The New York Times has a review out of the new book ROBERT E. LEE AND ME: A Southerner’s Reckoning With the
Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule. Here are a few excepts:
Long before the alt-right circled the statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville in 2017, Seidule, a retired brigadier general and professor emeritus of military history at West Point, set out to understand why his academy continued to display a portrait of Lee, a graduate of the school who resigned his Army commission to fight against his country.
This investigation required that Seidule, a native Virginian and graduate of Washington and Lee University, examine his own reverence for Lee and the myth of the Lost Cause. The resulting book — part autobiography, part history — is a powerful and introspective look into white Americans’ continuing romance with the Confederacy, and the lasting damage that has done.
…The book’s epilogue sets out the reason for Lee’s treason: the protection of slavery. The evidence is clearly on Seidule’s side. It is long past time to break Lee’s grip on American Civil War memory. Seidule provides a blueprint for doing just that.
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