To the Editor:

There were, and still are, two Robert E. Lees. One is well known as a "man of war," a general, a hero of Red States, and as an enemy to Blue States. The other is the little-known Robert E. Lee, a "man of peace" and president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University). He was, and still is, an unsung hero for his efforts to keep the peace in our nation after the Civil War - in Blue States, as well as Red States.

He tried to keep peace between the states and did not want to keep open the wounds of the Civil War with memorials or statues (especially of himself) and stated these words: "I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavor to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered."

Unfortunately, many years after he died, during the Jim Crow Era, statues were erected by racist segregationists as symbols of white supremacy. The statues opened "sores" of the Civil war that still linger today - exactly what Robert E. Lee, the man of peace, was trying to avoid.

Red and Blue States could bring harmony to our nation by removing the statues of General Robert E. Lee as a man of war on his horse in uniform, and instead honor him by replacing them with statues of him as a man of peace, and president of a college sitting at his desk, with his words of peace and harmony engraved on them.

The unknown Robert E. Lee may finally "obliterate the marks of civil strife" between reasonable Americans.

Paul F. Adinolfi

189 Julia Court, Sandy Hook         August 30, 2017