"A powerful and introspective look into white Americans’ continuing romance with the Confederacy, and the lasting damage that has done." - New York Times Book Review “With the vigor of a prosecutor, Seidule dismantles the near-sacred beliefs among many Southerners that the Civil War was a noble cause to preserve a way of life that benefitted everyone…an extraordinary and courageous book, a confessional of America’s great sins of slavery and racial oppression, a call to confront our wrongs, reject our mythologized racist past and resolve to create a just future for all.” – Associated Press One of Washington Independent Review of Books' "Favorite Books of 2021" Lee and Me challenges the deeply-held legends and myths of the Confederacy-and provides a surprising interpretation of essential truths that our country still has a difficult time articulating and accepting.
Part history lecture, part meditation on the Civil War and its fallout, and part memoir, Robert E. Through the arc of Seidule’s own life, as well as the culture that formed him, he seeks a path to understanding why the facts of the Civil War have remained buried beneath layers of myth and even outright lies-and how they embody a cultural gulf that separates millions of Americans to this day. In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy-that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans-and directly challenges the idea of honoring those who labored to preserve that system and committed treason in their failed attempt to achieve it. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Ty Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor.
From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacy-and explores why some of this country’s oldest wounds have never healed.
In a forceful but humane narrative, former soldier and head of the West Point history department Ty Seidule's Robert E. "Ty Seidule scorches us with the truth and rivets us with his fierce sense of moral urgency." -Ron Chernow
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