A new book about about General Robert E. Lee offers support to those who argue for removing confederate monuments. Its author taught history at West Point, and he has nothing good to say about the man idolized by many in the South.
As a kid, Ty Seidule aspired to be a Southern gentleman like Robert E. Lee. His school text books were filled with praise, and wherever he went in Virginia Lee was a hero.
“I was bused across town in Alexandria from the white elementary school to the segregated all black school," he recalls, "and what was the name of that school? Robert E. Lee Elementary, named in 1961.”
Later he would attend Washington and Lee University, but while getting his PhD in history at Ohio State, Seidule learned some unsavory things about the General. Lee was, for example, a wealthy slaveholder who inherited a plantation from his in-laws.
“Where his father-in-law kept families together, he didn’t do that. He actually broke every family apart for a profit," Seidule says. "He ordered his enslaved people whipped and said to ‘lay it on well and pour brine water on their wounds,’ so he was seen by the enslaved people at Arlington as a cruel, cruel person.”
And when the nation prepared for Civil War, Seidule argues Lee showed himself to be a traitor by going against the Union.
“There were eight U.S. Army Colonels from Virginia. They were all West Point graduates. Seven of those colonels stay with the United States, and one and only one – Robert E. Lee – chooses to do that. He commits treason.”
During the war, he affirmed his racist beliefs.
“When he went north into Gettysburg, his army captured freed black people to bring them back for sale into Virginia, and at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 his soldiers slaughtered black prisoners of war.”
And at his alma mater, West Point, Lee was remembered that way.
“In the 19th century, West Point banished Lee from their collective memory, because he was a traitor," Seidule explains. "He only came back in the 1930’s – the memory of him, things named after him – because it was a reaction to integration, in the 1950’s when the army started integrating, in the 1970’s when black cadets started coming in great numbers.”
During those times, he says, textbooks were rewritten to tell lies about the Civil War and Reconstruction.
“One, the war wasn’t fought over slavery, which is just a bald-faced lie. Two, that enslaved people were happy – that it was the best form of labor, which is another monstrous lie. Slavery featured the lash, rape, torture, murder, and the worst thing for enslaved families – breaking these families apart and selling them to the Deep South.”
When he served as a professor at West Point, Seidule was anxious to remind students of Lee’s true nature, but he got into big trouble for that.
“I couldn’t talk about these things openly in uniform. It was just too hot, particularly under the Trump administration I couldn’t talk about these subjects. It brought too much heat to the army and West Point.”
But now he’s teaching at Hamilton College in upstate New York – sharing his views through a book called Robert E. Lee and Me. In it he argues that taking down statues of Lee and other confederates does not erase history, but it does end commemoration.
“Commemoration is who we honor as a society, and who we honor should represent our values today, not those values of 1860 or 1930. We have an opportunity to do that now in a way that we haven’t in the past – to honor the diversity, the value and courage of real Americans.”
By doing that, he says, this country can finally confront slavery – what he calls the virus in our soil – and continue the progress made through the civil rights movement.
