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A review by unladylike
Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule
5.0
4.5 stars
This "reckoning" in the form of a memoir and history is both significant and, I believe, sincere. The POV is not just any random white guy from the U.S. South - he's a military history professor and spent nearly 40 years as an officer in the U.S. Army! I mean, just look at his accolades listed in the first paragraph of his wikipedia entry!We learn at the very end of the book that he in fact had to quit the Army, which he loves with fervent patriotic loyalty, in order to be able to publish this book.
When trying to describe this book to someone in a single sentence of text I called the author "very woke." I don't use that term often because of the mixed connotations it has gained in recent years, but I believe it's accurate in this case. One of the most significant aspects of Seidule's book is the explicit acknowledgment of the many ways he himself has reinforced and benefited from white supremacy. The primary angle of the book, he tells us, was pushed upon him by his wise wife - that he must bare his own involvement and backstory of growing up worshipping Robert E. Lee while also having zero Black friends.
Towards the end of the book, I kept wanting to tell Seidule to wrap it up already, but he draws it out and makes more than one problematic statement. The audiobook includes a 1-on-1 Q&A interview conducted over what must have been Zoom or Skype by a fellow white military history buff and writer. There were a few interesting tidbits but I'd recommend skipping the whole thing unless you want to hear two geezers sucking each other's dicks. It's really just a lot of back-patting and mutual praise.
Rather than review the whole book, I'm now going to insert my notes:
In the middle of the Civil War (1861-1865), the confederates tried out a few flag designs, notably none of which were exactly like the one held popularly by white supremacists. In discussion of one of the designs (the second flag officially) that’s mostly white, "The White Man's Flag." In explaining the white background, Thompson wrote, "As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause." - quoted in the book but copied from Wikipedia
ALSO, look into this interesting coincidence: verbatim from the Flag Act of 1965, in the South at the end of the war: “...That the flag of the Confederate States shall be as follows: The width two-thirds of its length, with the union (now used as the battle flag) to be in width three-fifths of the width of the flag…” If the “union” (which is the totality of the present-day, well-known Confederate Flag) goes 3/5ths precisely into the whole of the fabric, and the rest is white (and/or with a red bar at the end, which maybe ruins my working theory/hypothesis), is that because slaves had 3/5ths as much representation in the gov’t as white men?
Encourages saying “enslaved labor farms” instead of “plantations” and “United States vs. the traitors of the South” rather than “the Union vs. the Confederacy.” - Using “Confederate” continues to legitimize the treasonous secession.
“Georgia was a racial police state, not a democracy.”
“When asked after he left the White House, on what inspired him to create the Civil Rights Commission, Truman remembered exactly: It was the Monroe lynching combined with the beating and blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard that horrified the President.” - implication that those in power are only seen to intervene against violent anti-Blackness when they’re sufficiently disgusted and shocked by the most gruesome and visible cases.
Fort Bragg is one of ten US military posts named in honor of a Confederate, and he was not even a good general, hated by almost everyone in the Army.
“Racism requires falsehood, hypocrisy, and spite.”
Houses near West Point had notices to the owners saying “You shall not sell this property to a negro.”!!! This housing covenant was found still in the 2000s!!!
“Robert E. Lee committed treason to preserve slavery.”
Things I never knew about Lee: his father was a legendary Revolutionary War general! He was put in charge of shutting down the abolitionist John Brown Rebellion (and succeeded but didn’t recognize that afterwards Brown would be seen as a martyr).
~80% of colonels from West Point and in that region of Virginia fought for the U.S. - Lee was an outlier and def did not have to commit treason and lead the fight that would end up killing more American soldiers than any other time before or since. He controlled more enslaved workers personally than most of the powerful Army men in the South.
This "reckoning" in the form of a memoir and history is both significant and, I believe, sincere. The POV is not just any random white guy from the U.S. South - he's a military history professor and spent nearly 40 years as an officer in the U.S. Army! I mean, just look at his accolades listed in the first paragraph of his wikipedia entry!We learn at the very end of the book that he in fact had to quit the Army, which he loves with fervent patriotic loyalty, in order to be able to publish this book.
When trying to describe this book to someone in a single sentence of text I called the author "very woke." I don't use that term often because of the mixed connotations it has gained in recent years, but I believe it's accurate in this case. One of the most significant aspects of Seidule's book is the explicit acknowledgment of the many ways he himself has reinforced and benefited from white supremacy. The primary angle of the book, he tells us, was pushed upon him by his wise wife - that he must bare his own involvement and backstory of growing up worshipping Robert E. Lee while also having zero Black friends.
Towards the end of the book, I kept wanting to tell Seidule to wrap it up already, but he draws it out and makes more than one problematic statement. The audiobook includes a 1-on-1 Q&A interview conducted over what must have been Zoom or Skype by a fellow white military history buff and writer. There were a few interesting tidbits but I'd recommend skipping the whole thing unless you want to hear two geezers sucking each other's dicks. It's really just a lot of back-patting and mutual praise.
Rather than review the whole book, I'm now going to insert my notes:
In the middle of the Civil War (1861-1865), the confederates tried out a few flag designs, notably none of which were exactly like the one held popularly by white supremacists. In discussion of one of the designs (the second flag officially) that’s mostly white, "The White Man's Flag." In explaining the white background, Thompson wrote, "As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause." - quoted in the book but copied from Wikipedia
ALSO, look into this interesting coincidence: verbatim from the Flag Act of 1965, in the South at the end of the war: “...That the flag of the Confederate States shall be as follows: The width two-thirds of its length, with the union (now used as the battle flag) to be in width three-fifths of the width of the flag…” If the “union” (which is the totality of the present-day, well-known Confederate Flag) goes 3/5ths precisely into the whole of the fabric, and the rest is white (and/or with a red bar at the end, which maybe ruins my working theory/hypothesis), is that because slaves had 3/5ths as much representation in the gov’t as white men?
Encourages saying “enslaved labor farms” instead of “plantations” and “United States vs. the traitors of the South” rather than “the Union vs. the Confederacy.” - Using “Confederate” continues to legitimize the treasonous secession.
“Georgia was a racial police state, not a democracy.”
“When asked after he left the White House, on what inspired him to create the Civil Rights Commission, Truman remembered exactly: It was the Monroe lynching combined with the beating and blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard that horrified the President.” - implication that those in power are only seen to intervene against violent anti-Blackness when they’re sufficiently disgusted and shocked by the most gruesome and visible cases.
Fort Bragg is one of ten US military posts named in honor of a Confederate, and he was not even a good general, hated by almost everyone in the Army.
“Racism requires falsehood, hypocrisy, and spite.”
Houses near West Point had notices to the owners saying “You shall not sell this property to a negro.”!!! This housing covenant was found still in the 2000s!!!
“Robert E. Lee committed treason to preserve slavery.”
Things I never knew about Lee: his father was a legendary Revolutionary War general! He was put in charge of shutting down the abolitionist John Brown Rebellion (and succeeded but didn’t recognize that afterwards Brown would be seen as a martyr).
~80% of colonels from West Point and in that region of Virginia fought for the U.S. - Lee was an outlier and def did not have to commit treason and lead the fight that would end up killing more American soldiers than any other time before or since. He controlled more enslaved workers personally than most of the powerful Army men in the South.