Whether or not Lee was a great general has no bearing on the fact that he was a traitor. He should have been hanged and his estate liquidated and distributed to ex-slaves. He most certainly should not be memorialized in sculpture or lauded by the President of the United States.
Yes, I’m sure all those people with torches giving the Nazi salute and shouting “Blood and soil” were just there to make a point about generalship.
You’d have to ask his wife about that. But Martha Custis Lee is long dead, so his penile dimensions will remain a mystery.
You meant “hanged,” and you’re wrong.
His estate was confiscated, and is now the site of Arlington National Cemetery.
Oops. Hanged.
By estate, I mean the common, all-inclusive definition: “all the money and property owned by a particular person, especially at death.” Lee was left with money and prestige. He was able to buy land and was quickly employed as the president of Washington College.
So, not wrong.
And yes, hanged. He was a traitor and was personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of American citizens in the name of preserving slavery.
I cannot believe he took Biden’s bait. I guess he’s that stupid. Or it’s all about that base.
On a side note, my theory is that Biden is in the race precisely to provide cover for all the other Ds against whatever bile Trump spews. He’ll drop out eventually but for now, Trump sees Biden as a rival old white camera loving crowd seeking motor mouth (no offense to Biden, who is much more tolerable at those things that Trump).
Your simplistic view of very complex issues speaks poorly of you.
The national authorities of the period disagreed with that approach, and were more concerned with reuniting the nation that with punitive measures against those whom they defeated.
Magnanimity can be a far more potent tool than punishment.
Thanks for the ad hominem attack. It added a lot to our discussion.
There are virtually no legitimate historians alive today who would claim that the handling of Reconstruction was done properly. Magnanimity got us Jim Crow, red lining, and the industrial prison complex, along with myriad other problems.
I’m sure Donald Trump Jr agrees with that. We may have to ask Mueller if Junior’s smart enough to understand the word magnanimity. 
That was not an ad hom attack. I spoke about your viewpoint—not you personally.
And I wasn’t talking about Reconstruction—just about the surrender terms, which were magnanimous and appropriate.
Reconstruction would have been far different if Lincoln had not been assassinated.
Ah…donnie really likes those fine people. I guess he carries a torch for them.
Not possible. I used words of more than one syllable.
“Robert E. Lee, a great general”
I presume he’s talking about the same General Lee who lost the Civil War, right?
Yes, that Lee. Widely recognized as one of the best military tacticians of his day.
Even great generals make mistakes and lose.
Your comment was meant to attack my ability to understand complexity. Call it what you will, it was uncalled for and inaccurate.
You might be interested in reading Blair’s take on leniency toward the rebels.
Ironically, the lenient approach allowed Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders to become heroic figures to later generations of Americans of all sections, said Blair, citing words written by Union Gen. George Thomas in 1868: “The crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand-in-hand with the defenders of the (U.S.) Government.”
Says something about his poll numbers when he needs to bring this one back up.
Like a ginger hairball.
Huh. Didn’t know that. Interesting bit of trivia and somehow seems to balance the scales a bit.
Nice that you believe that thousands of Southerners should have been put to death for their beliefs.
That’s one historian’s story. Others disagree.
And hindsight is a great thing.
Yep. The guy that rebelled against the Union because he believed that brown-skinned humans could and should be the property of whites.
I agree.