Historian rakes GOP Senate candidate over the coals after he tries to whitewash Confederate general

Chris McDaniel, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Mississippi, sent out a message on social media Thursday praising the legacy of General Robert E. Lee, whom he claimed hated slavery.

"Robert E. Lee was the most decorated soldier in the U.S. Army," McDaniel wrote. "Lee opposed both secession and slavery. And yet to the historically illiterate left, a man who opposed both slavery and secession has come to symbolize both slavery and secession."

Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, however, dropped the hammer on McDaniel's claims and pointed out the ways that Lee was very much in favor of slavery.

"Lee owned slaves and brutalized them," he wrote. "Lee led an armed revolt against the United States to preserve slavery. And during it, Lee's army captured free blacks in the North and enslaved them. But you were saying something about the 'historically illiterate'?"

Kruse went on to say that "historians have documented this in great detail and anyone who's functionally literate can read their many works on Lee's support for slavery."

CNN's Jake Tapper also called out McDaniel for historical inaccuracy and pointed him to a New York Times article about Lee's actual writings about the institution of slavery.