Trump’s statement is, of course, breathtakingly historically inaccurate. He claims that President Lincoln wanted Lee to command the North, “in which case the war would have been over in one day. Robert E. Lee instead chose the other side because of his great love of Virginia, and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war.”
No, Donald, Lee’s decision to side with the South wasn’t just out of love for the state of Virginia, but his love of the slave economy, which he, a notoriously violent slave-owner, benefitted from and hoped to continue to benefit from. And Lee’s “commitment to reunification after the war” was probably little consolation to the free Black northerners he allowed his army to
capture and send into slavery.