Actually, a lot of people at the time had issues with slavery! At an absolute bare minimum, 3.9 million enslaved people in the United States probably had some s

Actually, a lot of people at the time had issues with slavery! At an absolute bare minimum, 3.9 million enslaved people in the United States probably had some strong critiques to level against the existing system of slavery and Lee's decision to commit treason in defense of that system. Of course, Robert Lee didn't consider those people to be humans, with full human rights. And similarly, when you ignore their humanity, and you ignore the historical record of abolitionists from the United States and all over the rest of the world, it becomes a lot easier to pretend that anger at the continued celebration of someone who committed treason in defense of slavery is somehow based on shifting modern mores. The post-war stuff isn't being ignored; it just doesn't matter. The value of "painting him as a bad man" is that he was a bad man, who did horrible things, for horrible reasons, and people like your family still think he was actually a great hero. Even in the language you use, you imply that you don't actually think he was that bad, and you definitely are suggesting that opening a school later in life somehow mitigates leading the military arm of a rebellion in defense of slavery. It really, really doesn't!