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...