Drew Angerer/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Monday called Confederate General Robert E. Lee an “honorable man” and suggested that a a lack of compromise caused the Civil War.
“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly said in an interview on Fox News Monday evening. “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”
“Men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand,” Kelly, a retired Marine Corps General, added.
He did not elaborate on how the Civil War could have been prevented through compromise.
The comments echoed those of President Donald Trump, who has pushed back against the removal of Confederate-era monuments, including those honoring Gen. Lee.
“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” Trump said in a August.
That statement came in the wake of a deadly outbreak of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia — which began in protest of the planned removal of a monument of General Lee — that left one dead and 19 injured after a car-ramming attack. Police arrested James Alex Fields, 20, and charged him with second-degree murder in the incident.
Major cities and institutions across the country have opted to remove or relocate Confederate-era statues this year, with many calling them symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
In August, the University of Texas at Austin, for example, said it would remove statues Lee and three other Confederate generals, because they were erected during the period of segregation and “represent the subjugation of African Americans.”
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