I grew up with a series of lies that helped further white supremacy. That’s uncomfortable. To see the real agony, think about the millions of people who lived their entire lives enslaved, knowing that enslavement would be the future for their children and their children’s children. Think of living with the violence of the Jim Crow era as an African American.
Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me
In his candid and searing recent memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s Press), retired US Army general and renowned professor of history Ty Seidule recounts his odyssey from youthful hero worship of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and an indoctrination in racist myths of the Lost Cause to acclaim as a historian devoted to challenging the poisonous white supremacist lies about slavery, the Civil War, African American inferiority, Jim Crow segregation, and the deified Lee.
As a distinguished scholar of history, a decorated soldier, and a native of the South, Professor Seidule writes with rare authority about race, the Civil War, and the myths and lies about the war that he learned from an education presented through the lens of racism and Confederate mythology. He explains how his early beliefs were shaped by white supremacist ideology that demeaned and dehumanized Black citizens.
These racist views imbued Southern culture and were widely shared throughout the country in textbooks, popular periodicals, and the media, with movies such as the award-winning Gone with the Wind and Disney’s Song of the South rife with degrading stereotypes of African Americans.
And Professor Seidule vividly describes his path to understanding and his emergence as a leader for historical truth and for a reckoning on race. He demolishes the myths about the saintly Lee and, based on extensive research and overwhelming evidence, concludes that Lee was a traitor to his country who fought to preserve slavery.
And, as Professor Seidule describes the military’s veneration of Confederate leaders in naming of bases and other actions, he rejects honoring of those who fought to preserve slavery and committed treason in the effort.
Read more…
https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/154579
Robin Lindley is a Seattle-based attorney, writer and features editor for the History News Network (history news network.org. His work also has appeared in Writer’s Chronicle, Bill Moyers.com, Re-Markings, Salon.com, Crosscut, Documentary, ABA Journal, Huffington Post, and more. Most of his legal work has been in public service. He served as a staff attorney with the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations and investigated the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His writing often focuses on the history of human rights, conflict, medicine, art, and culture. Robin’s email: robinlindley@gmail.com.
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Hmmm…reading comments here is illuminating, sometimes. Then there are the times when people spout the prevailing rhetoric, with little regard over some facts. No mention of the fledgling industrialists in the north in competition with England, no mention of king cotton and it’s (major) part in it all, no mention that those in the south entered into treasonous contracts with British firms to the detriment of northern manufacturers, which would guarantee British domination. No mention of the south conspiring with the French and English at the same time and Lincoln threatening both, which put an end to their collusion. As today, it’s the same players, but today we have the result of the eventual control by CoL. That control was cemented when Lincoln was assassinated and the greenback was discontinued, 35 years later the beginnings of the FED arose…after yet another assassination. That slavery was a trojan horse, used a an excuse, is yet another part…it’s called divide and conquer and it’s going gang-busters yet today. But the rhetoric is the same. It was states rights (over slavery in the territories and Dred Scott set it all afire), as is the mantra today. The main result from this is the same thing they would like to see today…civil war. As well, it’s run by the very same cabal. How about this…states have passed anti-BDS laws. Are these legal or not? They violate the constitution, yet could be construed as states rights, no?
This writer is a shameless hack and court historian. He perverts history for the benefit of the international banksters and for his own personal enrichment. Enjoy those shekels, hack.
Konehead is right. Slavery is a red herring and the ONLY way the North can be depicted as having the moral highground is by pushing the lie that the Civil War was fought over the principles of slavery (a practice that’s days were already numbered). It wasn’t about slavery- proof itself lies in the Emancipation Proclamation that abolished slavery in the South ONLY- not the North.
The Civil War was about the rights of local government vs being ruled from afar against your will. It was when tyranny and the NWO prevailed.
On top of fact civil war was not about freedom of slaves like is taught in schools, the Revolutionary War was about keeping slavery..
Britain had abolished slavery in their home country since mid 1600s, and shortly before the revolutionary war started up (however long it takes to get a decree across the atlantic) Britain declded that slavery would be illegal in the colonies (except Jamaica) and this really pissed off the “founding fuckers” (all slave owners and mass genocidal practitioners of native indian tribes – especially George Fucking Washington – the worst of the bunch…read up about him and the Seneca indian tribes how many hundreds of thousands of indians he personally had killed or starved to death)
So rich slave owners got together to create the USA nation and making sure slavery continued is the absolute no1 reason for split from British rule. Certainly was not about the price of tea.
Meanwhile the British make allirdwith all the indian tribes, by guaranteeing to them they will keep their land, in contrast the USA policy is to take their land, and murder as many as is possible.
“Lee’s comments after he heard about the Emancipation Proclamation on January 10, 1863, calling it,”
“A savage and brutal policy … which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution, our social system from destruction.”
Had the slaves had looked like white Southerners, Lee might have felt differently.
If not, it would say even more.
😢🤧
Civil war fought for three years BEFORE the emancipation proclamation – and the emancipation declaration was racisst as get-go…ONLY slavery in the southern states was made “illegal”….the northern states all continued to have legal slavery, if anyone so chose to.
Why only southern states affected by the “proclamation” was the reason to cripple the Southern agricultural economy, as it depended on the free-labor that slaves gave to their owners
The northern states just as racist as southern – witness the race riots in NY, and burning of black orphanages with hundreds of black kids inside being burnt to death.
Lincoln had many speeches claiming that Blacks are inferior to whites, and could never be equal in intelligence and culture etc.
Back then slaves were property that somebody had purchased, like cattle or horses. The word racism did not even exist.
Civil war was about the northern industrial states deciding they must dominate and control the southern states for some drunken reason based on whiskey, opium, and pure greed, not the freedom of black slaves.
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