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

by Ty Seidule

torture, mutilation, and eventual death at the Pennsylvania border rather than submit to enslavement in Virginia.77 The more I read about Confederate policy toward emancipated African Americans, the more the true nature of the southern states’ war becomes apparent. Lee led an army whose purpose was to support a new nation dedicated to subjugation. Of course, the Confederates would see free Black men as a threat. The enslaved fought for their own freedom, first by escaping to U.S. camps and then by fighting as soldiers. If African American soldiers could fight valiantly, which they did, the entire argument of slavery was bankrupt.78 We should also remember that Lee had African Americans in his army, as enslaved servants and workers, not soldiers. The Army of Northern Virginia hired thousands of enslaved workers from owners to dig fortifications and bury bodies.79 The South used enslaved workers to free more white men for combat. After Grant took command and the likelihood of victory diminished, Lee wanted even more enslaved workers in the army. He wrote to Jefferson Davis in the fall of 1864,