Robert E. Lee and Me

by Ty Seidule

  Because Governor Peay had no military background or national renown, the War Department changed the name to one of the most famous or infamous Tennessee soldiers: the officer white Tennessee politicians admired most—the Confederate lieutenant general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the “wizard of the saddle.” He had undeniable skill in small-scale cavalry combat. General William T. Sherman, always prone to exaggeration, told his officers, “Follow Forrest to the death if it costs 10,000 lives and breaks the treasury.” Yet Forrest’s effect on the war was not as great as his reputation for ferocity. Historian Charles Royster described him as “a minor player in some major battles and a major player in minor battles.”83 But among northern Civil War soldiers and African Americans, Forrest had a much darker reputation.

  Before the war started, Forrest made his fortune selling enslaved people in Memphis, and he participated in the illegal African slave trade. Only the domestic slave trade was legal after 1808, although some scholars estimate up to fifty thousand more Africans were sold into bondage after that date. In 1859, a report started by President Buchanan’s administration found that Forrest sold thirty kidnapped Africans from the ship the Wanderer, one of the last shipments to America from Africa. In 2008, Georgia emplaced a monument to the survivors of the Wanderer.84

  Forrest’s wartime record against African American soldiers was equally awful. After a battle at Fort Pillow, near the Mississippi River, in April 1864, soldiers under Forrest’s command, and likely under his orders, massacred Black U.S. soldiers and Black women. In discussing the massacre, a soldier wrote a week after the battle that several Confederate troops “tried to stop the butchery” of the U.S. soldiers but that Forrest “ordered them shot down like dogs, and the bloodbath continued.” “Remember Fort Pillow” became a rallying cry for U.S. soldiers, especially African American soldiers, for the remainder of the war.85

  Finally, after the war, Forrest became the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. While he eventually resigned from that position, both white and Black people throughout the South knew of Forrest’s infamous role in the first Klan and the Fort Pillow massacre. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast in 1868 showed the image of Forrest wearing a C.S.A. belt buckle. He holds a dagger aloft with the words “The Lost Cause.” In his back pocket a slaver’s whip links Forrest to human bondage. Under his boot, a prostrate African American man holds on to the American flag. Nast perfectly captures the view many in the North and South held of Forrest.86 Yet the U.S. Army named one of its largest World War II posts after Forrest.

  I tried to understand why the U.S. Army honored enemy combatants as late as the 1940s. The first reason should have come to me immediately. The United States in 1940 was only a democracy for some of its citizens. President Franklin Roosevelt told the country we would fight for the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. FDR called the United States the “arsenal of democracy.” Yet we did not practice democracy at home, where people of color in the South could not vote, serve on juries, or travel without fear. When the army declared that it would listen to local sensitivities on camp names, it meant white sensibilities.

  The same held true in the army. On the eve of World War II, only five Black Regular Army officers held commissions in the U.S. Army, and three of the five were chaplains. The other two were Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and his son, Benjamin O. Davis Jr. The War Department would not allow either officer to command white soldiers, severely limiting their chance for advancement. Moreover, the army’s own historical memory excluded Black soldiers. No army histories highlighted the bravery of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) during the Civil War or the success of the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, the Buffalo Soldiers, in Cuba during the Spanish-American War or on the western plains.87

  By the 1930s, the Lost Cause myth was no longer a southern phenomenon. President Franklin Roosevelt spoke at the dedication of the Robert E. Lee statue in Dallas in 1936. His description of Lee sounds like Jubal Early giving a speech in 1872 in Lee Chapel. FDR said Lee was a “great general. But, also, all over the United States … [w]e recognize Robert E. Lee as one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.” The South had lost the war but won the narrative.88

  The army’s naming convention also reflected its own miserable record on race. In World War I, two segregated army divisions fought in France. The 93rd Division included the Harlem Hellfighters and fought with French forces, wearing French uniforms. The 93rd performed magnificently. It was the only division that the commanding general, John J. Pershing, West Point class of 1886, allowed the French to control. Pershing did not want Black soldiers fighting for him. As he said about African American soldiers, “We must not eat with them, must not shake hands with them, seek to talk to them or to meet with them outside the requirements of military service. We must not commend too highly these troops, especially in front of white Americans.”89

  The second African American division, the 92nd, suffered from poor training and poor leadership because of the army’s own racist decisions. To add to the unit’s woes, the army selected southern white officers who supposedly knew how “to deal with Negroes” to command the unit. The 92nd’s track record in combat was mainly good except for one regiment in one battle, but white officers blamed African American officers for any failure. Several Black officers were court-martialed and sentenced to death, though they were eventually freed. The 93rd’s record showed competence and bravery under French leadership. Yet after the war, the army looked only at one regiment in the 92nd Division and unjustly concluded that African American soldiers couldn’t or wouldn’t fight.90

  From 1925 to 1938, the Army War College, the planners during that era, wrote a yearly report called “Negro Manpower in the Military Service.” The army told itself that in the next big war African American soldiers would be a problem because they wouldn’t fight. Yet the nation had more than twelve million Black people. How would it solve this “problem”? When I was researching another article at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, I read through the yearly reports. What I found went beyond mere racism into something much uglier. The army felt comfortable naming posts for people like Nathan Bedford Forrest because it didn’t see African Americans as fully human. The 1932 report included this assessment:

  The Negro … is lower in the scale of evolutionary development than the white but the important point is not the question of inferiority but the fact that the black race is different from our own … The Race is characterized by the greatest fecundity of all the races and by the urge to mate in a corresponding degree.91

  The army I served in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries lauded itself for its progressive record on race, leading the nation toward equality, but it rarely looked at its history honestly.

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  ONCE I STARTED looking, I found the Lost Cause and racism had thoroughly infected the army and not just through World War II. In the late 1980s, as a young captain, I went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to help train an Alabama National Guard unit. The unit performed well, acing the training event. At the end of the two-week event, the battalion’s officers gathered in a conference room to present the active-duty trainers like me with a certificate of appreciation.

  For the ceremony, the unit brought out its “colors.” Large army organizations have a flag called colors that represents the unit’s history. During the Civil War era, soldiers lined up shoulder to shoulder and fired en masse. A regiment’s colors would allow troops to orient on the formation’s center during battle. When the colors were held high, most soldiers could see them despite the chaos and smoke around them. The colors became a precious item, representing the honor of the unit. Losing the colors to the enemy meant the disgrace or capture of the entire unit.

  During the Civil War, units would embroider the names of the battles they participated in directly onto the flag. Now the colors have three-foot battle stre
amers. Each streamer has the name of one campaign. The army flag today has 190 streamers dating from Lexington and Concord in 1775 to the latest campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The army’s colors include twenty-five streamers from the Civil War. Each Civil War streamer has a blue top and a gray bottom with the name of the campaign, like Gettysburg, embroidered across the fabric.92

  The southern states’ National Guard battle streamers look different only for the Civil War campaigns. For those flags, the gray is on top and the blue is on the bottom, highlighting their Confederate legacy. The battle names reflect southern heritage too, not the U.S. nomenclature. For instance, we call the Civil War battles in 1861 and 1862 “Bull Run” and “Antietam” after rivers. The Confederates called them “Manassas” and “Sharpsburg” after towns. For the Alabama unit I evaluated, the streamer said “Sharpsburg” with gray over blue. The border states that remained in the United States like Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and even West Virginia have Confederate streamers, even though they had more soldiers fight for the U.S. than the C.S.A.93

  The Confederate streamers did not join the army flag when streamers were first authorized in 1925. Their addition came at a more sinister date—1949. President Harry Truman ordered the military to desegregate in 1948. Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall, a North Carolinian, did his best to keep the service segregated, allowing states to maintain segregated National Guard units. In fact, Royall was the leading spokesman in the Truman administration against integration. I found no document linking the Confederate battle streamers to integration, but my research has shown that if you scratch a Confederate monument, you find either white supremacy or a reaction against equal rights. It’s suspicious that Confederate battle streamers joined the army flag during the fight against integration.94

  The Confederate glorification continues into the present wars. The 167th Infantry Regiment fought with distinction in World War I with the 42nd Rainbow Division. At the Second Battle of the Marne, they helped stop the German attack that came perilously close to Paris. In World War II, they fought in the Pacific theater, including the Battle of the Philippines, as part of the 31st “Dixie Division.” Before redesignating as the 167th Infantry at the start of World War I, they were known for their Confederate service as the 4th Alabama.

  Throughout their World War I and World War II service, the 167th took pride in their lineage, but I found nothing official that linked them to the Confederates. Then, in 1971, the unit petitioned the army’s Office of Heraldry to add thirteen stars to their original 1921 crest to honor the thirteen Civil War battles the unit fought as the 4th Alabama. In 1983, the 167th added the title 4th Alabama to their official name. I read the Office of Heraldry’s current description of the 167th Infantry Regiment, and it included this phrase: “The thirteen blue stars symbolize the unit’s thirteen battle campaigns in the War Between the States.” In 1983 and today the army uses the Lost Cause name for the Civil War.95

  On 167th Infantry’s Facebook page and on Wikipedia, soldiers wore a tab above their unit patch that reads, “4th Alabama.” I checked with the officials who grant uniform changes. The tab is unauthorized. The 167th Infantry started wearing the tab honoring their Confederate service during their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. They still wear it today. I saw a video with an African American soldier wearing a tab honoring a Confederate regiment that fought to keep his ancestors in perpetual bondage.96

  * * *

  In 2015, the massacre of African American churchgoers in Charleston by a white supremacist who posed with the Confederate Battle Flag forced the army to talk about the subject. Unfortunately for the army, no other service has bases named for Confederates. The Department of Defense’s leaders steered clear too, effectively saying, “It’s an army problem.” The army’s chief of public affairs, the official spokesman of the army, released this message:

  Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history. Accordingly, these historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies. It should be noted that the naming occurred in the spirit of reconciliation, not division.

  “Historic names”? Is that mealymouthed answer the best the army could do? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, unless the army planned to change the names, with politicians’ support, it couldn’t go into more detail about pro-slavery secessionists, KKK leaders, white supremacists, and traitors. Were the names really chosen in the “spirit of reconciliation”? Yes, if the army had mentioned that the reconciliation was for whites only and reinforced Jim Crow apartheid.97

  I wish the army would begin a process to change the names of the forts and excise the racism of the Lost Cause myth. Honoring those who fought against their country to perpetuate slavery—or, in the case of Belvoir, the name of an enslaved labor farm—does not represent the values of the army in the twenty-first century. The army remains, perhaps, the most diverse organization in the country. Its posts should have names of military heroes who served for the United States of America, upheld their oath, and fought for the freedom of Americans and others.

  Yet changing the names of hundred-year-old posts would create local and national tensions. The army finds Civil War history too dangerous and would prefer to punt the issue to politicians. For most of its history, real change came to the army when politicians and the nation demanded it. Until then, historians and especially retired officers need to tell the American people and our soldiers that we honor men who fought to destroy the United States to perpetuate slavery. The facts, I hope, I believe, will result in change. Never underestimate the ability of Americans to do the right thing—eventually.

  Even though I’ve hung up my spurs, I will always be a proud U.S. Army soldier. I tell my classes that the American soldier freed tens of millions of people in East Asia from imperial Japanese fascism. U.S. Army soldiers freed tens of millions more in Western Europe and North Africa from Nazi fascism. They finally stopped the slaughter of European Jews and others in concentration and death camps run by the Nazis. The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., is a solemn place, but I was always proud to take cadets there. The first thing I see when I walk inside are the battle flags, the colors, of the U.S. Army divisions that liberated the concentration camps.

  As someone who wore “U.S. Army” over my heart for four decades, I am proud of our role liberating the camps. I am equally proud of the army’s finest hour. During the Civil War, the U.S. Army, which included 180,000 Black soldiers, emancipated four million African Americans from human bondage, destroyed chattel slavery, and saved the United States of America. Our post names should reflect the best of the United States and its army, not the worst.

  6

  My Academic Career: Glorifying Robert E. Lee at West Point

  On my first day of work at the United States Military Academy at West Point, I left an hour early for a three-minute drive because I was so nervous. West Point was my dream assignment. After two years of graduate school at the Ohio State University, I would teach military history to the next generation of army leaders.

  As I drove along Washington Road, I came to Trophy Point. The majestic Hudson River makes a lazy “S” turn around West Point, creating a gorgeous view north, straight up the river. The impressively named Storm King Mountain dominates the west side while Constitution Island with Revolutionary War–era redoubts, or small forts, occupies the eastern side. The colonists named the island as a protest against the English crown’s refusal to grant the Americans their rights under the British constitution.

  The view mesmerized me, but so did the history. I pulled the car over to a parking lot and walked across Washington Road to Trophy Point, named after the trophies of war seized by American soldiers from the Revolutionary War through the Spanish-American War. I found three British cannons captured by the Continental Army at Saratoga in 1777. One of the guns had an indentation where a cannonball had smacked it.

  Beside the guns stood a chain-link circle perhaps six feet in diameter. The chain li
nks were massive, two feet each, and were the remnants of the Great Chain, a sixty-ton iron monster floated on a log boom and anchored on either side of the river to prevent British warships from controlling the Hudson. George Washington called West Point, “The key to the whole continent.” I could feel the history of this place all around me and I loved it.

  As I walked west past the Great Chain’s remaining links, I stopped at a colossal seventy-foot Tuscan column topped with a statue of a female figure. Surrounding the column are cannons and large granite spheres. Imprinted around the rim of the business end of each cannon was the name of a famous Civil War battle. The first one I noticed said, “Gettysburg.” About a third of the way up the column, I read these words:

  In memory of the Officers and Men of the Regular Army of the United States who fell in battle during the War of the Rebellion. This monument is erected by their surviving comrades.

  “The War of the Rebellion.” I wondered why the monument would say that phrase. It would take me years to appreciate why those nineteenth-century West Pointers called it the War of the Rebellion. I soon learned the name of the majestic column: Battle Monument.

  The next year, as I led my cadet class on a tour, an old grad stopped us as we looked at Battle Monument. I’m not sure if he interrupted me because he wanted to talk to cadets or perhaps he recognized my southern accent. Through the years, my accent has smoothed out and most people can’t tell I’m from the South anymore, but in the 1990s he caught the lilt. The old grad pointed, “See that column?”