A mythology grew around Lee and the cause he served. For many, Lee's qualities and accomplishments, already impressive, gained godlike proportions. This was the Lee I first came to know: a leader whose flaws and failures were sanded off, the very human figure recast as a two-dimensional hero whose shadow had eclipsed the man from whom it came.

But as time passed, the myth was reexamined. The darker side of Lee's legacy, and the picture in my office, now communicated ideas about race and equality with which I sought no association. Down it came.

Read: Lee's reputation can't be redeemed

It was not a simple decision. For almost 150 years, Lee had been a subject of study, and of admiration, not only for his skill, but also as a symbol of stoic commitment to duty. And while I could appreciate the visceral association with slavery and injustice that images of the Confederacy's most famous commander evoke, for a lifetime, that's not the association I'd drawn. I'd read and largely believed Winston Churchill's statements that "Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains known to the annals of war."

At age 63, the same age at which Lee died, I concluded I was wrong--to some extent wrong about Lee as a leader, but certainly about the message that Lee as a symbol conveyed. And although I was slow to appreciate it, a significant part of American society, many still impacted by the legacy of slavery, had felt it all along. [...]

Lee's own statements on slavery are conflicting, but his overall record is clear. Although he repeatedly expressed his theoretical opposition to slavery, he in fact reflected the conventional thinking of the society from which he came and actively supported the "peculiar institution" of slavery. Well before joining the Confederacy, Lee loathed abolitionists, and his feelings hardened as the Civil War dragged on.

Read: The myth of the kindly General Lee

From as far back as 1859, Lee's personal treatment of slaves has been a public issue. Although accusations that he beat his slaves are impossible to prove after 150 years, their veracity is arguably beside the point. Lee was a willing and active participant in a society and economy that rested on slavery, and he fought ferociously to defend it. Lee was a Southerner, and efforts to depict him in opposition to slavery run contrary to his actions.