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

by Ty Seidule

King, not Emperor

Looking carefully at those eight U.S. Army colonels from Virginia confirms that Lee’s decision was abnormal. Of those eight, seven remained loyal to their solemn oath to the U.S. Constitution. Only one colonel resigned to fight against the United States. Robert E. Lee.

Lee was an outlier. Most officers of his experience and rank remained with the United States.

The more I learned about Lee’s decision, the more I realized that he did not have to leave the U.S. Army. Freeman’s admonition that joining the Confederacy was “the answer he was born to make” is another lie from the Lost Cause myth. Lee chose to renounce his oath. I’m not making a presentist argument in thinking Lee’s decision was wrong. Plenty of other senior southern army officers agreed with the Constitution’s definition of treason, agreed that Lee dishonored thirty years of service.

Lee and Lee alone among Virginia colonels left the United States. When one tries to answer the question of why Lee left, the simplest reason works best. Lee left for the same reason the southern states seceded. The southern states went to war to protect and expand chattel slavery because they felt threatened by Lincoln’s election. Lee said in 1861, “The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the North as you say. I feel the aggression and am willing to take every proper step for redress.” What acts “aggrieved” Lee? The threat to end slavery. 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 capital. Custis owned two other enslaved labor farms—Romancoke and White House.

Whenever Lee made a decision regarding enslaved people, he chose profit over human decency.

Lee’s attempt to arm slaves did not show he was for emancipation; it showed how desperate he was to defeat the United States and maintain at least a semblance of racial control.83

Lee’s decision to fight against the United States was not just wrong; it was treasonous. Even worse, he committed treason to perpetuate slavery.

Racism is the virus in the American dirt, infecting everything and everyone. To combat racism, we must do more than acknowledge the long history of white supremacy. Policies must change. Yet, an understanding of history remains the foundation. The only way to prevent a racist future is to first understand our racist past.