Robert E. Lee said some seemingly enlightened things during his life. Yet, even among the slavers he was known as a harsh master. He was known to personally whip the people he enslaved. Sometimes that would be followed by the pouring of brine over the wounds. He broke with his family's tradition of not breaking up slave families, selling off children to other plantations. He kidnapped free African-Americans when he invaded the north and sent them south into slavery. 

His personal mythology is part of the Lost Cause myth. He was the gallant aristocratic warrior fighting the industrialized machine of the North.  The reality is much uglier, and its sad that his reputation has been so strong for the past 150 years.