Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , [Nonetheless, the increasingly shrill tone of the abolitionists and the attitude of the North’s majority population worried Lee, as it did many Southerners. He also owned human property and believed that a master/slave relationship was the best that could be expected between the races. A multiracial society with egalitarian overtones was not just unattractive to Lee, it was unthinkable. Most Americans, including Abraham Lincoln, agreed. Lee had specific reasons, however, to fear an uncontrolled black populace. In the late 1850s, while executor of the large Custis estate, he had faced a group of slaves who resisted his authority, possibly with the encouragement of local abolitionists. The slaves had been freed by his father-in-law, in a messy will. Recently discovered court records show that Lee aggravated the situation by trying to postpone the bondsmen’s liberation. Believing they were entitled to their freedom, and alarmed at the way Lee was breaking up their families by hiring the able-bodied far from Arlington, the slaves banded together and tried to overpower him physically, shouting that they were as free as he was. Angered by the slaves’ defiance, Lee resorted to increasingly harsh measures to maintain control.]