Quote Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus View Post
From Lee's individual experience he was probably right - the black slaves he encountered probably were better off overall than blacks in Africa, despite being slaves.
What? How would one arrive at such a conclusion? Do you mean that in the sense that he only heard crazy racist stories about how terrible they had it in Africa or something like that? Was he unable to ask them whether they preferred picking cotton over their lives in Africa?
It sounds incredibly naive even or especially for the time. You usually don't chain, supervise and threaten with death (for fleeing) people whose lives you just improved...then again slaves in the US weren't seen as people but property...