““Lee had a low opinion of black abilities, and thought that Virginia would be better off it its freed black population now migrated south into the Cotton States. On the other hand, four years before the war he had written, “Slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country,” and in a postwar conversation he was to say, “I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished.””
![“[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. —W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America For” quote by Michelle Alexander](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/fdb/michelle-alexander-750_time_t-he-slave-went-free-stood-a-brief-momen_96485.jpg)
