Leaving the Church of St. Robert E. Lee

Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me: a Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

Imagine a young White boy, raised practically in the shadow of Robert E. Lee’s antebellum mansion. He attends Robert E. Lee Elementary School, and later, Washington & Lee University. He learns to read with illustrated Lee biographies, and shouts the “rebel yell” when his football team scores a touchdown. His entire childhood is suffused with Lost Cause mythology. Only as an adult does he think to wonder: “Why?”

Ty Seidule, a former West Point history professor, gained fame for a 2015 PragerU video speaking the uncomfortable truth: the Civil War was about slavery, nothing else. He claims this video earned him hate mail, even death threats. This baffled him, since he provided documentary evidence (something usually missing at PragerU). His wife pointed out that facts are frequently ancillary, and he needed to share his own intellectual journey.

This book represents Seidule’s journey out of Lost Cause mythopoesis. (I’m unsure what title to call Seidule. Mister? Professor? Colonel, his rank in the PragerU video, or Brigadier General, his rank at retirement?) Readers seeking a thorough history of the Civil War and its aftermath shouldn’t expect that here. Instead, it’s Colonel Seidule’s intellectual autobiography, describing how he gradually shed beliefs he once held deeply.

Seidule describes growing up in Alexandria, Virginia, and Monroe, Georgia, both cities deeply entrenched in racist myth-making. His schools presented a polished, morally cleansed version of history, where Lee represented the paragon of American virtue— Seidule uses the words “Christian gentleman” extensively— and Jim Crow wasn’t that bad overall. He didn’t just believe a sanitized history; adults around him willfully peddled that history, usually for clearly defined purposes.

The outline of Seidule’s narrative unfolds broadly sequentially, but the facts don’t. His adult self, with an officer’s epaulets and a doctorate in American History, frequently intrudes upon his reminiscence of a sheltered childhood. Seidule realizes now, as he couldn’t then, that he marinated in racist mythology, and his education was unofficially segregated; he scarcely knew any Black people until adulthood. It isn’t his fault, but it’s definitely his responsibility.

Ty Seidule, U.S. Army (ret.)

Moving into his collegiate years at what he half-affectionately calls “W&L,” the mythology Seidule internalized crosses a line. Though he doesn’t recognize it then, his college is a religious pilgrimage site, with Lee’s remains entombed beneath the chapel, his office preserved as a holy site for viewing, and his image engraved upon the chapel altar. Beginning in this chapter, he describes the Lost Cause narrative as explicitly religious.

The word he uses, though, is “cult.”

Throughout the narrative, Seidule uses Lee as a synecdoche for the Civil War, the Lost Cause hooey, and White Supremacy generally. Sometimes, as when discussing the arcane processes that got ten permanent Army bases named for Confederate officers, he addresses the war in larger terms, and moves away from individuals. Other times he focuses specifically on Lee, and the choices Lee made that steered the war and its aftermath.

Only well into adulthood, when he stands wondering at the number of Robert E. Lee memorials on West Point’s campus, does Seidule have what he calls his “aha moment.” He already had his doctorate, and had commanded troops in combat, before he reinvented himself as a Lee scholar. Once he realizes how deeply the Lee myth permeates, however, Seidule can’t stop seeing what he deems a false history wherever he goes.

Please understand, though Seidule is a respected scholar and textbook author, he doesn’t pretend to maintain scholarly neutrality. This story recounts Seidule’s encounters with Lee’s myth, and Lee’s written record. His purposes are unambiguously political. As Seidule writes: “Americans have a duty to better understand military history so they can hold their military and political leaders accountable.”

In his concluding pages, Seidule becomes demonstratively emotional. He describes how the Army has defined his adult life and continues molding his values even in retirement. Robert E. Lee abandoned the pledges he made as a soldier, Seidule contends, and did so for morally repugnant reasons. For him, there’s no coming back from the disfigured reputation of fighting for the slave republic. Once a Lee worshiper, Seidule now offers no forgiveness.

Seidule’s language is frequently emotional, always pointed. For him, this isn’t just American history or Lee’s biography. Seidule believed a mythology he now disavows altogether, and that brings his feelings to the forefront. Fundamentally, this is Seidule’s intellectual memoir, not a history, and he invites us to share his journey. It’s one that many readers have already made ourselves, and hopefully, others will willingly make soon too.