling empowered by these new coping skills and the feeling of BUILDING MASTERY.

03/25:

The struggle was so freaking real today. I woke up to drastically different weather (so no longboarding), and really upset about a few things. But I still tried to use my PLEASE skill and so I ate a couple frozen waffles and did some SELF SOOTHE with Abuelita hot chocolate. No luck, I still wanted to get drunk. So, I tried playing the ukulele until my fingers bled. Still no luck. At that point, I started to panic and texted J to ask for help because I was quickly running out of ideas for ways to spend my time that were going to keep me sober. However, I still have a hard time validating my drinking problem as, well, a problem, so as soon as I sent the text I immediately threw my phone on the bed and started pacing. I believe I started in on a chorus of “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK WHAT DID I JUST DO FUCK”. I know that part of what J offers is phone/text coaching for skills, which is technically what I asked for help with, but I just went full blown anxious after I messaged her. Once I remembered that it’s the weekend and she has a family and I started to invalidate my urge to get drunk, I kind of wanted to actually drink more. I’m 98% positive that if I checked the facts with her, she probably wouldn’t say that she hates me or thinks it was stupid that I texted her. Anyway, she suggested reading, which felt so obvious after she said it, but again, I had been panicking and didn’t think of that. Even after she helped me though, I still went back and forth with myself on the merits of just having one or two drinks, before I remembered that I never stopped at just one or two when I drank alone. Plus, I felt like if J wasn’t annoyed that I disturbed her Saturday, she would be if she found out that I disturbed her Saturday and then ignored her advice. Basically what I’m getting at is that I threw a bag together to take over to grandma’s empty house for the night, where I bandaged up my fingers to keep playing the uke and read some of Kipling’s The Jungle Books. I didn’t get drunk today and that has to be my accomplishment.

03/26

Well, I had to get back on my work schedule, which means that I pretty much began my day at like 2am, so I can take a nap before I go to work at 11:45pm. I’ll be tired tonight, which definitely isn’t the best, but I enjoyed having a few days to actually enjoy the daytime. Today was a lot easier for me, because I stayed at my grandma’s house overnight and through the day. I watched the entire fourth season of Orphan Black (literally one of the only TV shows I can stand to sit down and watch) and practiced my ukulele. The weather here is still pretty meh, but I did make it out to Granger park for a few minutes to skate around the parking lot which was still pretty puddle-y. As far as the drinking goes, I’m not having any real urges, besides when I was raiding my grandma’s freezer and saw some frozen margaritas. Today though, it was enough to just simply say “ho don’t do it” and then not do it. I wish I could get someone to just text me that once a day at random times. On a side note, I’m a little anxious about returning to work after being off for a week, but I’m sure I’ll do fine. Mostly I’m just tripping over the fact that the last time I was there I was all “I don’t hate my job, but it doesn’t make happy” and now I have to face the fact that yeah, waitressing doesn’t bring me the most joy (but neither did any of my previous jobs in retrospect). Maybe I just won’t know exactly which job will make me happy right now, but that’s okay because right now I’m not really ready to go back to school and pursue any degrees. Soon, but not just yet. Right now I need to pursue some happiness in general.

03/27

Today marked exactly 30 days from the last time I drank or smoked pot. I didn’t even realize it had been a month until after R messaged me in the afternoon to ask how my sobriety was going. I guess, for the most part, it must be going well if I’m not obsessing over counting days. I’m a little bummed out that I hadn’t realized what today was, or I would have done something special for myself maybe, besides getting off of work this morning, going skating for a few minutes, and then sleeping most of the day. I did go out to get a cheese pizza for breakfast (regular people dinner?) so I guess I’ll dub that my celebration pizza. I also just can’t believe that it’s only been 30 days since I smoked a joint on my way to go inpatient at 3am by myself. This has easily felt like the most transformative and change-packed month I’ve experienced in my entire life. J has her work cut out for her I guess. Okay, I’m not going to actually journal too much today, because the more I realize I’ve been sober for a month, the sadder I get when I realize that sure, I didn’t necessarily broadcast it, but the only person who checked in and knew it was a significant day was my former-lover-turned-friend. I’m lucky to still have R in my life though, she’s my under-appreciated love. I’m going to start treating her better. She’s a really good person and she really does care and listen to what her friends have going on.

03/28

This morning, my coworker H told me some more things about himself and his experiences that I guess he’s only told his girlfriend about (or he told a couple other people about, but they were invalidating as shit and didn’t believe him, and I told him I believed him). He gave me a hug for the first time and smiled a lot more. It got me thinking…what is it about the way I interact with people sometimes that gets them to tell me really personal things? I don’t think I’m a super friendly or outgoing person, but I have been told by people who both barely know me and know me really well that I’m a good person. Maybe that just kind of comes out? I don’t know, but between F and H, I do kind of feel like it’s important that I’m listening to them. I don’t always have anything to say, but sometimes it’s enough to kind of quietly encourage them to keep going. I just…keep finding the lonely people who need to be heard, and I listen, I guess. I just don’t know how they keep finding me. I’m not complaining, but it’s making me think about perhaps pursuing a career as a therapist instead of a nurse after all.

03/29

I had a discussion with A about girls, and I don’t know that I’m any closer to not having to deal with them. On one hand, I have M, who I’m pretty sure is the love of my life. However, due to circumstances I can’t do anything about, I can’t start or pursue or even make sure she fully understands that. All I can do is just keep loving her from afar for now, but I’m human and I’m selfish, and I just want to know if I can take my heart back yet (you know, if she’s not using it). On the other hand, there are all of the other confirmed lesbians I haven’t met yet, who may also be beautiful and move like poetry. And they may actually want to be with me. But it doesn’t feel fair to start anything with anyone either, because I know that I would run to M the moment I had the chance to right now. Do you see my problem? I’m stuck in this loneliness limbo. Otherwise, today was pretty relaxed and I was able to go check on my grandma. I only had a minor urge to drink because I had to deal with an extra stupid bitch at work, but it passed relatively quickly.

#skaterukedbt #diarycard #j4205

0 notes