I disagree with keeping statues of Confederate generals erected in parks and city centers.

Robert E. Lee gets much attention because he was such an honorable general, loved by his troops and respected by his enemies.

Virginia held its own convention in regards to secession; they voted against it in the beginning of April 1861. Lee was even offered the position as head of the Union Army. When Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called out the troops in all the states that had not seceded to stop the rebellion. Then, Virginia had another vote and seceded, after the war had started. In the western counties, they decided to remain in the Union, I believe because in that part of the state slavery was not as popular. Hence, West Virginia.

Why I support removing statues we see in the South is not based on my belief that the generals of the South were horrible human beings. The fact is that even with some of the heroic exploits in the Mexican War by these southern generals, including Lee, their real claim to fame is fighting in a war that not only supported slavery, but was basically fought to preserve it —slavery based on the pigment of the skin. It was an insidious evil.

Most of these statues were erected after reconstruction in the early 1900s, when Jim Crow and the KKK had re-emerged. These statues should be in museums, battlefields, and cemeteries. These men should not be honored, they should be remembered.

Mick Sheldon
Kingston