We may find a figure rising above the turmoil of history to legendary status. All well and good as long as we see that figure clearly.
Once such example is the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Pictured mostly as a noble figure and often excused by Confederate apologists, we must not forget not only what he did, the good and the bad, but not forget what he himself said he was fighting for, thus:
(quoted in Shelby Foote’s The Civil War) “In view of the vast increase of the forces of the enemy, of the savage and butal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution {and} our social system from destruction, let every effort be made, every means be employed, to fill and maintain the ranks of our armies, until God in his mercy shall bless us with the establishment of our independence.”
Knowing little of Lee, I will here imagine the way those underlined and highlighted words would have been understood in the ensuing post-war years in the White South.