The Honorable Foe

""I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man," Kelly said in an interview on Fox News on Monday evening. "He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it's different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.""
John Kelly (General (Ret.))

Being white (Yankee, but white), I can agree at some level with Gen. Kelly: Robert E. Lee WAS a gentleman (within the standards of his time). And, until he joined the Confederacy, he was also a gentleman by act of Congress. :-)

And the Civil War WAS a failure of compromise.

Big states and little states, industrial states and agricultural states, northern states and southern states, had already come close to war a number of times post-revolution.

One caveat is that where Robert E. Lee was in many respects an admirable human being (as were many of his officers and soldiers), he gallantly fought for - as General Grant, who certainly respected him, said - the worst cause for which people have ever fought.

Such was the tragedy of the Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln came to see as God's judgment on a South with the institution of slavery AND A NORTH which trafficked in the slave trade.

And while there HAD been many compromises - often brilliant ones - from the writing of the Declaration of Independence to firing on Fort Sumter, in the end compromise on slavery was impossible and the Civil War, as I believe Churchill said, was the most sadly necessary war in history.


Trump's chief of staff calls Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee an 'honorable man' (6ABC)