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So is it your opinion, when discussing history, we are to skip the "unpleasant" parts for fear our words may be somehow taken as an "aspersion" for some living person?

Certainly not. What you need to skip is the half-baked, unfounded, hubristic moral judgments as to the character of the players. One of the principal differences between a true historian and a propagandist, is that the true historian spares the reader the moral judgments. Sanctimony is better left to demagogues and quacks. Those who truly seek the "Light," are quite content to leave "Judgment" to the Lord.

It diminishes the character of George Washington, not in the slightest, that he had slaves. On the other hand, we all owe him our gratitude, for furnishing his own domestic staff from Mount Vernon, and not sticking the public with the bill, when he became President.

It diminishes the character of Robert E. Lee not in the slightest, that even though he personally declined to own slaves, he led the troops that arrested the sociopathic abolitionist, John Brown, who was tried and hung; or that when Virginia was threatened, he resigned his position in the United States Army, to defend his homeland.

William Flax

What you need to skip is the half-baked, unfounded, hubristic moral judgments as to the character of the players.

My original question to you was to show me some examples of that on this forum (goof balls like stand watie excluded) and you said you could not recall any. Now you say the opposite?

If your condemnation is against the popular (leftist) press or Hollywood stereotypes, take it up with them. Nether points of view are represented or respected here.

My only reason to participate in these Civil War threads is to refute the totally distorted history engaged in by seminar posters who have an abundance of "regional pride" and very little actual knowledge of the history they claim to be intimate with via genetic heritage. Add to that trolls representing various radical neo secessionist and white supremest factions who infiltrate this forum from time to time masquerading as "Southern Patriots" and it can sometimes get busy.

I'd add, as a whiskey, I like Bourbon straight, sting and all. And I like my history the same way. There is no need to sugar coat anything for me. The bite of human foibles and flaws makes it all the more interesting and important. It's only about what happened.

BTW. I also add that IMO, George Washington was the GREATEST American ever. No one else has ever come close.

That he was also a slave owner has no bearing on his greatness, and in fact in a place and time when slavery was a the norm, his growing realization of the fundamental philosophical and moral conflict between human servitude and the cause of human liberty for which he risked everything, is all the more reason to admire him. If only others had been as dedicated to those principles as he, we would likely not even be having this discussion.

Eighty years later, the founders of the Confederacy saw slavery not as a conflict to the principles of liberty, but as the foundation of their philosophy of government and societal structure, and the very cornerstone of their "nation". They said so without embarrassment when they directly refuted the words of the Declaration and called the Founders misguided in proclaiming "all men". They were not shamed by slavery. They celebrated it as a positive good.