Events over the last year have seen the removal of statues of Robert E. Lee, and why they were erected in the first place has been ignored and mischaracterized. Here is how he reacted to political and military defeat.
Lee most likely did not vote for Abraham Lincoln (Lee was Whig and probably voted for Bell and Everett), but Lee continued to serve in the U.S. Army after Lincoln was elected. Lee continued to serve after Lincoln was inaugurated. In this, he showed how to react to his preferred candidate losing an election. He was so well thought of that the Lincoln administration offered him command of the Union army. Republican Francis Blair, at Lincoln’s request, offered command of the Union armies. In response, Lee said, “Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State?' (R. E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman, vol. 1, p. 635.)
Only after Lincoln called for troops to invade the states and overthrow the elected state governments (and Virginia withdrew from the Union in response action), did Lee resign.
Lee did not support secession. The morning after secession ordinance was passed by the Virginia Convention, Lee said, “I must say that I am one of those dull creatures that cannot see the good of secession.” (R. E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman, vol. 1, p. 439.)
Yet, when the Virginia Convention voted to leave the Union, Lee’s side (opponents of secession) lost, but went with the majority of his native state anyway.
In 1865, when further conventional military resistance was futile, Lee declined to disband the Army of Northern Virginia and fight on as guerillas. Instead, he surrendered to Grant, and agreed to desist from fighting. To a professor at Washington College who bad-mouthed Ulysses Grant, Lee said, ”Sir, if you ever presume again to speak disrespectfully of General Grant in my presence, either you or I will sever his connection with this university.” (Gamaliel Bradford, Lee the American, p. 226) After the war, Lee said, “Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans.” In August, 1865, Lee wrote, “I think it the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony, and in no way to oppose the policy of the State or General (i.e. Federal) Government directed to that object. It is particularly incumbent on those charged with the instruction of the young to set them an example of submission to authority.” (Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, vol. 4, p. 228.)
We have redefined Lee’s legacy and recharacterized why monuments were erected to him, but on Lee’s birthday, I wonder if Trump and his supporters might have benefited from his example.