Regarding The Flap Over Confederate Statues

[Rev. Rye]

I don't think any of that justifies maintaining statues of him on public grounds. Wherever his loyalties lay, we may be sure that his loyalty to his home state led him to taking up arms in service to an odious cause ... unlike Jefferson.

Put the statues in a museum.

Davis' cause was not exactly Lee's cause. Though no abolitionist, he did not seem to have any particular investment in the perpetuation of slavery, and even hoped that some day it would be abolished (although he expected that God would take his sweet-ass time on that). He even had his own slaves freed in 1862 (admittedly as part of his father-in-law's will), something even Thomas Jefferson failed to do. In the last days of the war, he even lobbied to allow the Confederate Army to allow black soldiers in combat. The war ended before they saw action. Useful idiot, perhaps, but I think "taking up arms in service of an odious cause" might be over-stretching it a bit, since it implies a sort of unanimity of purpose that simply isn't in the historical record.