Slavery, the Rebel flag and the shutdown

[Uncle Joe]

5. As for Lee's Paradox, he was trapped in a Sophie's Choice dilemma

This letter has long struck historians as significant because of its apparent paradox: A few years later, Lee would command hundreds of thousands of young men to kill and die for a cause he personally believed was immoral, a cause his great adversary, Ulysses S. Grant, would describe as “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” Lee was of course not the first white American to be pinioned by this paradox, which was written into our Constitution, with its oblique references to “other persons” existing in certain states who were to be counted as three-fifths of a human being. Nor was he the last.

Lee didn't support secession but when Virginia seceded, his choice came down to either taking Lincoln's offer; commanding the Union Troops as the Supreme Commander to which would result in battling and killing his family, friends and neighbors or fighting to defend Virginia; an entity much older than the young United States to which Lee's ancestors had played a prominent role in that state's history.

Had Virginia remained in the Union I have no doubt Lee would've become a Union General.

Lee made the same choice as Sophie choosing the entity; child or state with the most memories.