Robert E. Lee and George Washington do not equate, says Lee biographer Jonathan Horn

[Machiavelli]

Randy Dotinga
The Christian Science Monitor
September 7, 2017

In the heat of the debate over Confederate monuments, the names of two generals – Robert E. Lee and George Washington – were linked...

Historian Jonathan Horn, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, explains why the two men should not be equated in the title of his well-received 2015 book The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee's Civil War and His Decision that Changed American History...

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[skeeter]

I'm certain the radical left and their scrawny meth addled shock troops will find Mr Horn's well reasoned argument compelling and leave monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Christopher Columbus, etc etc. alone.

[Wingnut]

[Smokin Joe]

I think part of the problem is the perception of what is a "State" antebellum versus today.

I also believe that Washington did not have to choose between Virginia and a government with which it was at odds. Oh, wait. He did.
It is just that that government was across the Atlantic, not the Potomac.

Lee had served the Army of the United States honorably.
But when called to turn his back on his native Virginia and side against the land of his birth, he would not.
Only the idea of a "State" as the watered down rubberstamp for an outrageously overreaching Federal Government muddies the water, here.
In Lee's day, the Federal government was a Federal one, not a National Government like it is today. Yes, there is a difference.