Lee’s army captured and enslaved free blacks in Pennsylvania and Maryland
Lee’s two invasions of the North, which ended at Antietam in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863, saw his army seize property from the people of both states. While living off of the land was common during the war – Northern armies frequently pillaged the lands through which they marched, often against orders – Lee’s troops seized free blacks and carried them back to Virginia as slaves, frequently in the service of the Army’s most senior commanders.
The abduction and enslavement of blacks were conducted by nearly every unit in Lee’s army and with the knowledge of the commander. This gives the lie to the often-told canard that the majority of Southern troops were not involved in slavery. While many southern soldiers did not own slaves, they participated in supporting what the South referred to as the “Peculiar Institution.” When some Confederate officers protested that the seized freedmen were adding to the logistical strains on the Army – more mouths to feed – Lee’s silence on the matter speaks volumes.
Lee’s attitude towards the black troops deployed by the Union army was expressed in an exchange of letters between Lee and Grant over a prisoner exchange, which would have benefited Lee by releasing badly needed troops to join his depleted battalions. Grant requested that black troops be exchanged under the same conditions as white. Lee replied, “…negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition.”
Throughout his life, Lee expressed his belief in the natural supremacy of whites over blacks. In the emancipated South following the Civil War Lee urged family and friends to hire white laborers whenever possible, over blacks. Lee offered his belief 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.”
It would seem Lee’s military leadership of the South was based on much more than his professed sense of honor over protecting his home state of Virginia from Northern aggression.