In his chapter on his West Point tenure, he offers details that explain how came to question the Lost Cause mythos. Among the more powerful of these reminiscences is Seidule’s recounting of his pride and awe attending Washington & Lee University and attending events in Lee Chapel, essentially a shrine to the Confederate leader. Rather, he provides the personal details needed to contrast his prior reverence for Lee and idealization of the notion of a “southern gentleman” with his ignorance of southern racism and racist history when he was younger – thus offering his own attitudes and beliefs as evidence of the powerful and enduring effectiveness of the Lost Cause mythos. Seidule does not provide a comprehensive accounting of all his experiences. These start with his young childhood, continuing with his schooling in Alexandria, Virginia and then Monroe, Georgia, college at Washington and Lee University, his army career in the operational force and then later on the faculty of West Point (where he ultimately led the Department of History), and finally culminating in a critical assessment of Lee’s career and legacy. military institutions.Īs a memoir, chapters follow the phases of Seidule’s life. In this regard, the book is unapologetically a clarion call to identify and combat the insidious ways in which the Lost Cause has endured, particularly within U.S. Army soldiers who fought and died to preserve the country from insurrection and free millions from bondage. Moreover, both the myth in general and the idolization of Lee in particular also obscured and belittled the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Like thousands, even millions of other people, Seidule had practically deified Lee as a paragon of virtue and honor, a reverence that has served as a crucial component of the myth of the Lost Cause created shortly after the war’s end.

Lee, was in fact a constructed image designed to facilitate and promote white racial dominance in the years after the Civil War. Army officer and later Confederate general Robert E. That outrage stems from the revelation that his childhood hero, one-time U.S. The work is an engaging and prescient combination of memoir, history, cultural analysis, and moral outrage. But no others possess Ty Seidule’s unique and personal perspective on this issue, one informed not simply by his expertise as a historian and teacher, but also by his upbringing in the American south followed by his 36-year service as a U.S. Many books consider issues of race and America’s struggle with its legacy of slavery.

Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

Robert e lee and me ty seidule