They were both were great generals. Both Virginians. Both came from slave-owning plantation families. Is it really so far-fetched to put Robert E. Lee in the same category as George Washington, as President Donald Trump did Tuesday?

Historians, for the most part, say yes. Professor Gregory Downs of the University of California, Davis, says someone with a fifth-grade education could understand the difference between a man who helped create the nation and a man who tried to destroy it.

In his remarks on the recent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of a Lee statue, Trump defended those who seek to keep Lee in place. The president asked whether removal of monuments to Washington and Thomas Jefferson would come next. After all, both had slaves.