Robert E. Lee Confederate statue in Charlottesville melted down

Context is quite a subject.

Lincoln, elsewhere on slavery[0]:

    This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. I think Slavery is wrong, morally, and politically.

And Lee, further on in the quote you provided (from a New York Times article[1]):

    (But he (Lee) added that slavery was) “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race” in the United States, and that the “painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction.”

And also on the subject of monuments:

    The general did, however, object to the idea of raising Confederate monuments, writing in 1869[2] that it would be wiser “not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife.”

The narrative you appear to be trying to paint here, that Lincoln was the real racist between the two, presumably in service of implying that there is some hypocrisy in tearing down Lee's monuments but not Lincoln's, isn't historically accurate. Both saw slavery as a moral evil. But Lee was a slave owner and traitor fighting for a government dedicated to the preservation of slavery, despite having some vague hope that maybe eventually the whole unfortunate business might end somehow, and Lincoln, who never owned slaves, actually did something about it.

Which is why Lincoln, for all of his faults, gets his face on Mount Rushmore and the penny and his own monument and the other guy gets melted into slag, and there is no moral paradox in doing so.

[0]https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/robert-e-lee-slaves.ht...

[2]http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?sou...

Snopes has an article on this topic, at https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-and-lees-views-on-... .

> Claim: A meme accurately reflects Abraham Lincoln's and Robert E. Lee's views on slavery.

> Rating: False

Concerning the quote by Lincoln, in the full letter:

"Lincoln drew a clear distinction between what he felt his political duty required of him (i.e., preservation of the Union and not a forced, unilateral abolition of slavery) and what his personal viewpoint on the slavery issue was (i.e., a "wish that all men every where could be free").

Concerning the supposed quote by Lee (which you have modified!) it was recounted by the Rev. Dr. Leyburn:

"Even this passage, which does not match the quote attributed to Lee above, is problematic in several ways: primarily that the purported conversation was witnessed by no one other than the person who reported it, that it was not disclosed until some sixteen years after the fact, and that Lee was long dead by the time it emerged and thus could not confirm or deny it. Moreover, even if it were correctly reported, we can't determine at this remove whether it truly reflected Lee's beliefs at the time, or whether it was part a post-war effort by Lee to resurrect his reputation in the North."

Further, "“[Lee] was not a pro-slavery ideologue,” Eric Foner, a Civil War historian, author and professor of history at Columbia University, said of Lee. “But I think equally important is that, unlike some white southerners, he never spoke out against slavery.”"

That viewpoint is quite different from Lincoln's, who was publicly anti-slavery: "I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free."

EDIT: Leyburn's letter is at https://archive.org/details/sim_century-illustrated-monthly-... . You can see he's already pushing the false revisionist narrative that the Civil war was not about slavery:

> After dwelling with emphasis and with feeling on this point, the General then introduced another topic which also moved him deeply, viz., the persistent manner in which the leading Northern journals, and the Northern people generally, insisted that the object of the war had been to secure the perpetuation of slavery. On this point he seemed not only indignant, but hurt. He said it was not true.

I would not trust that letter any more than I trust the claim Darwin renounced evolution on his deathbed.

> Destroying art whether it be books, paintings, sculptures, or otherwise is emotionally reactionary at best and totalitarian at worst.

You must surely understand that isn't true.

I destroy art pretty often. I've thrown away old books. I've tossed art posters I no longer find interesting. I've junked sculptures that were past their prime, and sculptures in old awards I no longer wanted to keep.

Parents often throw away the art their small kids made.

Architecture is art - can we no longer destroy buildings?

Industrial design is art - can I no longer throw away old equipment?

You can't really think only the creators of those works have the right to destroy it.

I suppose you'll argue that mass-produced art is different. As a reminder, many of the Civil War statues (not necessarily this one) were mass-produced in the early 1900s, and again in the 1950s, by reactionary white supremacists spreading a false narrative. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues...

But even with a unique piece of art, we can look to the infamous story of the statue of Juan de Oñate in New Mexico. Its foot was cut off to highlight Oñate's massacre of 800 citizens of Acoma Pueblo, and the foot amputation of 24 of the survivors.

How would that be "emotionally reactionary" or "totalitarian"? I think it adds to the art, as a reminder of the actual history.