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

James Tyreus ‘Ty’ Seidule (pronounced (SED-ju-lee) is a retired Brigadier General in the United States Army, who served as a professor in the history department at West Point for over 25 years. Seidule was born in Alexandria, Virginia, very close to the childhood home of Robert E. Lee. As a young boy, he briefly attended Robert E. Lee Elementary School, a formerly all-Black school at the center of halting local efforts to integrate. After just one year, his parents removed him to private school, and he spent the rest of his education overwhelmingly in the company of white students. For high school, he attended George Walton Academy in Monroe, Georgia, which had been recently established as a “segregation academy” to give white students an alternative to integrated public schools. He attended college at Washington and Lee University, and after taking a course in its ROTC program decided to apply for a scholarship whereby the Army would help pay for school and he would serve a term in the Army following graduation. Seidule would end up spending 36 years in the army, including service in the Persian Gulf War and the Balkans. Early in his military career, he met his future wife, Shari, an investment banker who had grown up in a military family.