After the Civil War several newspapers carried an article head-lined “Robert E. Lee — Woman Whipper.” But we're getting ahead of the story.
A couple of months before Lee would be called to suppress John Brown's Raid at Harpers Ferry (Oct. 16-18, 1859) he was at Arlington, on leave from the army, acting as executor of the estate of his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis. A pair of letters to the editor appeared in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune on June 24th 1859, under the title “Some Facts that Should Come to Light” accusing Col. Lee of whipping run-away slaves over whom he had authority as executor. Their most salacious claim being that when Lee's slave-whipper refused to whip a girl captive, “Mr. Lee himself administered the thirty and nine lashes to her.”
A letter writer calling himself “Justice” argues against that claim on June 5 in the N.Y. Tribune under the title “Col. Lee and His Slaves” . He points out that Custis's will allowed 5 years after his death, in 1857, before the slaves had to be freed. He makes no objection to the claim that the re-captured escapees had been beaten.
Lee gave no public reaction to this story but commented on it in a letter to his son G. W. Custis Lee in which he told the story this way:
I do not know that you have been told that George, Wesly and Mary Norris, absconded some months ago, were captured in Maryland, making their way to Pennsylvania, brought back, and are now hired out in lower Virginia. ... The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy. -- Letter from R. E. Lee to G. W. Custis Lee, August 19, 1859.
Lee recounted the story of the run-away slaves, giving their names, (George, Wesly and Mary Norris) and made no claim not to have had them whipped for their transgression. He complains only that G. W. P. Custis left him “an unpleasant legacy.”
After the war in 1866, Wesley Norris wrote his own eye-witness account. It appeared in the The National Anti-Slavery Standard on April 14, 1866. He recounts how he, his cousin George and his sister Mary escaped Arlington under the impression that they were properly free and being wrongly held by Col. Lee. They were re-captured and whipped at the order of Col. Lee.
“...we had already reached Westminster, in Maryland, on our way to the North, when we were apprehended and thrown into prison, and Gen. Lee notified of our arrest; we remained in prison fifteen days, when we were sent back to Arlington; we were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.” -- Robert E. Lee. His Brutality To His Slaves in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 14, 1866.
In 1866, newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Saint Cloud Democrat and the Cleveland Daily Leader carried articles entitled Gen. Lee a Woman Whipper. which included the quotation from Wesley Norris above and concluded:
“A Woman Whipper A Christian Gentleman!”
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To hear these documents read-out by Ron Codrington, view Controversy Over Robert E Lee's Alleged Treatment of Arlington Slaves in Life on the Civil War Research Trail:
Read also Was Robert E. Lee a "Woman Whipper"? by John Reeves appearing in 2018.
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