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

by Ty Seidule

Lee chose the Confederacy because of his abiding belief in slavery. A senior army colonel as intelligent as Robert E. Lee knew full well why the states seceded; they told the world why they seceded—to protect and expand slavery. Lee chose to fight for a new nation whose explicit, constitutional guarantee was human bondage—forever.55 While Lee believed in slavery, he also profited from it far more than other army colonels. At the age of twenty-four, two years after graduating from West Point, Lee married Mary Custis, the only child of George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington. Custis earned his money through inheritance, and that inherited wealth derived from the work of enslaved labor. Enslaved labor created much of his wealth including the prestigious, Doric-columned Arlington House with its commanding view of the