Yesterday’s melee in Washington provides good reason to honor Robert E. Lee because he demonstrated how he maintained dignity in defeat while convincing many resentful Southerners to reconcile with their former enemies. At the end of the War Between the States in 1865 he had as much reason as any Southerner to reject reconciliation, but he didn’t do that. To the contrary he promoted reconciliation for the sake of the entire country.
Shortly after Lee died in 1870 his family gave biographer J. William Jones personal access to Lee’s letters in the family’s possession. Of this time Jones wrote, “When I had the privilege . . . of examining his private letter-book, I found it literally crowded with letters advising his old soldiers and others to submit to all authorities and become law abiding citizens.” In one letter Lee wrote, “The interests of Virginia are the same as those of the United States. Its prosperity will rise or fall with the welfare of the country.”
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