[x]

I'm not convinced that Lee's duty required taking up arms against the country he'd taken an oath to years before. As a child, I accepted that in some way Lee thought of Virginia as his "country," but that doesn't look like a very convincing argument now. I don't say that he should have fought against his neighbors, but the alternative wasn't war against those he'd served with.

Moreover, let's say that Lee did put duty first and suppressed contrary inclinations. What was the result? The war was prolonged. More men died. And the destruction of the South was greater than it otherwise would have been.

Had Lee sat on his hands, some people have said, the war would have ended after two or three years with much less loss of life and property. What survives is Lee's personal moral example, rather than any benefit to Virginia. So in a strange way, the course described as selfless was worse for the community than for Lee as an individual.

That may have been what Henry Adams was getting at when he said, perhaps in response to his brother, Charles Francis Adams, who eulogized and idolized Lee, "It was all the worse that he was a good man, had a good character, and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm."

[Alberta's Child]

Everything you've said there about Lee would also apply to Lincoln.