Readers Blog: General Lee was not a supporter of slavery

I am very familiar with Charlottesville having lived there for almost a year in the early 1980s. 

It has a proud history, having been the home of three presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, and it was central to the formation of the American Republic, being the location of the new nation’s first university. Despite these proud associations and its central historical importance, probably the most revered figure among local Virginians was not that of Jefferson, but that of General Robert E Lee, whose name would always be followed by the sobriquet of “the finest gentleman who ever came out of the South”.

Lee was neither a supporter of slavery nor indeed of seccession, but as an honourable soldier felt duty bound to obey the wishes of his native state and to fight on behalf of the confederacy when the Commonwealth of Virginia voted to seccede from the US.