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

by Ty Seidule

Looking at what “might have been” shows the possibility of a terrible future, but it’s speculation. We do know, however, what Robert E. Lee did. For me, the biggest issue was the fateful, awful decision he made in April 1861. Lee’s decision to fight against the United States was not just wrong; it was treasonous. Even worse, he committed treason to perpetuate slavery. Slavery was and is wrong. That’s not a hard moral judgment. Four million men, women, and children were not property; they were people who deserved to share the American dream. Frederick Douglass described the experience of a typical enslaved man, “robbed of wife, of children, of his hard earnings, of home, of friends, of society, of knowledge, and of all that makes his life desirable.”115