Ron Owens, the Bay Area’s centrist radio host, has been going on this morning, comparing Robert E. Lee with George Washington, on the grounds that both owned slaves. Should we be tearing down statues of George Washington? Owens asks.
The two men aren’t comparable. George Washington founded this country. Lee tried to destroy it. Washington did own 200 slaves, but he freed all of them in his will. At that time his slaves were worth about $200,000 (or many millions in today’s currency).
Forty years later Lee was still ordering slave women whipped for insolence.
Someone yesterday pointed out that General Grant had also owned slaves. Actually Grant had owned one slave, who had been given to him by his father-in-law. At the time, Grant was pretty much broke, and the slave was worth $700. After one year, Grant freed the slave.
You did not have to be saintly in the 1800s to grasp that slavery was deeply evil. Just be a somewhat decent human being. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was an abolitionist.
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