It is a great shame that the madness of political correctness is leading to the destruction of monuments to two of America’s greatest soldiers (‘Confederate monument is taken down in New Orleans’, April 25).

Neither General Robert E. Lee nor  General P.G.T. Beauregard were in favour of slavery or fundamentally against the Union but both fought for a cause they did not believe in out of patriotic loyalty to their home states: Lee for Virginia and Beauregard for Louisiana. Both did this at a considerable personal loss.

Lee was actually offered a senior command of the Union army, an offer he declined out of loyalty to Virginia, which had seceded from the Union.

Both fought valiantly and honourably and neither deserve this ignominious insult to their memory.

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