Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

General Ty Seidule achieved a degree of internet fame when in 2015 he published a short video on the causes of the American Civil War, in which he flatly declared that slavery was by far the most important cause. At the time, Seidule was head of the History Department at West Point. He delivered the lecture in his US Army colonel’s uniform, hoping these credentials would signify his expertise. The video was controversial, bringing some praise but also impassioned denunciations and even death threats. This was not Seidule’s first time encountering the thorny politics of Civil War memorialization. A few years earlier, he was part of a committee to create a new memorial for West Point graduates who lost their lives in US wars. Seidule argued that graduates who joined the Confederacy should not be included in the memorial, since they were enemies of the United States. He lost out to those who claimed that including Confederate names would signify national healing. West Point ended up excluding the names for fear of negative publicity. Seidule’s fervent opposition alienated many of his colleagues who failed to understand why he was so opposed to memorializing the Confederacy, especially as he himself was a Southerner and a graduate of Washington and Lee University, named in part after Confederate general