At least you do not want to condone the Orwellian erasure of history.

Didn't you once write that you thought General Lee was a great American figure?

Egregiously, you want to fault those who lived more than 200 years ago for not following the politically-correct fashions of 2017.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century figures should not be judged by currently fashionable opinions, but rather by what honorable men during the time in which they lived.

As you know, racism per se was not even an issue then.  In 1780 those opposing slavery thought, as Lincoln clearly did in 1858, that blacks were manifestly inferior to whites intellectually and morally.  Lincoln, Madison, Monroe, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, et al were all honorable men by their contemporary standards.  To pillory them with 2017 political correctness and expediency is completely ridiculous, but it serves the interests of the Alinsky, Orwellian, alt-Left who believe that they must control everything, even historical thought.