I guess that depends on what you consider inexcusable. The colluding of the industrial northern states to destroy the economy of the agrarian southern states was contemptible if not inexcusable. When the southern states found that their constitutional state sovereignty was being eroded and the balance of the congress was becoming stacked against them to their detriment, they decided the only course of action that left them the sovereignty and representation that they had fought in 1776 to obtain was to secede.
You call Lee a traitor because the south lost. If a few key battles in the 1770's had turned out slightly differently, you would be referring to George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, etc as traitors and Benedict Arnold as a hero.
If the south had won, the USA and CSA would probably be strong allies today (like the USA and Britain) and would also probably still be the "superpowers" that the USA is. Slavery would still have been abolished, though probably a generation later than it was, and racial relations would probably have improved more quickly than they did with southerners acting out of civility rather than having Washington dictate policies to them. (just my humble opinions)
If the CSA would have won, don't you think they would have tried to take over the North?
GW and the rest -were- traitors. What else is new?
Walt
You can't show this in the record.
Walt