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ROBERT E. LEE AND ME A Southerners Reckoning With the Myth of the Lost Cause By Ty Seidule291 pp. St. Martins. $27.99.

Long before the alt-right circled the statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville in 2017, Seidule, a retired brigadier general and professor emeritus of military history at West Point, set out to understand why his academy continued to display a portrait of Lee, a graduate of the school who resigned his Army commission to fight against his country.

This investigation required that Seidule, a native Virginian and graduate of Washington and Lee University, examine his own reverence for Lee and the myth of the Lost Cause. The resulting book part autobiography, part history is a powerful and introspective look into white Americans continuing romance with the Confederacy, and the lasting damage that has done.

The chapters follow Seidules life, from his upbringing in Alexandria (which he later learned was a major slave-trading hub) and Monroe, Ga. (where a grisly 1946 quadruple lynching remains unsolved), to his Army career and years teaching at West Point. Along the way he explores Lost Cause ideology, which denies that slavery was the wars central motive; describes the pro-Confederate propaganda served to children in Southern schools in the 1960s and 70s; and illuminates the tortuous relationship between the U.S. Army and its greatest traitor.

The history of the Armys relationship to the Confederacy and Lee is fascinating, especially in light of current controversies over military bases named after Confederate commanders. After the Civil War, Seidule explains, West Point banished the Confederates from memory. The academys postwar motto, Duty, Honor, Country, was a rebuke to secession. Over the next century, however, Lee memorials began to appear. Seidule saw a pattern. Again and again, he says, progress toward integration and equal rights in the military was accompanied by Confederate memorialization.

The books epilogue sets out the reason for Lees treason: the protection of slavery. The evidence is clearly on Seidules side. It is long past time to break Lees grip on American Civil War memory. Seidule provides a blueprint for doing just that.

A SHOT IN THE MOONLIGHT How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow SouthBy Ben MontgomeryIllustrated. 285 pp. Little, Brown/Spark. $28.

The breathless title tells it all. The shot in the moonlight was fired by George Dinning, an emancipated slave, in defense of his home and family in Simpson County, Ky., in 1897. Dinnings target was a mob that had congregated at his home and accused him of theft; his shot killed a white farmer, the scion of a wealthy local family. Dinning was spirited away by a civic-minded sheriff determined to prevent a lynching. Denied that satisfaction, the mob burned Dinnings house to the ground.

Although Kentucky remained in the United States during the Civil War, it was rived politically and plagued by guerrilla violence long past 1865. By the turn of the century, the states white elite had grown impatient with mob violence, which marred its reputation and deterred investment. Kentuckys legislature passed an anti-lynching bill one month before Dinning stood trial for murder. Dinning could have been hanged, either by the mob or by the state. Instead, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison.

This sentence was too extreme for Gov. William Bradley, who pardoned Dinning, declaring that the fair name of Kentucky had been disgraced by mobs for too long. Noting that Dinnings conviction had been procured almost entirely on the evidence of his assailants, Bradley also affirmed Dinnings defense: that he had fired into the mob only after it had fired on him, and that he acted solely to protect his family.

Dinning, aided by his lawyer, Bennett Young a former Confederate soldier and humanitarian went on to sue members of the mob for the destruction of his home. They won a noteworthy victory in the Kentucky courts.

Montgomerys claim that a Black man in the South had sued his would-be lynchers and won is overstated. Its not clear that the men who congregated at Dinnings home intended to lynch him, and the lawsuit centered on the burned house, not on personal assault. Even so, its a good story, one that reveals the complicated history of the post-bellum South, a world that included brave freedmen, occasionally sympathetic white men and genuine commitment to law and order.

ECONOMY HALL The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood By Fatima ShaikIllustrated. 525 pp. The Historic New Orleans Collection. $34.95.

Economy Hall is so inviting that the true depth of its scholarship is revealed only in its bibliography, which lists dozens of archival and other sources. Shaiks monumental book is anchored in 24 handwritten ledgers rescued from the trash by her father years ago. Her painstaking translation of the ledgers, and re-creation of the world that produced them, transports you to the orbit of the Socit dEconomie et dAssistance Mutuelle, a benevolent association and social club begun in 1836 by 15 French-speaking freemen of African descent in New Orleans. The book is simultaneously a history of the mens iconic meeting place, Economy Hall, and of the city they called home.

Alexis de Tocqueville, commenting on Americans propensity to form associations, called this art of joining the fundamental science of democracy. Shaik emphasizes the political activism of the New Orleans group. Whether refuting the claims of scientific racism, risking their lives for the right to vote or nurturing jazz and other forms of African-American culture, members of the Economie fought to participate in democratic life. Not all of their ventures achieved the desired outcome, as a coalition of New Orleans Black men that included a president of the Economie discovered in 1896, when the Supreme Court upheld Louisianas separate train car law in Plessy v. Ferguson.

After 1900, the Economie evolved from an elite to an inclusive society, Shaik writes. As segregation tightened across the South, the society was led by the son of a Black mother and a Jewish father and began to focus less on politics and more on culture, particularly jazz. Economie musicians shaped the new musical form, and Economy Hall became famous for its dance parties.

The book is organized around the life of Ludger Boguille, the groups long-serving secretary and a local leader of New Orleanss prosperous Creole community. A fierce advocate of Black suffrage, Boguille was nearly killed in 1866 when an armed mob led by police burst into a reconvened Louisiana constitutional convention. Boguille was also a teacher, who prescribed radical kindness for students and parents alike. The city of New Orleans is Boguilles co-star, and Shaiks rendition of her hometown is lyrical and mysterious and always captivating.

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Puncturing the Allure of Robert E. Lee, and Other Civil War-Era Histories - The New York Times