However when I went back to see if you discussed the Robert E Lee quote or article it was not posted. Anyway here is the quote by Lee concerning the building of monuments.
“I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered,”
Cern, good quote by Lee. Correct, I did not discuss the quote. My comments were that I had posted in agreement to Lee's stance on statues prior to your post.
Anyway, a few years back I read "Grants Final Victory"( Great book), a book about his last year of life. That lead me to read his memoirs (Long books!) which lead me to "Read "Lee, The Last Years" (Good book). The Lee book covers Appomattox through his death.
Tidbit: Lee's wife Julia was a direct descendant of Martha Washington through her first husband, Daniel Custis. That is where his slaves came from. The land at Arlington Cemetery and it's mansion was her ancestral home which was confiscated by the North when the war started.
My reflection from the book was that he was an honorable man who worked hard after the war to rebuild the South and rebuild the nation. He was 63 at Appomattox and back in those days, that was old. He is perhaps the most revered historical figure in the South.
IMO, the key part of the quote is the second part, "to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered".
There are clearly still wounds from that War that have not been healed and I think we all agree that violent protest will not heal them.
I will post separately about how secession shows that slavery was also a fundamental issue for the founding fathers. In short, the FF went along with slavery and put provisions in the constitution to protect it.
I abhor slavery. We all learn history in grade school. We tend to have this noble vision of George Washington and the cherry tree, and Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, et al. When you start to really dig into, you see that the reality was that our historical figures were really no different from our political leaders today. They had their own issues of day and the fought each other with just as much vitriol as we see today. I despise that fact that the original Constitution protected slavery. Was it done as a compromise necessary to form the Union.
Who knows?
I have recently posted critically of Trump's handling of the Charllottesville. I stand by that criticism. However, part of the criticism included the "Dead Right" notion. While he should have immediately denounced the "Unite the Right" protesters, to think that alone would put this issue to rest is naive.
We have much more work to do to eradicate racism, bigotry, hatred, etc.
