Robert E Lee and Me Ty Seidule -In Conversation - CrowdCast

Date and Time for this Past Event

Thursday, Jan 6, 2022 7pm-8:15pm

Location

Details

Rediscovered Books and the Frank Church Institute welcome Brigadier General Ty Seidule to discuss his book Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause . Event will be held virtually via CrowdCast.

Ticket includes a copy of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause. Book will mailed after the event.

Frustrated by his realization that so many white Americans from all parts of the nation have "grown up with the same myths, really lies, about the Civil War" that he learned as a child in Virginia, Seidule takes apart the bedrocks of "Lost Cause" mythology, presenting evidence that the Civil War was truly about slavery, not states' rights; that Robert E. Lee's high moral character has been exaggerated; and that the North won because of its strategic superiority as much as its manufacturing capabilities.

Seidule delves into the history of lynchings in Walton County, Ga., where he attended high school, and the ways in which the U.S. military valorizes the Confederacy. He contends that, with the exception of an "extremist fringe," most Americans who accept Confederate mythology do so out of ignorance rather than racism.

As he began to study the American Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras, he learned that the version of history he was taught was inaccurate. He makes a solid case that leaders of the Confederate states should not be honored because they betrayed their oaths to uphold the Constitution and in fact fought to destroy the very nation they were sworn to protect.