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Lee was a personally honorable man who fought valiantly and with great tactical skill. He fought for what he considered to be his primary political unit, his state. He considered his loyalty to be first to his state, then his nation. Many people in those days felt the same way.

But what did Virginia and the Confederacy stand for?

The split came because the south knew that if slavery did not extend to the territories, they would lose their power in Congress, and would eventually be outvoted and then lose the ability to control their way of life in the South. What was their way of life? Sitting on the veranda sipping cold beverages? Well, yes. Good manners and chivalrous behavior? Yes. A strong honor code? Yes. Love of family and loyalty to the extended clan? Yes.

An economic system based on two main cash crops, tobacco and cotton? Yes. An economic system that depended on slave labor in order to function? Yes. A system that the people who fought for the Confederacy fought to preserve from extinction through expansion of the Union into the west? Yes.

Did it matter that most people didn't own slaves although their economy was dependent on slavery? I don't know, did it matter to the Germans that most Americans don't own factories when we fought to defend free market capitalism against fascism? Our way of life, personal freedom, leads to a large middle class and a smaller group of very rich people who are among the best entrepreneurs, or who got lucky, or who were born to the right parents. In any event, we like our way of life, and have fought to protect it in recent generations even when we weren't the ones who controlled the economic levers.

So did Confederate soldiers. They liked their way of life in the south. They had a large degree of personal freedom, they had a cultural heritage, including but not limited to slavery and concern with social status, that differed significantly from the North's, and they weren't going to have Yankee values and moralizing imposed upon them. They had an economic system that they wanted to maintain, whether it benefitted them or not. Small farmers, artisans, backwoodsmen, merchants, professionals, all fought for their county, and their state. Their states fought to preserve the "freedom" of the southern states to oppose the gradual destruction of the insitution of slavery, which is what they saw coming in 1861. They knew they had to get out of the Union then or eventually be outvoted in Congress. So they got out. The North demurred, and war ensued.

We can argue until the cows come home over whether the Southern states had the legal right under the Constitution to secede. But the reason they wanted to secede was to preserve something that was inherently evil. And when Lee made his choice which side to fight for, he chose to lend his considerable talents to the forces that sought to preserve evil in this world. For that, he is still explaining his actions to his maker, who may or may not have forgiven him. The several hundred thousand dead American soldiers who Lee played a part in killing may not be so forgiving.

Being magnanimous in victory is different from honoring the cause of the loser. Eisenhower's correspondent understood this better than Eisenhower did. Lee should be remembered as a great general for an evil cause (like Rommel?), a man therefore of flawed character, a man who could not rise above the morays of his time to achieve a higher destiny. Like Lincoln did.