This assessment gauges students' sourcing skills. To answer the question correctly, students must identify and explain a weakness of congressional testimony from Robert E. Lee as evidence of the treatment of African Americans in the postbellum South by former Confederates. Students should understand that Lee’s loyalties may have still been with the Confederate cause, making him unlikely to candidly report white Southerners’ attitudes and actions toward African Americans to Congress, especially at a time when Congress was considering punitive actions toward states that had been part of the Confederacy.
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