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

History and art should, in theory, be subject to different standards of evaluation. History is a record of the facts, and the difference between good and bad history should be accuracy. The judgment of art is essentially subjective, since it relies on an emotional reaction. Seidule’s recollections of his childhood show that the boundaries between history and art are blurry in practice. By any historical standard, Lee’s Gettysburg campaign was a gross strategic mistake. Invading the North quickly put Confederate forces beyond their supply lines, and so soldiers stole from the local population, earning their resentment. Standard military theory holds that an invader requires at least a three-to-one manpower to compensate for the advantages that a defender has in terms of choosing favorable territory, easy resupply, and presumptive support of locals. Lee was vastly outnumbered, with exhausted troops who stopped in Gettysburg because many soldiers needed shoes. After the US force established a formidable position on high ground, Lee made a series of probing efforts against their flanks before making the fateful decision to order a frontal assault over a long distance of open ground, where soldiers were helpless against artillery fire and were at a fraction of their strength upon reaching the US line.

Whereas other famous defeats like the Spartans at Thermopylae and the Texans at the Alamo helped pave the way for future victories, the Army of Northern Virginia spent nearly two years in a grisly war of attrition. Meanwhile, US forces, having captured the last fort on the Mississippi River the day after Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg, had free rein to conquer the entire Confederacy. According to some historians, Lee was fixated on the Napoleonic model of warfare he learned at West Point, which taught the destruction of the enemy’s force in a single climactic battle, and in doing so failed to account for the fundamental differences between his own forces and Napoleon’s, as well as the technological developments of the intervening half-century. Lee was in many ways a skilled general, but took risks that his army could not afford.

As Seidule describes it, the prevailing narrative of Gettysburg owes more to art than history, the tragic story of a noble man who brought his gallant army to the very brink of total victory before fate cruelly snatched it away. The invasion of the North is romantic precisely because it was hopeless, indicating a willingness to fight against overwhelming odds in order to defend what is right. This version has drama, suspense, and heroism, all the qualities that sustain an audience’s attention. It is far more compelling than an account of a strategic error that wasted thousands of lives, especially for the cause of defending slavery.

People often prefer legends to facts, and this also helps to explain the enduring popularity of Gone with the Wind. Seidule confesses that even when he reread the book as an adult, with a more critical eye, he found it rich and engaging. The film is an extraordinary work of cinema with magnificent costumes, sets, acting, and cinematography. Few other films can keep an audience engaged for four hours. The problem with the novel and film is that it glorifies the antebellum South and depicts Black Americans as either servile or incompetent. Although it is a work of fiction, the power of its story is capable of shaping how people think about actual history. The film’s artistic merits become a part of the historical record, turning criticism of the film on political grounds into an exercise in revisionist history. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, HBO withdrew Gone with the Wind from its library. It restored it shortly thereafter, with an introductory message explaining the film’s problematic aspects. Many denounced this as an act of censorship, although HBO still shows the entire film without edits. HBO was also accused of presentism, judging the past by contemporary standards, even though the was the subject of protests even before it was released in 1939. Acknowledging the historical context of a work of art, and contemplating its troublesome aspects, need not necessarily interfere with the appreciation of its artistic qualities, but its artistic qualities do not render it immune from political and historical critique.

Seidule’s position appears to be similar to that of HBO. He does not to ban the Uncle Remus stories or Gone with the Wind, nor censor works of history that elevate the myth of Lee over the grim reality. With art, it is simply important to acknowledge that works of fiction do have real-world consequences. Notably, the 1915 film Birth of a Nation inspired the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and gave them the idea of burning crosses to indicate their presence. The film is taught in film schools to this day because of its influence on the art of narrative filmmaking, while its grotesque racism keeps it out of the mainstream collection of classic films. In the case of history, Seidule believes that showing how myths endure in defiance of the facts is the first step toward deconstructing those myths and confronting the facts, however unpleasant they may be. There is no resolving the debates over the relative merits of valuable art and its controversial messages or creators, and it is important to consider how art and history influence one another, while also maintaining a strict distinction between fact and fiction.