Ty Seidule Was Duped. And He's Pissed About It

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, by U.S. Army Brigadier General (retired) and West Point Professor Emeritus Ty Seidule.

Seidule’s work is a reflection - or if you like, a meditation on a worldview built on the foundation of the deeply flawed Lost Cause version of Confederate history.

For those who may not be familiar with this particular history, the Lost Cause is a mythology created by former Confederates in the wake of the Civil War, which helped them come to terms with devastating defeat. In short, as the story goes…the southern states seceded from the Union to protect their way of life from an oppressive government, the institution of slavery had nothing to do with secession, virtuous southern soldiers fought valiantly against insurmountable odds, and in so doing, enshrined their legacy in the annals of military history as the most noble soldiers ever to take up arms in defense of a cause they thought just. And who was the greatest, most virtuous, most gifted of all of these soldiers? You guessed it: Robert E. Lee.

This brutally honest and transparent book serves as Seidule’s confessional. Yes, he fell for it. All of it. And now he’s pissed. He lived a good deal of his life as a devotee of this mythology and idolized Lee. But to Seidule’s credit, he did what a many people are not willing to do: he looked at the evidence…and the evidence told a different story. Secessionists sought to create a slave-holding nation independent of the United States and a perceived attack on their institutions. They sought to secure race-based chattel slavery for all time (it’s in their Constitution - look it up), and Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia was their greatest chance. In fact, if any one person came close to successfully securing Confederate independence, it was Lee. Seidule’s position is crystal clear here. Lee committed treason by resigning his commission in the U.S. Army and waging war against the United States - and he was fully committed to the Confederate cause, slavery and all. Now now now…I know my Confederate apologist readers out there will take issue with this. Please read the book and weigh the evidence for yourselves. If indeed you are willing to engage a history in an honest and meaningful way, I think you will find it very compelling.

On a personal note, a lot of what Seidule had to say really resonated with me - I too grew up surrounded by Lost Cause mythology, half-truths, and outright fabrications. When I was a kid in Alabama (once celebrated as the “Heart of Dixie”), the Confederacy existed in my worldview as a holy mission, something - while fleeting in existence - deserved the highest praise. In my family our Confederate heritage was a source of great pride (to be fair, the stories are what drew me to Civil War history and what inspired me to become a historian and a teacher). Slavery and white supremacy was never ever ever part of the particularly Confederate-sanctioned history. The story instead was about a noble people who just missed their chance - the great lost moment. I didn't read Faulkner until I was pretty well-versed in Lost Cause mythology, but if I had been aware when I was younger of the now infamous moment in Intruder in the Dust I am quite sure I would have imagined myself in this exact scenario…

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

I bought all the way in to the cause when I was a kid. But like Seidule it was the evidence that compelled me to revise my position on the “glorious” South and the Confederate cause. Did Lee and other Confederates possess virtues? Sure. But the secession documents, the press, political speeches, and other first-had testimony (including Lee’s) convinced me that my ancestors and the rest of the Confederate citizenry had been part of an effort to secure a southern way of life - one that was founded on the “cornerstone,” in the words of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, of white supremacy. And to make matters worse, members of my immediate family took part in supporting the mythology that functioned as much to perpetuate a racist social order as it did to commemorate Confederate heroes. They may have done so unknowingly, the Lost Cause was deeply entrenched in white southern culture by the time I was born. But they never bothered to check the historical record…and so the persistent legacy of the original authors of the Lost Cause informed my thinking until I actually read the history.

Lost Cause mythology lingers still in many ways for a lot of folks. We can fix this - though reasonable discourse and education. Every white southerner should read this book, look at the evidence for themselves, and then have their own personal reckoning. We need to be honest and face our history, without overlooking the unsavory truth that our ancestors were part of something truly terrible. Everyone else should read it because it is genuine. It shows one’s capacity for change, something that I think we miss in today’s tumultuous political climate. This book suggests we might listen before we make assumptions about people (or historical actors, for that matter).

And there’s no bullshit here. Seidule is a straight shooter who acknowledges his past shortcomings and owns it. Finally, Robert E. Lee and Me is a remarkable example of intellectual honesty - something to which we should all aspire: when faced with evidence that challenges your worldview, then you owe to yourself to account for it.

With compliments,

Keith