Category: Commentary

Subtitled “A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause,” this work is by Ty Seidule, Brigadier General (retired), and the first Professor Emeritus of History at the United States Military Academy. Seidule had his “fifteen minutes of fame” back in 2015, when he gave a talk for PraegerU, a conservative online site which produces short videos. Entitled “Was the Civil War about Slavery?” it became the most watched history video . . . in history.

Spoiler alert: Yes, the Civil War was all about slavery. Seidule was shocked at both the popularity and the notoriety of this short video, which he thought rather obvious.

Seidule’s book builds on that experience to address the Lost Cause mythology of the American South. However, don’t expect a history book in the classic sense, or even a data-driven argument. Seidule adopted the personal-story-as-explanatory-history approach, very popular among authors today. Seidule’s personal history is as a young man who grew up in Alexandria, Virginia (a close-in suburb of Washington, DC, so close it was originally included in the District), a quintessentially southern town in the 1970’s.

In prose both fluid and florid, Seidule tells of growing up a privileged son on the south, taught to revere that ultimate southern gentleman, Robert E. Lee. During his youth, Virginia state history books still had outrageous depictions of plantation life complete with happy slaves and kindly masters! Alexandria especially tried to proclaim its Confederate heritage: the town was occupied on the first day–and for the duration of–the Civil War, so it literally named all its north-south streets after Confederate heroes.

BG(ret) Seidule notes he swallowed all these myths (State’s rights, contented slaves, chivalrous Confederates personally opposed to slavery but unwilling to end it) and fully believed them. Only as an adult and budding historian did he come to realize what a slanted version of history he had been fed, and he has dedicated himself to setting the record straight.

It should go without saying, but Seidule is absolutely right. The Civil War was about slavery. Slavery is uniquely horrendous at all times, and the behavior of post Reconstruction southern leaders in their successful attempts to rewrite history and enforce Jim Crow laws was egregious. Seidule is at his best uncovering the history he never learned about towns he lived in, like Alexandria and Monroe (Georgia), which was once known as “lynchtown.” He is at his weakest when he makes post hoc arguments about why things are without any footnote or reference. Here his book comes across with little force, more like an extended opinion piece in the New York Times magazine.

Further, Seidule relies on his righteous anger at being misled at key points. He does establish the fact that generations of southern children received similar brain-washing, which partially explains the staying power of the Lost Cause myth. But, he also recognizes most of this historical fiction ended by the 1980’s, so what we have now is . . . what? Street names? Statues? Today’s students in Northern Virginia (where I lived for thirty years) get barely a few hours of Civil War history, and are hard pressed to say anything intelligent about the war. Their ability to process the name of Lee highway or J.E.B Stuart high school as a public symbol of white supremacy is suspect.

Early in this work–in the Foreword, actually–Seidule relates the story of his involvement with a project to memorialize West Point alumni who died in combat. Seidule explains he opposed including those West Pointers who abandoned the country and the Constitution at the moment of greatest danger to join the Confederacy. He notes he was overruled by the Academic Board and even the Superintendent, before someone leaked the plan and public outrage led to his position (i.e., no Confederate names in the memorial) being adopted. So far, so good, and of course the Brigadier General was in the right.

But in the telling of the tale, Seidule says “I should have realized that the overwhelmingly [sic] white men around the table might have grown up with the same myths, really lies, about the Civil War.” He has no footnote, no evidence, just a bold-faced assertion of the private thoughts and beliefs of his follow officers. This is unfortunate.

How did he know? He never says. Was there not another possibility? As a professional historian, he knows there was. I attended West Point around the same time Seidule was at Washington & Lee. Cadets did indeed study Lee, the officers who abandoned the Union, and the issue of slavery in the Civil War. In Military Art classes, we examined in-depth Lee’s tactical and operational brilliance, and his manifest failings as a strategist. In ethics, while we examined the role of States in the early days of the Republic and the loyalties they entailed, we also firmly established that abandoning our oath in wartime was an act of treason. Some cadets found this hard to swallow, but I never heard anything else than that from the faculty.

Finally, in studying how wars end, we learned about the unique outcome of the American Civil War. Most such conflicts end only with reprisals, widespread destruction, and endemic hostility. The US Civil War was different: it ended with the successful re-integration of the seceding states. This was in no small part due to the guidance of President Lincoln, whose wartime Second Inaugural address said “with malice toward none except the damn rebels, with charity toward all except the racist traitors.” You know the italicized words ring false because they weren’t there. Lincoln told Congress his plans to pardon the Confederate soldiers upon conclusion of the war. President Andrew Johnson issued a conditional pardon shortly after the war, and he followed that up with an unconditional pardon on Christmas day, 1868. Thus began the process of re-integration of the Union, which was uniquely successful.

Seidule confuses this part of the historical record with the shameful failure of Reconstruction, the abandonment of the freedmen, the introduction of Jim Crow and the racism in both north and south that continued to the Civil Rights era. These things did follow, but they were not necessarily caused by the pardoning process, which worked. He suggests any reference (picture, naming, statue, etc,) to Lee is part and parcel of the Lost Cause mythology and therefor suspect. Seidule rightly holds dear to the US Constitution and the oath that he and I took to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yet that pardoning power is part of that same Constitution, and he rejects it. Here his anger at being misled gets the better of his argument.

Robert E. Lee was a great leader and a fine military officer. He was also a racist who personally benefited from, and directed the mistreatment of, slaves. He was at once refined AND cruel, educated AND ignorant, kind AND intolerant. The author is right to decry the fact he was led to believe only one side of history. Would that he had heeded that advice here.

My verdict: if you were led to believe only in the ‘sainthood’ of Robert E. Lee, this work is a powerful corrective. If you were ever exposed to the more complicated story of Lee and the South, you’ll find much of this book unsurprising.

Authored by Roosevelt Montás, the senior lecturer in American Studies at Columbia University, this work answers the question “what is the value of a traditional liberal education?” The full title is Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. I am not a fan of putting the full thesis of the work in the subtitle, but then again, no one can complain they were misled about what they were about to read!

Montás is a capable writer, and this work is part autobiography and part argument for a traditional liberal education. By that he means an undergraduate curriculum focused on intense study of the classics of Western philosophy and literature. This is the program he went through as an undergraduate, and it deeply affected him, so much so he dedicated his teaching career to carrying on the tradition.

Thus his arguments do not stem from a neutral perspective, nor does he try to marshal an imposing array of data to support his points. This does not slight his work, which remains powerful based on his personal experience. Through a variety of helpful government, charitable, and fraternal organizations, he moved from a tiny village in the Dominican Republic to New York City, where he eventually lands a scholarship to Columbia and engages its Core Curriculum, one of the few such programs in the country.

Montás begins by describing the original intent of a university education, an intent long lost in modern America: not to earn a good living, but to lead a good life. Working skills were taught by the trades, and were (and still are) an effective means to earn a good living. But what constitutes a life well-lived? Such a challenge requires serious engagement with “what is good?” and “how would we know?” While the classics of Western thought may be of little value in programming the next immersive digital experience, they are critical to those looking for answers to those nagging “why?” questions. Montás believes everyone–even students looking for a solid STEM education–would benefit from an engagement with the classics. A point I would add in his favor: if a person like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had spent more time engaging the classics at Harvard, he might not have made the naive mistake of thinking his social media project would only be used for good purposes!

Montás eschews the typical partisan battles about “dead white males” or “what constitutes the Western Canon” by stating of course the material can be enlarged, but whatever is chosen must stand the test of quality and the test of time. For this work, he highlights Plato, St. Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi, winding together a short synopsis of what makes these thinkers “great” with how they affected him. He proofs his argument by including Freud and Gandhi: the former is largely discredited but has a profound influence on society, the latter a modern and non-“Western.” Of the four parts, I found the one on Freud the least interesting, since it leads into Montás personal experience with psychoanalysis, which to me is as useful as astrology (Hey, I’m a Libra!).

I came to this book as a true believer, already convinced of the value of such an education. University curricula today have become à la carte offerings that leave dedicated students with marketable skills but little balance, little depth, and little ability to argue persuasively. One only need look at social media to see the paucity of serious engagement. I hoped for a juggernaut of an argument, but Montás presents more of a personal plea, citing his own rise. This is effective, even if I wanted more.

The book is an easy read, and provides nice summaries of the four great thinkers for those who may have forgotten–or never had the chance to engage with–them. I sincerely hope more parents encourage students to demand a rigorous core curriculum in place of the thin gruel offered today. Some will benefit greatly, and all will benefit some. The rest of us will benefit from a more intelligent discourse!

Why a book report? Why not?

Forget the Alamo is a new work by Bryan Burrough, a onetime Wall Street Journal reporter who now writes at times for Vanity Fair. He has several well-received books, including Barbarians at the Gates (about the takeover of RJR Nabisco) and Public Enemies (about the birth of the FBI). This work takes on the legendary siege at the Mision San Antonio de Valera, a staple of Texas history (where he grew up). His co-authors are Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford. I will refer to them collectively as Burrough.

Burrough admits early on, and repeats in summary, that this is not strictly speaking a work of history. He calls it historiography, or a history of the history of how various groups have used the events of the siege to their own ends. Needless to say (based on the title), he believes most of those who cherish the legend are wrong, either in what they believe (the defenders were heroic, they were fighting for freedom, they died to-a-man while fighting) or what they believe in (Anglo superiority, anti-Mexican hate, general hatred of immigrants, macho sexism, or simple racism).

Burrough writes with a clean style and has ample footnotes to work by historians. I find his attempts at humor, introducing today’s jargon for example, as off-putting, but some may enjoy them. His storytelling skills remain strong, and while you never doubt where his sympathies lie, he keeps the narration interesting.

The main challenge this book presents is Burrough’s contention that we should reject the dominant narrative–and he readily admits this narrative is dominant–of heroic Alamo fighters dying in defense of freedom. His bases this claim on a number of supporting points. First, the Anglo settlers in Mexican Tejas were mainly interested in cotton-growing and slavery, and that was the purpose of the secession movement from Mexico. Second, the defense of the Alamo was a colossal military blunder by Colonel Bowie and Sam Houston, so the siege never should have happened. Third, it is uncertain whether the defenders died heroically: some may have been captured, others may have been cut down running away outside the walls. Fourth, General Santa Ana and the Mexican Army have become the bogeymen of the drama. Finally, various groups (e.g., the KKK, Confederates, bigots and racists) have used the Alamo legend to their own unfortunate ends. Let’s deal with each in turn, from last to first.

Obviously, the fact that some malign groups misuse the Alamo legend is no reason to forget what happened there. The most powerful piece of evidence Burrough presents is testimony by many Texas Latinos who grew up feeling as American as apple pie until they took the school-sponsored, mandatory, seventh-grade field trip to the Alamo, where they saw themselves portrayed as the enemy. No one should doubt their stories, and there is ample reason to tell the entire Alamo story, not just the part with heroic white guys dying at the hands of evil brown guys. Yet Burrough must know, in fact he even explains, why this happened. The two groups of settlers in Mexican Tejas were long-standing Tejanos (of Spanish/Mexican descent) and Anglo newcomers called either Texians or Texicans. The Tejanos wanted Tejas to provoke a change in the Mexican federal government toward greater federalism, while the Anglos wanted independence from Mexico. The Texians ended up winning, and the Tejanos were relegated to a side-story in the history of what became American Texas. Their story deserves to be told; some Tejanos died at the Alamo. As Churchill reportedly said however, “History is written by the victors.”

As to General Antonio López de Santa Anna, little needs to be done to confirm his role as a very bad person. He was a slippery leader who moved seamlessly from side to side in the Mexican War of Independence and had a preternatural ability to recover from battlefield losses. He fought against the American government, sought their assistance, sold territory to them, and ceded all of California, New Mexico and Arizona after losing the 1848 war. His behavior on the battlefield in the Tejas campaign was both pitiful and dreadful (more on this later). As a braggart and a vicious bully, he is practically typecast. Even Mexicans consider him “one who failed the nation.”

Another argument Burrough presents is based on more recent evidence that the Anglo defenders did not all die where they stood: some were captured, others apparently sortied (leaving the fort) and were run down by Mexican cavalry. The new accounts come from Mexican military sources, which could present a bias, but let’s accept them at face value. Burrough’s analysis of these sources evinces a lack of military experience. Burrough cites evidence of Davy Crockett (and a few others) being summarily executed after the battle (at the command of Santa Ana) as proof they did not die heroically. A soldier may still be captured without surrendering. Ammunition spent, surrounded by a mass of enemy soldiers, you can swing your rifle and still be subdued. It has no bearing upon your heroism. Likewise, Burrough assumes the men who sortied were running away. With the fort overrun and again out of ammunition, it is natural to strike out away from the enemy. People jumped from the top of the World Trade Center when presented with no other choice; it was not a matter of dying without honor.

The argument over whether the Alamo battle was a blunder is also misguided. True, Sam Houston sent Colonel Jim Bowie to the site to reconnoiter and if necessary, destroy the fort. Bowie recognized it was perhaps the only defensible site between where Santa Ana was marshaling his forces and the Brazos river, where Houston planned to marshal his. The Alamo was not much of a fort; Travis had only two hundred troops, and he would have needed more like one thousand to adequately defend it. However, having made the decision to stay, he counted on being reinforced by the 400 men in Goliad and more from Sam Houston. Neither arrived. Sam Houston thought Bowie was being hysterical, and Colonel James Fannin at Goliad dithered, only to later surrender to Santa Ana and have all his men massacred. In the end, Travis only got thirty volunteers from nearby Gonzales. They arrived after the siege began, demonstrating that the Alamo defenders could have still withdrawn after Santa Ana arrived and laid siege; that they didn’t stands as testament in their favor. Travis probably did not count on causing 600 Mexican casualties and slowing Santa Ana’s advance by two weeks; those were accidents of battle. But there is no way to consider the choice of battle site as a colossal mistake.

Finally, Burrough makes much of the seedy personal stories of men like Crockett and Travis and Bowie, and the reliance of the Anglo settlers on slavery. Crockett was a slimy politician, Bowie a drunk and a slave trader, Travis a deadbeat. Little is made of this in histories of the battle, since it has little to do with what happened inside the walls. These men were emblematic of Texicans in general: men looking for a second chance after failing elsewhere.

Burrough believes his most damning accusation is the Texican’s embrace of slavery. He treats this as a revelation, as if anyone even minimally aware of the history of Texas hadn’t heard it was a slave state that later fought with the Confederacy. Burrough admits the Anglos were invited to settle in Tejas, and slavery permitted, in a series of political compromises with the Mexican state and federal governments. The peace-loving Commanches had nearly depopulated the northern part of Tejas, and the government in Mexico City felt a wave of Anglo settlers might forestall more attacks and perhaps even rile the American government to eliminate the Commanches. It was only after Santa Ana reneged on these deals that the Tejanos supported a revolt (for greater state’s rights, of all things) and the Texicans did so too, to retain their cotton plantations and slaves. As Burrough’s footnotes point out, cotton prices went on a boom during this period, and Tejas had the land to support massive cotton production if slavery was permitted. It wasn’t that Texicans were dedicated slavers as much as they were a collection of desperate men trying out their luck in a situation that can only be described as “the wild west.” If beef or oil had been the hot commodity at that time, it would have been the cause of the revolt.

Perhaps the best work by Burroughs is when he describes the various machinations by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), a lineal group who eventually came to own and mismanage the site. Theirs is a story right out of a sorority house, filled with infighting, cliques, and fierce resistance to any change. That they fatally mismanaged the site is proven by a simple visit. Like most visitors, I was stunned at the tawdry ring of wax museums and tourist kitsch surrounding the Alamo. Even the inside locations lacked adequate signage of what happened. Eventually, the Texas State Land Commission withdrew the DRT claim to manage the site, and a renovation has fallen to none other than George P. Bush (eldest son of Jeb). Good luck with that!

This book belongs to a genre that uses anachronistic arguments to attack various ‘sacred cows’ of American history. No one firing on the advancing Mexican army from behind the walls of the Alamo shouted “give me slavery or give me death!” Most of those killed there did not own slaves, yet slavery was a sticking point in the larger argument over Texas independence. The Alamo plays the role it does in Texas (and indeed, American) history for what happened during those thirteen days in February and March, 1836, not for slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights, or Black Lives Matter.

Burrough et al try too hard to forget the Alamo. I hope their work leads to increased interest in the full story, and a much better job at preservation by San Antonio and Texas.

This is a complicated story; I hope I make it worth your trouble to follow!

The simple part is Notre Dame football. As an Irish Catholic lad growing up about 3 miles (as the crow flies) from the Golden Dome, I was predestined to be a fan of the Fighting Irish. Going to the local parochial school, still staffed by nuns who led us in prayers of thanksgiving every Monday for the past Saturday’s victory, didn’t hurt. And my adolescence coincided with a run of greatness that included national championships, miraculous comebacks, and legendary players/coaches. Unfortunately, it also came with the childish expectation that such things would continue: “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” Amen.

Except of course it wasn’t. While Notre Dame football went through extended periods of mediocrity, I remained a staunch fan. While excellence was a key component of their reputation, so was winning the right way, graduating student-athletes, and enforcing a degree of discipline and decorum. It’s not that the Irish players were better people than the players anywhere else. It’s that the institution held them to a higher standard, and disciplined them when they failed to meet it. And the same went for its coaches.

And then came Brian Kelly, a coaching success at small programs who brought Cincinnati near the top of the college football ledger for a season, right at the end of four failed Irish coaches in a row. He was straight out of central casting: Boston Irish, Catholic, blue collar, with a solid family life and a straight-forward demeanor. My first impression: no, he wasn’t a high-profile choice, but he had all the ingredients for success.

So I was shocked when I first asked my Dad what he thought of Kelly: “I don’t like him, he’s a phony. He’s not the right man to be coach at Notre Dame.” Now Dad couldn’t cite any statistics or even link to any salacious gossip to reinforce his gut instinct, but he stuck with it. What gave me momentary pause was the fact Dad was career policeman–a detective–and was very good at reading people. But he was also old-school, and a blossoming curmudgeon, so I chalked his opinion up to the latter and left it at that.

The fact that Kelly left his undefeated Cincinnati team practically on the field, facing Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators in a major bowl game (they were blown out), was a clue to the man’s character. There were many more to follow. Some were football related, like the time he had his quarterback throw a low-percentage fade route into the end-zone (intercepted) as the team was driving for a winning field goal, resulting in a loss to Tulsa. Yes, Tulsa. Questioned after the game, Kelly responded that was how he called his offense, and “get used to it.” There was the emergence of the screaming, purple-faced Kelly monster, literally losing his religion on the sidelines during a pathetic opening game loss to South Florida. Yes, South Florida.

Always taking the ball to start the game, often having a false-start out of time out, the star quarterbacks mentored into indecisive wrecks (before transferring), the posse of assistant coaching buddies who failed on the big stage, the offensive play-calling scheme (and I use the term loosely) that was indeed offensive. Not to mention the unending string of humiliating losses in big games.

I’m a Catholic, and a football optimist, so all these past sins could be forgiven. But then there were the off-field issues, too. When a student who helped with filming practices died in a fall from a camera tower, toppled in high winds, Kelly admitted no responsibility. His Athletic Director boss, Jack Swarbrick, called the 50 mph wind gusts “unremarkable.” Kelly’s players got caught cheating. His reaction when asked whether he had ANY responsibility: “Zero. Zilch. None.” He secretly met with representatives of the Philadelphia Eagles professional team (for a job interview) just before a championship match-up against the Alabama Crimson Tide (this in his third year at Notre Dame)!

To be sure, Kelly brought Notre Dame out of the doldrums where they languished when he was hired. Some younger fans admire his record number of victories, ten-win seasons, “appearances” in play-offs, or just his keeping Notre Dame “in the conversation” (a favorite quip of AD Swarbrick). And all those things are true, but counterfeit. His victory total includes wins forfeit due to NCAA violations. He has more ten win seasons than past ND coaching legends because his teams play twelve or thirteen games a season. His appearances in the play-offs and championship games have all the luster of the time when Grandpa showed up at Thanksgiving without his pants. And “the conversation” is highly overrated in today’s social-media saturated world.

And all this happened on top of a constant need to have everything his way. They tore up the grass and put in fake turf because Kelly wanted it. They added a jumbo-tron with nonstop jock-rock because Kelly said the players wanted it. He abandoned the tradition of pregame Mass because, well, there was no reason given. He got more, bigger, and better facilities which serve to separate the players from the other students, previously a hallmark of the Notre Dame experience. He complained about having to meet with so many alumni/booster clubs, perhaps misunderstanding the price of coaching a legendary program.

Did Kelly grow into the job, or embrace the traditions and the challenges they represent. Not really. He did eventually fire coaches, did admit he didn’t need to score a lot of points to generate excitement about the program, did get more involved with his players. These were all do-or-die changes. The closest he ever came to introspection was when he was smart enough to admit (around all the hoopla of “passing” Knute Rockne in total wins) he still didn’t have a championship. Kelly left his players with a tweet (this time), surprising even his chief proponent, AD Swarbrick. One of his assistants found out as he left a recruit’s house! In some respects, Kelly never really believed Notre Dame was different, and he proved his point by first denying any interest in other jobs, then taking one suddenly for a ridiculous payday.

In the end, Brian Kelly was a conniving, grasping, small-time coach. Yes, he was above-average on the sideline, but well below-average as a person of integrity. Despite my harsh words, I hold no grudge against Kelly. He was offered the opportunity, and he took it. He failed in the goal of winning a championship, but got paid admirably along the way. I wish him well, and I hope he performs just as well for Louisiana State. I do hope some future AD and leadership at Notre Dame correctly records Kelly’s tenure–officially–as having only 92 wins. After all, winning isn’t everything, . . . or is it?

So my Dad was right, again. I know he’s been waiting to hear that from me!