Robert E. Lee would have wanted his statue (and others) removed. Heres why.

[ehrnst]

We know with near certainty how Lee would have reacted. He would have told the supremacists to shut up and go home, although he would have phrased it more politely. He would have told Charlottesville officials to remove his statue.

After his surrender to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, at the close of our nation’s bloody Civil War, Lee defied the illogic and passions of many of his fellow Southerners.

He publicly, repeatedly advised them to move past the war, embrace peace and become stellar citizens of the United States.

This directly contradicted the intentions of other leading Confederates, who urged Southern soldiers to hoard their weapons, melt into the hills and wage a never-ending guerrilla war.

Fortunately for all concerned, Lee was so beloved that his voice carried the day.

The late Kentuckian Charles Bracelen Flood, in his book “Lee: The Last Years,” writes that “conciliation was his creed. Lee knew that the war was over and that everything depended on a new attitude for a new day.”

When a man in Richmond, Va., solicited donations for a monument to honor Lee’s legendary comrade Stonewall Jackson, Lee declined to contribute.

In Flood’s words, “Lee believed that the erection of Confederate monuments would keep alive the wartime passions that he was trying to eradicate.”

http://www.kentucky.com/living/religion/paul-prather/article167095637.html

[FSogol]

1. Correct. Lee only did one thing that makes him worthy of remembering.

When he surrendered and lost, he quit the southern cause. He was urged to keep it going, but he declined. Unfortunately, all of the confederacy deplorables want to keep the cause going. They are frauds, fools, and completely in the wrong with their myths and should be treated as such.

From the VA Historical Society:

Lee's military career, which had started at West Point many years before, had ended, and his civilian life began when he returned to Richmond and his family on April 15th (1865). For the next two months Lee lived in a city busily rebuilding itself. That summer, he and his family escaped the chaotic atmosphere of the capital city and took up residence at Derwent, a house owned by Elizabeth Randolph Cocke west of Richmond in Powhatan County. There, Lee enjoyed life in the country and considered buying land and living out his remaining years as a farmer. Whatever happened, he had no desire to leave Virginia. "I cannot desert my native state in the hour of her adversity," he remarked to a friend. "I must abide her fortune, and share her fate."

The solitude did not last long. The trustees of Washington College in Lexington, then looking for a new president, decided that Lee was the perfect choice. He had been superintendent of West Point earlier in his military career, and more importantly, he had a very recognizable name in 1865. The college, mired in financial difficulties, needed a prominent person to help raise funds. At first Lee hesitated, but on the advice of friends and family he eventually accepted the position. He wrote to the trustees that he believed, "it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony."

http://www.vahistorical.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/robert-e-lee-after-war

[dalton99a]

2. They built him statues anyway