THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

FACTS THAT YOU NEVER KNEW

General Robert E, Lee slept in a modest soldier's tent and ate the same rations as his men? It is true. Much to the chagrin of his staff, Lee almost always turned away delicacies offered by the wealthier civilians in the area where his army camped. When fresh fruits or vegetables, fine meat, good bread, or even quality spirits were sent to his headquarters, Lee would write a gracious letter of thanks to the benefactor and quietly send the food onto his men, usually the wounded in hospital. General Lee always ate simple meals and took the typical army ration given to his men. Similarly, he routinely turned down offers to use the homes of Southerners as his headquarters, preferring to sleep outside in his modest tent, which, incidentally, was that of a New Jersey officer captured by the Confederates. He thus made it a point to share the daily hardships of his men as much as possible, and to know them as much as he could. Once, as Lee was returning to his tent, he noticed a soldier peeking inside. "Walk in, Captain," Lee called out, "I am glad to see you." The startled soldier turned and addressed Lee: "I ain't no captain, General Lee. I's just a private in the Ninth Virginia Cavalry." "Well, come on in, sir," Lee responded. "If you aren't a captain, you ought to be." Not only did General Lee hate slavery, he also abhorred secession. Though Lee never personally owned slaves, he was charged with managing for a five-year period the 200 slaves at Arlington Plantation who had belonged to his father-in-law after George Washington Parke Custis' death. While Lee certainly believed the white race to be superior to the black, once observing "that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving." And yet, in a letter of 1858, Lee deemed slavery to be "a moral and political evil in any country," and once emancipation came, he accepted the new social realities and encouraged other Southerners to do so also, treating freed blacks with respect; on one occasion, he was the first to join a black man who had dared to kneel first, ahead of white worshippers, at the communion rail at Lee's Episcopal parish in Richmond. If Lee found slavery distasteful, he positively detested secession. In a letter of January 1861 to his son Custis, Lee wrote: As an American citizen I take great pride in my country, her prosperity & institutions & would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, & I am willing to sacrifice every thing but honour for its preservation. I hope therefore that all Constitutional means will be exhausted, before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labour, wisdom & forbearance in its formation & surrounded it with so many guards & securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the confederacy at will. It was intended for pepetual [sic] union, so expressed in the preamble, & for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. Lee often railed against Southern "Fire-Eaters," who fanned the winds of war in their eager desire for the South to form its own confederacy, ultimately blaming them and extremist Northern abolitionists for the bloody conflict. And yet, Lee, after much agonizing, determined that his duty lay in remaining loyal to his country—that is, his native State of Virginia. He told a cousin in the federal army: "I have been unable to make up my mind to raise my hand against my native state." Lee was not the only southerner who was against slavery.

A list of Confederate leaders against slavery include: The president himself, Jefferson Davis. While Jeff Davis was not an outright "abolitionist," he believed people of color needed to be slowly educated to become a citizens before slavery was ended. And he was very right; if you look at former slaves in the post-war South, the scene was one of great poverty. The South as a whole was devastated by the war. Louisiana, for example, before the war had the second most free people of color in the country. Afterwards, it set a new #2 record, second poorest state in the country. Is poverty an improvement over slavery? Depends on your opinion. At least a slave can depend on a meal every day. Jeff Davis owned slaves, but treated them quite well, educating them and attempting to see to their futures. He also took in runaway slaves who'd escaped cruel masters. An adopted son of his was black. After the war, Davis, now impoverished, was often given money by his former slaves, who lived near him, as to them, he was family. General Joseph Johnston, General A.P. Hill, Lee's nephew General Fitzhugh Lee, and General J.E.B. Stuart were all abolitionists. General Stonewall Jackson was also kind to the blacks because he illegally taught them to read the Bible. He also made a school and supported until he died. Another anti-slavery confederate was General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Contrary to completely unverifiable public belief that he was the founder/a member of the KKK, there is in fact no evidence of this. Contrary to this assertion, Nathan Bedford Forrest was an early civil rights activist, and was even invited as a guest speaker at functions for colored people.