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Originally Posted by Kevin
Here's an outstanding article in the Atlantic about Lee. Worth a read if you still think he was in any sense a decent human being.
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I tend to think that "in any sense" goes a bit too far. I won't deny at all his shortcomings or his significant moral failures, nor the consequences of them.
But like most of us, he was a mix of good and bad. There are very few people who I would deny were "in any sense a decent human being." I can't put Lee in the same category as Caligula, Hitler or Pol Pot, nor do I think history suggests that I should.
To suggest that he wasn't decent in any way is not accurate, I don't think. And I think it's the mirror image of the mistake of making him the noble hero that the Lost Cause myth does. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in the middle.
I wonder what would have happened had he lived longer—whether any development might have been seen in his views. Who knows?