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Robert E. Lee had a successful military career in the U.S. Army, but he tended to identify himself as a Virginian and sympathized with the interests of the slaveholding South. His views on slavery reflected a mixture of misgivings about the impact of slavery on whites and a belief that the institution was the best that could be done for Blacks so long as they lived in the United States. He never doubted white supremacy; he blamed abolitionists for the controversy over slavery.