5/23/21 - Weekend Listening from Intercontinental Exchange

This weekend, the 2021 Corps of Cadets of United States Military Academy completed their 47-month West Point experience. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, USMA ‘75, addressed the Long Grey Line as the graduating class received their commission as second lieutenants in the U.S. Army.

"The next time I see your commander in chief, I'm going to tell him I have some very good news," he told the graduates. "Reinforcements are on the way." You can watch the ceremonies at this link.

West Point was founded in 1802 as America’s first college of engineering. As the school’s website proclaims, The Point’s mission remains constant: “to educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the nation as an officer in the U. S. Army.” 

We ask much of these graduates. Secretary Austin served in the Army for 41 years after leaving West Point, concluding as Commander of U.S. Central Command in 2016. So many others have given the last full measure of devotion.

While this year’s class sent 996 new soldiers into that service, the class of 1829 graduated only 45 brevet second lieutenants in the Corps of Engineers. Robert E. Lee, who did not incur any demerits in his four-year course of study, was second in his class. He distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War and served as superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855. The rest of the story is complicated.

Brigadier General Ty Seidule (USA - Ret.) was the former head of the history department at West Point. He was a 1984 graduate of Washington & Lee University and imagined himself as the epitome of the “Southern Gentlemen,” in some ways an inheritor of Lee’s legacy. His difficult reckoning with that heritage is the subject of his new book, Robert E. Lee and Me and the topic of our conversation on this week’s episode.

The view from Parade Field:

• U.S. Army General (Ret.) Ty Seidule’s Mission to Rename Military Bases May Be His Ultimate Battle Against the Lost Cause Brigadier General Ty Seidule (Ret.), a member of the DoD’s commission reviewing bases and other military instillations bearing names linked to the Confederacy, explains what’s in a name. Seidule, the former head of the history department at West Point and author of Robert E. Lee and Me, a Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, is cutting through the mythology that he grew up surrounded by to reveal a legacy of racism and inequality that the nation needs to repair.

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