Could you each post your sources please?
Anyone else posting anything as a fact should include their sources too.

Robert E. Lee opposed Confederate monuments. You can read all about it in his own words–a simple search returns plenty of information.

Robert E. Lee owned slaves. A handful from his own family, and he controlled the 200 or so slaves that his father-in-law left to Lee & his wife for a 5 year period. Lee went to court to try and extend that period for his own benefit, but lost and was forced to free those slave in 1863.

Facts matter.

“It’s often forgotten that Lee himself, after the Civil War, opposed monuments, specifically Confederate war monuments,” said Jonathan Horn, the author of the Lee biography, “The Man Who Would Not Be Washington.”

“Lee believed countries that erased visible signs of civil war recovered from conflicts quicker,” Horn said. “He was worried that by keeping these symbols alive, it would keep the divisions alive.”

Prescient.

Re: Robert E Lee “didn’t own slaves”

John Reeves, a historian and author of the book, “The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon,” said the claim about Lee is false.

“Between owning a handful of slaves from his own family and then managing his father-in-law’s 200 slaves, Lee was very, very involved with slavery during his life up until the end of 1862,” he said.

Reeves explained that Lee worked the slaves for about five years in order to pay off legacies associated with his father-in-law’s estate. “He was utilizing the slave labor in order to pay the legacies,” Reeves explained.

Lee wanted to work the slaves beyond the five-year limit stated in his father-in-law’s will. Lee fought in court to keep the slaves working because he didn’t know if he would be able to pay off his legacies.

Facts matter.

Come now, that is a silly question. Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

If it isn’t delegated or prohibited to the states, the power belongs to the state. (States don’t have rights, only powers. People are also included, so they had the right under the Tenth Amendment.)

“The Confederate government was established in February 1861 which was considered illegal by the United States federal government and soon after formed a Militia that eventually attacked the Union Fort Sumter and thus started the Civil War.”

They obviously didn’t really consider it illegal because they acted in ways lawful only if the states had ceased to be part of the Union.

They formed West Virginia out of Virginia without Virginia’s consent. That was not Constitutional if Virginia was still part of the United States of America.(Article 4, secction 3 ” no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.”)

They passed and ratified the amendment ending slavery and granting rights to former slaves which would not have been lawful if the Confederate states were still part of the union. In fact, they made approval of those amendments a requirement for readmission into the union. Until we did so, we were just conquered territory.They could do that also under Article 4, section 3 “The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States;”

(That wasn’t how Lincoln saw it, but they killed him so he didn’t figure into matters after 1865.)

So to keep it simple: Certain states withdrew from the union and got our butts whipped. To regain any standing other than losers, we agreed to decent amendments which we would not have accepted had we been full members of the union.

This was a good thing. Slavery was a bad thing. It took the secession to

The problem is that some people just can’t handle victory.

David for accurate civics education