Retired West Point historian and brigadier general Ty Seidule spoke with The Guardian recently about the persistence of Confederate iconography in modern America. Here are some of the remarks of the author of Robert E. Lee and Me:
Asked how the US military came to name bases, barracks, roads and other assets after soldiers who fought to secede from the union and keep Black people enslaved, Seidule said: “The first thing to know is that in the 19th century, most army officers saw the Confederates as traitors.
“That’s not a presentist argument. That’s what they thought. And particularly about Lee, who renounced his oath, fought against this country, killed US army soldiers and as [Union general and 18th president Ulysses S] Grant said, did so for the worst possible reason: to create a slave republic.
“So in the 19th century, they would not have done this … the first memorialisation of a Confederate at West Point is in the 1930s. So, why is that? [It’s about] segregation in America. The last West Point black graduate was 1889. The next one was in 1936. West Point reflects America. [The first memorials] were a reaction to integration.”
Seidule rejects the notion that memorials to Lee and other Confederates – PGT Beauregard, a West Point superintendent fired for sedition, William Hardee, a commandant who fought in the west – might be claimed as symbols of reconciliation.
“The problem with that is it was reconciliation among white people, at the expense of Black people.
“There had already been reconciliation. Magnanimously, the United States of America pardoned all former Confederates in 1868 … reconciliation is sort of an agreement among whites that Black people will be treated in a Jim Crow fashion. So no, it’s not a reconciliation based, I would say, on an America we want today.”
…Lee did not lead the Confederacy. Its president was Jefferson Davis, a former secretary of war and senator from Mississippi. But Lee, who died in 1870, became the most-memorialised Confederate.
Asked why, Seidule said: “If you think of Confederate monuments, of the burning of books which the United Daughters of the Confederacy did in the early part of the 20th century, to ensure that textbooks said the right thing, really it’s that every religion needs its God. And in a way, that’s what Lee became.”
Today, conservatives are banning books in attempts to control teaching of history, race, sexuality and other culture-war issues.
Seidule concentrates on his historical work. Lee, he said, was in part idealised for lack of other options. James Longstreet enjoyed battlefield victories but after the war “fought for biracial democracy in New Orleans. So you can’t use him.
“While Lee ended up losing hugely, completely defeated, his armies destroyed, he was successful for a time before that. And so he was seen by the white south as their best general, as their ideal. And by the 1930s, he comes to represent something not just in the south, but among white Americans in general.”
Beyond West Point, the Confederate battle flag has become a symbol of rebellion, reaction and racism more potent than any statue or building. On 6 January 2021 it even flew in the halls of Congress, when Trump supporters attacked.
Again, Seidule rejects any notion that use of the flag might in any way be excused.
“We have to remember that it really didn’t mean that much different then than it does now. In 1863 it represented the Army of Northern Virginia, which was fighting to create a slave republic. Now, some people say it reflects rebellion. But remember, this was rebellion to create a slave republic. And so, to me, it is a symbol of all that America is not.
“It’s a symbol of insurrection, it’s a symbol of somebody that would not take the results of a democratic election. I grew up with it, my dad had Confederate flags over the mantle. I know how powerful these symbols are.
“One thing we often do with the civil war as historians is we let the smell of gunpowder seduce us into thinking about the war as American football, [about the] Xs and Os of military history, without understanding the purpose. That’s the thing I always come back to: why this cruel war?”
Seidule’s next book will be about events at West Point towards the end of another cruel war: Vietnam. In 1971, Richard Nixon decided he wanted to oversee “a moral rebirth” of an army in disarray.
“OK,” Seidule says, “that’s great. But the next thing he does is go to Trophy Point”, the focal point of the West Point campus, high over the Hudson river. “If you’ve seen Battle Monument, you know it says on there, ‘the War of the Rebellion’. Nixon says, ‘Where’s the Confederate monument?’ So he orders the superintendent to put a Confederate monument on Trophy Point.
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Ty Seidule is a propagandist, not a historian,
I’ll return to this page.
Ty Seidule has a PhD in History from Ohio State and in 1994 he was appointed an assistant professor of history at the United States Military Academy. He eventually became the chair of that department.
I can appreciate that, but not the methodology of his work.
The methodology of his work to produce his thesis in ‘Robert E. Lee & Me’ was even dodgier than what Keith Windschuttle utilised to produce, ‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Vol. IV: Van Diemen’s Land’.
I recall sitting with Stuart Macintyre (RIP) at the Uni of Mel discussing them in comparison for lengths and Stuart just shook his head.
I’ll come back to elaborate but I’m glad you’re alright enough to fully monitor the page again.
God bless, friend. You gave us all a scare! But you’re a legend!
For a sense of order, I’m going to simply address Seidule’s arguments. As a historian, I must be akin to a judge at a bodybuilding contest: I can only judge what is directly presented to me at this time.
I can not and do not give any vent to ‘appeal to authority’/’appeal to achievement’. If Seidule occupies a given place at a particular institution and/or educational facility, that does not in itself legitimate his arguments or necessarily mean they are well-founded. I can only judge the given argument/thesis on its own merits.
****Asked how the US military came to name bases, barracks, roads and other assets after soldiers who fought to secede from the union and keep Black people enslaved, Seidule said: “The first thing to know is that in the 19th century, most army officers saw the Confederates as traitors. “That’s not a presentist argument. That’s what they thought. And particularly about Lee, who renounced his oath, fought against this country, killed US army soldiers and as [Union general and 18th president Ulysses S] Grant said, did so for the worst possible reason: to create a slave republic.****
This statement is a quintessential argument of the contemporary ‘Battle Hymn’ school of studies (aka, ‘False Storyism’). The only way that such an argument can be made to appear cogent is to deliberately omit pertinent evidence that one knows is relevant, that inclusion of it would necessarily challenge in serious manner the depiction rendered, and one gains a wrongful advantage by its omission.
This statement omits entirely the near-clinched 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty between itself and France and Britain and the later Duncan F. Kenner Mission. The reality of these means that it cannot be put that the Confederacy was eternally devoted to slavery, or anything of the sort.
That a high number of Officers/soldiers/civilians/etc, who supported the Union Cause did see the Confederates as traitors is well-documented and this deserves to be explicitly cited and engaged with. It does not necessarily follow that this ‘proves’ the Confederates HAD in fact committed treason.
This relies on omitting that the Confederates interpreted the US Constitution and other related documents and events in a different manner than did their Union contemporaries. As Brion McClanahan has explained well, the Oath that Lee actually swore could well be interpreted to mean that states could withdraw themselves from the Union; that the Oath could substantiate this interpretation even if not all came to the same conclusion.
Lee did kill US Armed Forces personnel, as Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Red Cloud, etc, for the reason that he saw the US as militarily invading the area that Virginia, his home state, had allied herself with freely.
What else did Grant say that ought be included in such a discussion? In his Memoirs, he admitted he himself had wilfully participated in the 1846-48 Mexican American War, which was fought to conquer new American lands to make new American slave states out of and he knew this. Elsewhere, he said that he would have quit the war immediately if the aim of the North was to abolish slavery rather than just restore the Union and that he was never an Abolitionist.
As well, why isn’t Seidule disclosing that in 1776, a new slave republic WAS created. And that at least at the start of the CW/WBTS, this one was willing to reconvene all the rights to slavery that already existed and guarantee them eternally?
This is exactly the sort of ‘dishonest omission’ he engages in and which I impugn.
**** “So in the 19th century, they would not have done this … the first memorialisation of a Confederate at West Point is in the 1930s. So, why is that? [It’s about] segregation in America. The last West Point black graduate was 1889. The next one was in 1936. West Point reflects America. [The first memorials] were a reaction to integration.”****
Why and what does the first memorialisation to a Confederate in the 1930s have to do with the history of the war directly, and Black Americans graduating from this institution? Segregation in this era he points was as much in the hands of Northerners as anyone. And where is the explicit proof that monuments were being put as a rejection of integration and even at that, anything which he expects the reader to simply ‘assume’ at gut level?
And ought we not exclude memorialisation of ANY White American graduates from the North who fought in the war?
What did West Point graduates, (along with any and all federal office holders, such as members of Congress, the President, etc), swear to do when they took their posts? To uphold the Constitution. What did that mean? Among other things, they would uphold the Fugitive Slave tenet in it to return to bondage all presumed fugitive slave, the legal onus being on the Black Americans to prove themselves free persons of colour in legal terms. So ought any memorialisation be given to anyone who swore to do that?
This are the essential historical questions and material that Seidule deliberately evades to gain an advantage that is dishonest and wrongful.
And why does Seidule posit about West Point and not admit Confederate monument building was going on in all this time? I’ve seen clippings from the Archives of Memorial University in 1873, from in Newfoundland that cite how a monument for Robert E. Lee is being attempted.
****“There had already been reconciliation. Magnanimously, the United States of America pardoned all former Confederates in 1868 … reconciliation is sort of an agreement among whites that Black people will be treated in a Jim Crow fashion. So no, it’s not a reconciliation based, I would say, on an America we want today.”****
I will cut Seidule some credit here; offering the pardon in 1868 had some spirit of reconciliation and the like to it. But it was also a means of President Johnson attempting to save face; it had become clear that the attempt to convict Jefferson Davis in court for treason may well not succeed, (BOTH sides could present a considerable argument in this, yet neither was invulnerable and both sides knew it).
So Johnson’s Pardon was a way of attempting to latch the status of treason upon ex-Confederates. But, given the reality of the three precedents of New England in the War of 1812, South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis and Maine in the Aroostook War and how no legal consequences/processes of any type were ever initiated against any party involved in any of these whatsoever despite all the prima facie elements of treason being met, all ex-Confederates could look on the matter of accepting the Pardon as they could accept it with the interpretation they never COULD have been charged with Treason, as none of these groups had.
Reconciliation based on exclusion of Black Americans was not something that Lee supported either. Again, very happy to posit with evidence and full references what that is based on…and what Seidule will not tell you.
****…Lee did not lead the Confederacy. Its president was Jefferson Davis, a former secretary of war and senator from Mississippi. But Lee, who died in 1870, became the most-memorialised Confederate.
Asked why, Seidule said: “If you think of Confederate monuments, of the burning of books which the United Daughters of the Confederacy did in the early part of the 20th century, to ensure that textbooks said the right thing, really it’s that every religion needs its God. And in a way, that’s what Lee became.”
Today, conservatives are banning books in attempts to control teaching of history, race, sexuality and other culture-war issues.****
…Would Seidule like to read some of the approximate 6 pieces of primary evidence that Davis became open/supportive of Emancipationism, in the Union and Confederacy? How about other evidence about Davis, such as he fully supported that Black Americans ought to be able to give evidence in court to convict White Americans, serve as jurors, give equal testimony, etc?
Now…is Seidule going to openly reference this or hide it?
But about Seidule he is being guilty of doing to Lee the exact thing he puts the UDC as having done: Turn Lee into a symbol, rather than attempt to glean the most accurate understanding of the man that is possible based on a holistic examination of the evidence and subjected to a critical reflection process.
Whatever the UDC did in its’ time and/or conservatives are doing with regards historical works now, that can not in any way be put upon Lee the man.
****Seidule concentrates on his historical work. Lee, he said, was in part idealised for lack of other options. James Longstreet enjoyed battlefield victories but after the war “fought for biracial democracy in New Orleans. So you can’t use him.****
The manner in which BOTH the Lost Cause of yore, and the Battle Hymn of the present (as voiced by Seidule), are simply dishonest in this regard about Lee renders them both ahistorical.
It’s true that Longstreet commanded Black American militia at the Battle of Liberty Square in 1874. I’ve previously written on this page about Longstreet, but it’s wrong to push him as in the newly-deified position that Lee formerly occupied.
Longstreet is another example of Lee’s contemporaries who never eschewed 100% his racial prejudices, but made courageous challenge upon these.
Why does Seidule omit that Lee had appeared before the Confederate Congress in support of, and personally argued to Davis over and over, for Black Americans to be enrolled as official, legal soldiers in a national equivalent in the South to the USCT? And that he was willing to personally lead them into battle?
His complete support of the Cleburne Plan when Edward Sparrow of Louisiana showed him a copy in December of 1864 resulted in Lee stating additionally, “I can make soldiers out of any human being with arms and legs.”
Again, his 27 & 29 March 1865 orders to Ewell upon the subject provide even more illumination (along with that these prove he was willing to see significant racial-social change come about in the South through what national Black Confederate troops would necessarily mean), and his letter of 2 April 1865 to Lee on the subject illuminates this even more.
Now…where is ANY of this in Seidule’s analysis? Once one becomes familiar with them, there is no way that it can be argued that these are irrelevant or unimportant. They are GAME CHANGERS.
****“While Lee ended up losing hugely, completely defeated, his armies destroyed, he was successful for a time before that. And so he was seen by the white south as their best general, as their ideal. And by the 1930s, he comes to represent something not just in the south, but among white Americans in general.”****
Seidule again fails to note something directly relevant to the topic: That in the Era of Total War (1850-1945), victory comes from one side being able to destroy utterly and absolutely the opposing side’s ability to successfully resist them.
This is why/how the Civil War/War Between The States was the dress rehersal of the First World War and the exact thing that Michael Collins was so desperate to avoid for any semblance of victory in the Anglo-Irish War and what WWII makes plain: Victory in war in this era comes from the total destruction of one side.
Lee was not just “successful for a time before that.” This is a ‘smart’ way of diminishing his achievements which were he nearly brought the Confederacy to victory more than once. And through it all, per the notes of William Allen (for one source alone), ‘…he told Mr. Davis early and often in the war that the slaves should be emancipated.’
Again, Seidule inadquately and what must be deliberately attempts to ‘sum things up nicely’ by saying, “And so he was seen by the white south as their best general, as their ideal. And by the 1930s, he comes to represent something not just in the south, but among white Americans in general.”
Actually…no. Lee was seen as an incredible General and in a heroic light to both Black and White Americans and the world while the war was being fought.
Happy to put forth evidence. Would Seidule be willing to sit down with me, acknowledge this evidence exists is credible and engage in either a chat or robust debate about what it can be said to ‘mean’?
****Beyond West Point, the Confederate battle flag has become a symbol of rebellion, reaction and racism more potent than any statue or building. On 6 January 2021 it even flew in the halls of Congress, when Trump supporters attacked.
Again, Seidule rejects any notion that use of the flag might in any way be excused.****
I would put to Seidule, as a person of French Canadian heritage, and whom grew up with Aboriginals as his neighbours and friends, that he ought to remember that the reason the Stars and Stripes was hoisted was to champion the racism and genocidal sentiments of the American colonists had towards both said groups. The Declaration of Independence is a Declaration of War, literally, upon the British laws which protected the rights, humanity, lands, culture, etc, of Aboriginals and French Canadians in the 1763 Royal Proclamation and 1774 Quebec Act.
Do I view the Stars and Stripes as wholly defined as that? Certainly not. And just for the record, I am able to look back upon the AR’s history and see at least some validity in the claims of the American colonists while simultaneously applying a measure of fair and balanced criticism.
The Confederate Battle Flag is an American flag and I proudly salute it.
I decline to in any way publicly comment about the 6th January Riot at the Capitol as this matter is still being investigated and/or is before the courts.
****“We have to remember that it really didn’t mean that much different then than it does now. In 1863 it represented the Army of Northern Virginia, which was fighting to create a slave republic. Now, some people say it reflects rebellion. But remember, this was rebellion to create a slave republic. And so, to me, it is a symbol of all that America is not.****
Herein, Seidule outdoes himself in this one. In doing this, he skirts the fact that in 1862, the CBF stood for the Confederate Emancipation Treaty with France and Britain and by late 1864, it stood for the Duncan F. Kenner Mission.
From 1776-1863, the Stars and Stripes represented slavery and the republic which enshrined it in its constitution with the Fugitive Slave and 3/5 tenets from 1789 onwards.
It was the flag that tore a republic in half to appropriate the means to perpetuate the institution of slavery from 1846-48.
It was the flag of the republic that went to war in 1861 explicitly dedicated to reconvening all the rights to slavery as they already existed and was willing to guarantee them for all time to come.
****“It’s a symbol of insurrection, it’s a symbol of somebody that would not take the results of a democratic election. I grew up with it, my dad had Confederate flags over the mantle. I know how powerful these symbols are.****
Herein, Seidule is again attempting to insert emotional nationalist sentiment in place of actual historical evidence that is subjected to a critical reflection process, which is why he pushes so hard on the CBF being a ‘symbol’, explicitly citing it in those terms. That means its not what he’s trying to persuade people of in rational terms, or better, an invocation to balance reason and emotion in-step to make sense of the world around us-
Instead, he is trying to influence how people ‘feel’. That is, the nationalist’s tactic of by-passing reason to appeal directly to one’s sense of emotion, exactly as how Pierre Trudeau described of Rene Levesque.
But I will extend; I can understand how someone of solid ‘pro-North or pro-Union’ bearings can look upon the CBF in a negative light. But, and this is the catch, I would expect that person to be able to articulate and engage with the topic of how America was born out of insurrection, in his own terms, and how the Declaration of Independence itself has language that legitimates insurrection/rebellion/revolution in its very content.
Viewed in this light and openly disclosed, let Seidule explain his stance THEN and NOT through bypassing the entirety of the matter.
And…I’d have to put to Seidule in just such a chat for him to then defend the actions of Maine in the Aroostook War…!
How was THAT legitimate?
****“One thing we often do with the civil war as historians is we let the smell of gunpowder seduce us into thinking about the war as American football, [about the] Xs and Os of military history, without understanding the purpose. That’s the thing I always come back to: why this cruel war?”****
Then explain how an inter-American conflict was predicted with frightening accuracy by Alexander Hamilton in 1787 in ‘The Federalist Papers’; explain how all prima facie elements of Constitutional treason were met by the New Englanders in The War of 1812, South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis and Maine in The Aroostook War, how no legal processes, let alone consequences, of any type were ever put to any of the individuals in these instances (Winfield Scott and President Van Buren condoned the actions of Maine ultimately) and yet Seidule tries to ‘hide’ these to condemn the Confederates as guilty of Constitutional treason; explain Robert E. Lee’s Emancipationist convictions and dedication to ending slavery and his challenging with word and example his racism towards Black Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Aboriginals; explain how not all Black Americans ‘felt’ about Robert E. Lee as Seidule will hold they ‘should’; explain how the CSA forged a path to ending slavery simultaneously, even prior to, the Union, etc, etc, etc.
There is simply TOO MUCH that Seidule attempts to dishonestly omit from open critical reflection for his credibility as a historian to be maintained.
His is not the work of a historian; he may have the training and/or credentials of one, but ‘Robert E. Lee & Me’ is absolute propaganda and a discredit to the author. He has simply typed up the emotional nationalism wishes of those who want to have such ahistorical information appeared to be legitimate.
****Seidule’s next book will be about events at West Point towards the end of another cruel war: Vietnam. In 1971, Richard Nixon decided he wanted to oversee “a moral rebirth” of an army in disarray.****
I have no knowledge to offer on the Vietnam War.
****“OK,” Seidule says, “that’s great. But the next thing he does is go to Trophy Point”, the focal point of the West Point campus, high over the Hudson river. “If you’ve seen Battle Monument, you know it says on there, ‘the War of the Rebellion’. Nixon says, ‘Where’s the Confederate monument?’ So he orders the superintendent to put a Confederate monument on Trophy Point.****
If so, then that is to the credit of President Nixon.
Or, as I said earlier in my posts, why not just to remove honour from ALL who graduated from West Point and in so doing, swore to uphold the US Constitution when it contained the 3/5 and Fugitive Slave tenets? Now, who would that affect…? And by all rights, for can there be any redemption for any who were affected by the stigma of slavery and White Supremacy?
Or…or…are we ready to rather view the historical landscape willing to apply a measure of fair and balanced criticism where/when this is justified, but also to recognise humanity and its attending credit and heroism at the same time…?
That’s a choice between nationalism and patriotism.