“ was God, and his Confederate cause was the one true religion.” He admits, somewhat shamefully, that he, too, once believed “all the lies and tropes.” Lee, “my childhood bible.” And “growing up in Virginia I worshipped Lee, the Confederate general.” Seidule attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington City, Virginia, where Lee Chapel features a statue of the general lying on the altar, but nothing else: no hymnals, no Book of Common Prayer, and no Ten Commandments (as the first one is: “I Am the Lord Thy God and Thou Shalt Not Have False Gods Before Me”). The facts changed me.”Īs a boy, Seidule read Meet Robert E. “I went to the archives and spent years studying…that process changed me. Army brigadier general who taught at West Point for 16 years and spent many of those years trying to understand why America’s premier service academy had so many monuments honoring Lee. It wasn’t always an easy call for Seidule, a retired U.S. Army soldiers, and violated Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. “It’s an easy call,” he writes at the end of his stunning book, “because Lee resigned his commission, fought against his country, killed U.S. Yet, armed with years of documented research, Seidule demonstrates that Lee, like Judas, was guilty of base betrayal. For even today, the image of Lee, who fought against his country to preserve slavery, is revered with monuments, parks, military bases, counties, roads, schools, ships, and universities named in his honor. in history could so persuasively mount the case against a national hero, and label him a traitor. Only a man of the South, a Virginian, and a soldier with a Ph.D.
Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.įew others could write this book with such sterling credibility. Senate, Charles Sumner, who led that body’s anti-slavery forces, railed against the slaveholding Confederate general, saying: “I hand him over to the avenging pen of history.” That pen has now been wielded to dazzling effect by Ty Seidule in Robert E. When debate about the property seizure reached the U.S.
Lee never returned to his home, but he sued his country for damages after the war and collected more than $4 million. Lee’s 1,100-acre estate across the Potomac from Washington, DC - and used it to headquarter federal troops. Early in the Civil War, the Union Army seized “Arlington” - Robert E.
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