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

by Ty Seidule

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.