It's an easy thing to dig up anyone's imperfections.  If Lee wasn't imperfect (a thing which he admitted to himself, and often), then he wouldn't have been human.  It's all a matter of scale.  Lee was an admirable man -- with feet of clay.  But sterling, as humans go.  In his own lifetime, he was sometimes referred to as "the marble man": the implication being that only a statue could embody the ideals that he did in the flesh.

Yes, Lee has his detractors today, just like he did back then.  

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. - Mark Twain

The men of that era were made of the same sort of substances which comprise the men of our own era.  So we need to be careful what sort of judgments we mete out to them......we'll be held to the same standard.

Yes, I admire Lee.  Because IMO he was better than his contemporaries.  This isn't a matter of playing "favorites": it's a matter of observation through the eyes of the people who actually knew him, and who knew the others.

Something To Do At 3:00AM