Violence in Charlottesville

[Montmorency]

Various defences can, and have, been mounted for this but any such defence would equally apply to Lee et al.

No, it would not. That's fundamentally wrong deontology.

In fact, the natures of the US at the time, which described itself as "Theses United States" and not "THE UNITED STATES" as it would after the war gives Lee's defection greater credibility. The individual States voluntarily acceded to the US on the basis of a democratic vote. A basic principle of Common Law is that which is not prohibited is licit. Ergo, if there was nothing in the US Constitution prohibiting secession (and there wasn't) then secession was legal.

Also wrong. Secession is naturally extralegal or a-legal. It constitutes a repudiation of the existing legal and judicial apparatus. Secession cannot be either legal or illegal, regardless of what is or isn't in the books. It is entirely, in terms you understand, a matter of either coercion by the secessionist state(s) or acknowledgment by the parent state. Why should the Confederacy have been acknowledged?

There is a very strong argument that, in fact, the US Government was in the wrong and was only able to carry the day through force of arms, as opposed to the force of Law.

As you have so commonly pointed out in threads on the Middle East, force of arms is sometimes the only recourse to resolve wrongs.

The fact that Washington allowed this narrative to be fostered in the immediate aftermath of the war is tacit acknowledgement that the South had the legal, if not the moral, Right in the dispute.

So, their failure to use force on the South after the war? Your legal argument would have to be that the Union violated the legal rights of the South in fighing them - but as there is no such thing as a right to secession, what rights would have been violated? The actions of the Confederacy brought the two sides into a state of war, which the Union then prosecuted to its conclusion.

Allowing Lee to be lionised was an act of reconciliation, tearing him down is an act of divisive modern politics.

Keeping them up is, and always has been, an act of divisive modern politics. If Germany had erected statues to Hitler following WW2, you would oppose their removal on the grounds that to do so now would be divisive? Hell yes it had better be divisive, to draw out those who do not deserve a seat at the table. Their continued presence is a constant source of tension that must be resolved one way or another, and to not do so is neither reconciliatory or justifiable.

Unlike other Southern figures Lee did not really support slavery, even though he supported the right of the South to practice it and his position before and during the war is compatible with support for abolition afterwards. God gave the North victory despite the South having the legal argument - ergo God ordained the abolition of slavery against man's law.

He supported the validity of the institution and its necessity with respect to black people existing in America. That he was not an avowed expansionist looking for Lebensraum does not do him very great credit here. EDIT: And after the war, Lee held as a tacit precondition for "reconciliation" that emancipated blacks not be given equal standing in society, which would poison their relationship with the White race. No more false reconciliation off the blacks thrown under the bus.

Every major American figure prior to the Civil War will have in some way have benefited from the slave trade. If they themselves did not support it they will still have had tangential benefit from it because of the structure of the US economy at the time.

That's would be the position of the Left. Their solution is to dismantle white supremacy and accord full citizenship to minorities. It does not mean that 'everyone was the same then'.

Retroactively demonising Lee means Demonising the Founding Fathers, which undercuts their right to state a Civil war for Independence, which undermines the foundation of the United States.

We return to the wrong deontology, and it's a really defective one. Lee should not be repudiated merely because he was a slaver, but because he was a traitor and fought to maintain slavery in America. That the Founding Fathers were themselves traitors does not place them on a level with Lee, as though all treason were equal. It is not.