NamSouth

[btownsend]

1. His father instructed him:

"Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practice its precepts... by agreeing to this duty."
Richard Henry Lee, President of Continental Congress and Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Memoir of the Life of Richard Henry Lee and His Correspondence With the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe (Philadelphia: H.C. Carey and I. Lea, 1825), Vol. I, pp. 17-19.
The first speech of Richard Henry Lee in the House of Burgesses

Lee taught his daughter:

"In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race......"
Letter to his wife in 1856

Mary Custis in turn:

Was arrested for sitting with blacks on a Washington train in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Cleveland Gazette June 21, 1902

Lee was "The most stainless of living commanders."
Philip Stanhope Worsley. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, England

2. Massachusetts invalidated the British commercial system, which Virginia resisted from abhorrence of the slave-trade. Never before had England pursued the traffic in Negroes with such eager avarice. The remonstrances of philanthropy and of the colonies were unheeded, and categorical instructions from the (British) Board of Trade kept every American port open as markets for men. The Legislature of Virginia had repeatedly showed a disposition to obstruct the commerce; a deeply-seated public opinion began more and more to avow the evils and he injustice of slavery itself; and in 1761, it was proposed to suppress the importation of Africans by a prohibitory duty. Among those who took part in the long and violent debate was

Richard Henry Lee, the representative of Westmoreland

who was descended from one of the oldest families in Virginia, he had been educated in England and had returned to his native land familiar with the spirit of Grotius and Cudworth, of Locke and Montesquieu; his first recorded speech was against Negro slavery, in behalf of human freedom. In the continued importation of slaves, he foreboded danger to the political and moral interests of the Old Dominion; an increase of the free Anglo-Saxons he argued, would foster arts and varied agriculture, while a race doomed to abject bondage was of necessity an enemy to social happiness.

He painted from ancient history the horrors of servile insurrections. He deprecated the barbarous atrocity of the trade with Africa, and its violation of the equal rights of men created like ourselves in the image of God. Christianity, thus he spoke in conclusion, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of universal benevolence and brotherly love, happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practice its precepts, and by agreeing to this duty, pay a proper regard to our rue interests and to the dictates of justice and humanity.

The tax for which Lee raised his voice was carried through the Assembly of Virginia by a majority of one; but from England a negative followed with certainty every colonial act tending to diminish the (British) slave-trade.

South Carolina, also appalled by the great increase of its black population, endeavored by its own laws to restrain the importation of slaves, and in like manner came into collision with the same British policy.
(History of the United States, George Bancroft, Brown, Little and Company, 1856, pp. 421-422)