Visiting Professor of History Ty Seidule recently presented a lecture at the University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee. The event was sponsored by Sewanee’s Roberson Project On Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation.
In his talk, Seidule discussed how his Southern upbringing shaped his views about the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy, and the Myth of the Lost Cause. He said those views were reinforced through his military service but now, in the years since his retirement from the U.S. Army as a brigadier general, have shifted dramatically, bringing about his new way of seeing the Civil War and how it is commemorated.
Seidule is the author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (2021). He served as vice chair of the Congressional Naming Commission, established in 2021 to compile an inventory of military assets having names associated with the Confederate States of America and provide recommendations for their removal.
According to Sewanee’s website, The Roberson Project “seeks to gather and give a more complete historical account of [the] university, the town of Sewanee, and all its people — one that sheds light on how slavery and its legacies have marked our history and that acknowledges the contributions and sacrifices of all who have shaped Sewanee’s past and present.”
